the times, they are a-changing
Perhaps paradoxically, one of the most constant aspects of Doctorow’s Ragtime is the persistent reminders that nothing really is constant. Instead, throughout the book there is the feeling that the world is rapidly changing on a large scale, and each character is simply swept up in the current, left to deal with it as best they can on their own. The time period Doctorow chooses, the first few decades after the turn of the century, is a time of profound, and complicated, political, social, and economic change. There was increasing wealth and prosperity that followed growing industrialization, and yet still deep poverty and exploitation perpetrated by those same industrialists. The same racial exploitation that had always existed in America was experiencing a resurgence -- D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, a hugely influential film that played a large part in furthering white supremacy in the 20th century, was released in 1915. And there continued to be demog