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The Evolution of a Man and his Son
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The Evolution of a Man and his Son
In the book Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow two of the main characters are a little boy and his father who live in a normal family in the early 1900’s, but the reader sees them both change throughout the novel. These dynamic characters progress in opposite directions throughout the story. E.L. Doctorow expresses the evolution of the young boy and the decline of the father through foreshadowing, characterization, and plot. In the exposition the father is going on a trip to trek to the North Pole. While he is getting ready to depart there is a sense of anxiety throughout the house as if the family knew that this trip would change their father. Everyone in the house fears for the father. “No one in the family was unmindful of the particular dangers of which father would be exposed. Yet no one would have him stay because of them” (Doctorow 11). These dangers that Doctorow is referring to is not only the dangerous conditions of his destination but also the belittlement that the father experiences when in the wild and the danger that the father would lose confidence and admiration he had so possessed before. The little boy in this story starts out as a measly child with no respectable qualities, but with the prodding of his father’s decline in manhood he is forced to become more or less the man of the house. The Father returns from his journey to the pole an older and considerably weaker man. As a consequence to his father’s lacking qualities the...
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