Mother's Younger Brother and His Disguises
Mother’s younger brother’s black face is not just a practical choice when joining Coalhouse's movement, but a metaphor for his fragmented sense of self. Throughout the entire book, he struggles with identity, borrowing literal and figurative masks instead of growing his own authentic and firmly established one. Younger Brother’s reliance on imitations, disguises, and other people’s causes exhibits the fragility of his principles. To see this most clearly, we can look at how he is characterized before he joins Coalhouse’s cause.
Before Coalhouse’s organization, Younger Brother was portrayed as a restless and purposeless person. When Younger Brother had an encounter with Emma Goldman and Evelan Nesbit, he is infatuated and searching with Goldman’s fierce personality, but cannot create or act upon his own convictions (Doctorow, 62-64). After his heartbreak with Nesbit early in the novel, he finds a radical cause, Coalhouse’s, to latch onto (243). I believe his fascination with radical causes demonstrates his tendency to onto external systems of meaning rather than developing one individually. This recurring pattern may suggest that his identity relies on whatever external system or ideology he can cling to, not an inner conviction, exposing his lack of personal foundation.
When Younger Brother did blackface to attempt to enter Coalhouse’s organization, it is symbolic in a way: his identity only exists through borrowing another's (243). His “disguise” allows him to belong with the organization, but highlights just how artificial and adopted his role is. His crisis is postmodern in the sense that he can only ever perform his identity, never sincerely embody it. Emma Goldman is the opposite; she is the embodiment of authenticity and conviction. She uses her own voice to speak of her truth and rebellion. Goldman voices her ideology when she talks with Evelyn Nesbit and says, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look at me, even with my figure I have not one foundation garment, I wear everything loose and free-flowing , I give my body the freedom to breathe and to be” (61). And although Younger Brother admires Goldman and the genuineness that she can form, he is never able to create the same level of authenticity. Younger Brother’s inability to live authentically stands in stark contrast with Emma Goldman, who lives the embodiment of the opposite of everything the brother represents (61). I have started to believe that this gap between admiration and action for Younger Brother will become (if it isn’t fully already, which I think it is, but maybe by the end, even more so) the defining tragedy of his character.
The Suicide Rag’s title alone, which Younger Brother describes, alludes to his self-destruction (173). His adoption of different disguises leads him down a path that he won’t recover from. The ragtime motif here emphasizes performance, an improvisation built on fragments, just as Younger Brother’s identity is pieced together by borrowed fragments of beliefs and disguises. In this way, Doctorow hints that his lack of authenticity will never be sustainable. And although I have not read chapter 40 of Ragtime yet, I have a feeling that because Coalhouse has been shot dead, Younger brother will search for yet another radical cause to cling to, to fill the void that has once again resurfaced in his soul.
Ragtime uses Younger Brother’s character to critique the instability of the modern identity of having no authentic core. We talked a little about this in class, I believe, but I also think that when someone has no originality or authenticity to themselves, the disguise they wear will, at some point, lead to more and more despair. By looking at Younger Brother and comparing him to characters like Tateh or Mother, whose identities stabilize and grow more individual over time, Doctorow highlights the dangers of Younger Brother’s fragmented self, while also underlining the possibility of finding genuine fulfillment through a genuine transformation.
Thanks for reading my blog!
-Ava
Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007.
Hi Ava! I liked how you dove deep into the characterization of Mother's Younger Brother to really grasp the why when it comes to his actions. It really helped gain a better understanding of why he found community with Coalhouse's gang, and why exactly he acted the way he did.
ReplyDeleteAva, I really enjoyed reading your blog! You took advantage of quotes to support your claims and explained them throughly. I also think you did a good job of incorporating your voice in this. I also liked that you incorporated some your predictions :)
ReplyDeleteIt's always hard to know exactly where Doctorow himself is with a topic like this, and he seems to treat MYB with equal amounts of seriousness and satirical irony. Do we read him as completely "straight" when he notes that "the effect was salubrious," when MYB visits the damaged car and stokes his moral outrage? It DOES give him a sense of purpose, a "cause," and it DOES have a potentially "salubrious" effect on a character who, to this point, has been aimless, restless, impatient. But at the same time, Doctorow's narrator piously insists that "we can't condone" the violence done in Coalhouse's name--is he being serious HERE or not? Can we see MYB's radicalization as "salubrious" AND condemn the violence he commits? Doesn't that seem like a bit of a contradiction?
ReplyDeleteSo while MYB dressed as a minstrel performer while acting like a militant revolutionary and earning the good faith of the entire Coalhouse gang, Doctorow's narrator describes him as "fully integrated into the group." The use of the word "integrated" seems to directly call up the issues of integration and desegregation: so are we supposed to feel good about the Coalhouse gang as an equal-opportunity employer who doesn't discriminate against white boys from the suburbs, as long as they know how to blow things up? Or is the author using "integration" with the same degree of irony as MYB's blackface? It's so hard to decisively unpack!
MYB is like the duck-rabbit illustration, to me: one moment, he looks like a legit revolutionary; the next moment, he looks like a delusional clown. Is it possible for him to be a little of both?
This is a great summary of Younger Brother's character and his revolutionary acts. Like the title suggests, you explore the motivations and meanings of his blackface disguise, and how in the end it's fake and performative, since it can simply be washed away, and eventually is. But you also go into depth on other actions of his that could just as easily be considered "disguises" as well; he hops around between various lovers and causes out of a desire to find meaning and acceptance, for example. Here, too, everything about his actions screams that they're inauthentic, from the description of the (limited) rage he feels upon seeing Coalhouse's car, to the speed at which he forgets about Evelyn Nesbit, to the hastiness apparent when he applies to join Coalhouse's gang and later the Mexican revolutionaries. Ultimately, almost all of what Mother's Younger Brother does in Ragtime could be seen as a disguise he puts on to hide the emptiness he would otherwise feel.
ReplyDeleteAva, this is a wonderful analysis. I really like how you framed MYB's disguises as a metaphor for his lack of a stable identity. I think the contrast you drew between him and Emma Goldman was especially strong, who, as you have mentioned, was never at the same level of authenticity in himself. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteHI AVAVAVAVVA! I really like how you portray younger brothers change in identity throughout the book. Its interesting how you highlight his borrowing, embodying, and eventually the destruction of identities. Its interesting in comparison to changing characters like Tateh and Mother that younger brother's identity doesn't grow. GOOD JOB
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