Trinity

Character Experience as Representative of Alternatives to Tradition January 30, 2009

While reading Ragtime, I followed closely the character thread of J.P. Morgan, which seemed to be uniquely separated from the other stories interwoven through the narrative.  All of the other principal characters are dealing on some level with money and the struggle to generate financial security for themselves.  Tateh leaves his socialist comrades for the advantages and opportunities afforded by capitalism, Evelyn rejects her wealth and fame to pursue her own life independent of the society that had dictated her every action, and most of the other characters fall somewhere in between.  However, Morgan’s quest within the novel runs in an entirely different direction.  He has accumulated power and wealth so vast that it stretches the limits of imagination, enough that even his fellow industrial tycoons Carnegie and Rockefeller are regarded as inferiors.  According to the traditional Western view of history as a linear progression of time, with events unfolding in sequence and with cause and effect clearly delineated, Morgan has reached the pinnacle of achievement and fully expects his legacy to endure long after he is gone (indeed, the character’s prospective ideas are validated by the reader’s retrospective knowledge), and he should be content with the life he has wrought.  However, he rejects this idea as hollow and unsatisfactory, and turns to alternative sources to find a lasting fulfillment.

“It seemed an indisputable truth.  Somehow he had catapulted himself beyond the world’s value system.”  (141)

Morgan finds his answers, or at least the clues that start him on his quest for the ultimate answer, in Eastern mysticism and its notion of history as a cyclical progression of time and the associated belief in reincarnation, specifically the Hermetical belief that “transcendentally gifted” individuals are “born in each age to ease the sufferings of humankind with their prisca theologia“, the ancient knowledge that empowers these chosen paragons.  From this model, which he envisions as applying to himself and perhaps other contemporary visionaries such as Henry Ford, Morgan derives a sense of satisfaction in his belief that he will be reborn when the world needs him again.  His desire for order, juxtaposed with his understanding of the traditional old-world system as deeply flawed and his equally condemning view of the perceived chaos and instability inherent to the emerging new-world society, give the character a unique clarity when it comes to understanding the world events leading up to World War I and the long-term geopolitical and socioeconomic consequences of that process.  His character thread concludes with his death which, ironically, was almost certainly a direct result of his quest for knowledge, and which he approaches without trepidation, believing wholeheartedly that the world’s need for his reincarnated self was most urgent in the face of the upheaval and chaos he saw.

The philosophical nature of Morgan’s progression throughout the narrative provides a stark contrast to the materially-driven development of the other dynamic characters of the novel, and places Morgan into a unique role in the text.  Because his story arc moves in such a radically divergent direction, and because his pursuit of knowledge gives the character an unusual perspective, Morgan functions as a conduit for history itself within the narrative, afforded an understanding of not only what has been but what will be.  By embracing an alternative view of history and time, the character has found himself in the unprecedented position of viewing the present from the exterior.  Morgan’s notice of Einstein’s discovery of the curvature of the universe does more than date the text, it also provides a physical corollary to his belief:  if the universe is curved, and time is truly a cycle, then by all rights an enlightened individual such as himself should be able to see all points on the wheel.  By rejecting the traditional concept of history, Morgan to some extent becomes a physical manifestation of that which overlooks the passage of time.  Implicit in this is the idea that the consensus views of American society are not inherently perfect, and that sometimes it is necessary to reject what is traditionally accepted to find answers or meaning.