The unrealistic yet somehow realistic world of Ragtime
One of the big things that stood out to me as I read Ragtime was the description of the worker’s strike and its consequences for Tateh and his little girl. The way his experiences were narrated somehow highlighted and made personal this experience of marching and striking to the workers in a way I didn’t feel when I learned about this event in history. The story from the two’s perspective really gave me the immigrant point of view through Tateh, who does whatever he needs to survive. I felt a sense of realism in the narrative despite Tateh being a fictional character. Doctorow somehow managed to capture the “feel” of the time period a lot better than just a statement of facts or a historically accurate fictional work. In some ways, I was able to learn more through this telling of the times compared to other more conventional methods of teaching. The interesting interactions between historical characters who never would have met otherwise (each one being unrealistic, yet realistic in it...