Where It All Goes Down
New York, 1902-1917
Ahh, the Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. What could be more American than New York City (besides apple pie)?
While Ragtime does take trips to the Arctic, Egypt, Europe and other locations in the Unites States, the book's real center is New York: from the beginning of the turn of the century to the end of World War I.
The setting is hugely important. New York at this time is the center of America, and is on its way to becoming a global capital. By using New York as his setting, Doctorow can examine a bajillion different themes: from immigration and poverty to class differences and intolerance and sex.
Check out the contrasts that Doctorow conjures up. One the one hand there's (yeeesh) this:
The tenements glowed like furnaces and the tenants had no water to drink. The sink at the bottom of the stairs was dry. Fathers raced through the streets looking for ice. [...] Horses exploded in the heat. Their exposed intestines heaved with rats. (3.7)
And on the other end of the income spectrum there's this:
Thaw was not really fond of the jail fare so they brought in his meals from Delmonico's. He liked to feel clean so they passed along a change of clothes delivered each morning to the jail doors by his valet. (4.4)
Anything and everything is possible in New York City, if you have the right amount of money. But between rich and poor lies a broad spectrum, and it's in the middle-income melting pot of New York that Doctorow focuses the action of his novel. Doctorow plays the city like a piano, hitting notes where he wants and bringing characters in and out of famous locales.
Freud spots the Little Girl and Tateh on the Lower East Side, Houdini hangs above Times Square, the mansions of the rich contrast with the tenements of the poor. Through it all, more and more immigrants are arriving at Ellis Island, trying to pursue the American dream. It all goes through New York. If you can make it there... well, you know the rest.
In 1971, John Lennon famously said, "If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Today, America is the Roman empire, and New York is Rome itself. New York is the center of the earth." What Doctorow is foreshadowing, by setting Ragtime in New York at the turn of the century, is that the United States would loom freaking large in the 20th century. The United States became a superpower in the 20th century, and Doctorow charts its meteoric rise by concentrating on America's largest city.