What Starts With Chaos, Ends With Chaos
"Happily ever after" is a phrase we have heard very often in stories every since we were little. The stories all follow a similar pattern: there's a problem, two people fall in love and solve the problem at the same time, and they live happily ever after. However, with a book like "Ragtime", this pattern becomes very complicated, because of the multiple plots going on at once without any real sense of logical progression. So what does the conclusion look like? Death. That's what it looks like. While reading, I noticed that in order to wrap up the book in a seemingly quick and simple way, Doctorow just kills off all the characters he doesn't know what to do with. Coalhouse? Dead. Mother's younger brother? Dead. JP Morgan? Dead. Father? Dead. In fact, it seems like the only significant people left alive might be Mother and Tateh, who do get a "happily ever after" ending. So what led Doctorow to this choice? Honestly, I think it might have ...