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E.L. Doctorow wrote this novel, Ragtime, in a time of weakness in American history. In 1974, the Vietnam War had recently ended, New York City was in a state of bankruptcy and Watergate became a national scandal in the eyes of all Americans. The public was disillusioned by its government and Americans held little trust of their nation and its politics. For these reasons, it was ironic that Doctorow wrote this novel, one that looks back on easier and better days, in a time like this. Though Ragtime conveys the lives of many characters, no one character displays a progressive narrative like Tateh. His early years in the Lower East Side play a vital role in his success at the end of the novel. In reference to this Jewish haven, Hasia Diner mentions in his novel, Lower East Side Memories, that the area was plagued by “the recurrent themes of oppression, constriction, and danger, on one hand, followed by the expansiveness of liberation, on the other” (Diner 20). Tateh’s life serves as a model for this transition of Jewish life in New York City and represents the product of cultural memory that America has devised for Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side. The reader first meets Tateh in his sad state of loneliness and oppression. His wife has sold herself due to their lack of monetary security and their tenement was like all the housing for Jews: “They lived too many to a room. There was no sanitation. The streets reeked of shit. Children died on beds made from two kitchen chairs pushed together” (Doctorow 15). He spends his life pedaling in the street, selling silhouettes made from only glue and scissors.
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