Nil's Magic Carpet Ride

In 3rd period, Elizabeth and Erin brought up a really good point about how Ishmael Reed doesn't include any seriously relevant female characters. The ones that do get included get shown in a negative light. Like at first Reed depicts Jes Grew as an anti-plague that infects people with scandalous forms of dance and sheds a good light on sexuality and having fun. However, the scene with Earline becoming possessed by a loa feels sexually repressive and almost 'Atonistic'. PaPa Labas seems kinda embarrassed and is apologizing but I would think his character would be more appreciative of this happening? I also think it's kind of really disappointing how Isis is an extremely powerful goddess and is believed to be the most powerful magician in the world (according to Wikipedia) and Reed just writes her as easily seduced by Moses and gives away the Book of Thoth. Reed had a lot of room to develop her character and include her in more important ways in the 'alternate' ...

So far into reading this book, I've derived that the main conflict is going to be between the Wallflower Order, representing western society, and Jes Grew, representing black and African culture. Throughout the book, Ishmael Reed likes to prove that African culture deserves recognition and shouldn't be thrown away as "mumbo jumbo". I noticed that Reed takes jabs at western society and I enjoyed some specific lines. One of the first few lines I noticed where Reed makes fun of western society is when he is describing the symptoms of Jes Grew. Up until this point, we know of Jes Grew as a epidemic causing people to dance and feel lively. Soon after we get another description of how Harry (a person 'infected') felt with Reed saying, "he felt like the gut heart and lungs of Africa's interior. He said he felt like the Kongo: "Land of the Panther"." and "he felt like he could dance on a dime". These are just some of the many beauti...

In class, we went over why the title of the book was called Ragtime and I had an interesting thought. Each of the characters, especially the famous ones, are crafted by Doctorrow with elements of history and fiction that weave together. I like to view this "weaving together" of history and fiction similarly to a ragtime piano song with one hand playing history and the other playing fiction. There might be more aspects of history or fiction present in one character but without either you can't play a full Ragtime song.  I did some research and I first looked into Houdini since I really liked his character. Based on what I read, Houdini really did become very interested in mediums and trying to talk to the dead after his mother's death. Originally while reading this part of the book it kinda reminded me of a horror movie and how a bunch of them have a common thread of some type of communication with the dead. With this in mind, I thought the whole part was fictitious...