Dina's History as Fiction Blog

Although Jes Grew is presented as a sickness in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo , the illness can be seen as a tool to symbolize the greater view of change and society’s views on change, especially when it comes to that related to culture. Ishmael Reed begins to set up this parallel by presenting Jes Grew to us in a specific manner at the beginning of the book. Sure, Jes Grew is supposed to be this terrible, highly contagious disease. However, the infected are simply caused to dance, something that we very much associate with happiness and joy. Just think about it; when was the last time you full-out busted a move when you were miserable or ill? It leaves the reader wondering, is Jes Grew really such a horrible thing? It even makes it comedic for there to be an entire organization, the Wallflower Order, trying to stop this disease. It makes us focus on the real thing the Wallflower Order is trying to combat, which is the Black culture brought along with jazz, and not just people getting “...

 Mother’s Younger Brother sure is a character to remember in Ragtime -- even if Doctorow chose to leave him unnamed. His name almost seems to draw even less attention and importance than the other unnamed characters such as “Mother” and “Father”. However, we follow him rather consistently throughout the book compared to some other characters and watch him as he tries to find purpose in his life, even if that purpose is questionable and comes through the lives of others.  For the majority of the book, Mother’s Younger Brother seems to have little to no direction in his life, jumping from one thing to another to occupy his time. First, he becomes obsessed with Evelyn Nesbit due to nothing more than her fame and beauty. His purpose is to somehow be with Evelyn, which he actually manages, before Evelyn realizes what Mother’s Younger Brother actually sees in her, and “hey, maybe it is a bit weird that he was hiding in a closet and stalking me earlier.”  Next, Mother’s Younger ...

One of the factors that makes Ragtime so unique is its narrator and narration style throughout the book. Personally, I can’t pinpoint the narrator into exactly one category. Although the narrator could be considered as objective, it still seems to lead the readers to a certain conclusion in some matters, almost narrating situations to us from a modern perspective. For example, in the passage on page 34, the narrator recites facts, which are indeed truthful, but in such a way that leaves the reader disgusted at the state of America. The narrator tells the story of working America satirically from employers' perspective, emphasizing that even children are dehumanized into being more “agile than adults” but “most likely to lose their fingers”. The narrator also hits readers with issue after issue with America, overwhelming us with the dreadfulness that used to be normalized in the early 1900s. Even though the facts themselves are horrific, the way the narrator presents them to us is...