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Doctorow's distinctive lack of quotation marks when a character speaks has been on my mind ever since we started reading Ragtime. Without fail, Doctorow's characters never speak in quotations, their dialogue is simply printed on the page alongside the narration. The effect of omitting quotations varies throughout the book depending on the context, but I often find it jarring when Doctorow's writing switches from narration to quotation, or vice versa, with little warning. For example, on page 210, the narration switches from Father, to Mother's Younger Brother, to Father again, making it somewhat confusing if you read it fast. To honor Doctorow, I'll quote it here but won't use quotation marks:
Younger Brother was sitting with his elbow on the arm of his chair and his head propped in his hand. His index finger was extended and pointed at his temple. He watched his brother-in-law. Are you going out to find him and shoot him? he said. I'm going to protect my home, Father said. This is his child here. If he makes the mistake of coming to my door I will deal with him. But why should he come here, Brother said in a goading tone of voice. We did not desecrate his car. Father looked at Mother. In the morning I will go to the police and have to tell them this murdering madman was a guest in my home.
In this conversation, although the context clearly specifies who's talking, it takes longer for a reader to realize when one character has stopped talking and another has started, or narration has resumed, because there are no quotations to mark the beginning or end of a speech. The quote Father looked at Mother. In the morning I will go to the police... tripped me up for a few split seconds, which is short but arguably important in creating an impression when reading text for the first time. The words In the morning do not suggest immediately that speech has resumed, blending the lines between narration and speech.
I'm not sure what the purpose of omitting the quotation marks is, but I think it is distinctly postmodern for a few reasons. For one, it's a postmodern idea because it challenges the traditional ideas of how novels should be written. No doubt, the lack of quotations is unique to the writing in Ragtime - or at least I've never seen it before (let me know in the comments if you've seen it in another book!). However, I think the lack of quotations is even more postmodern in its equating of speech with the central narration of the novel. A character's speech and the narration share the same importance when the speech is not segregated by quotation marks - something Houdini says to his mother is not separated from the narration which gives it context. I would characterize this as postmodern because it gives every meta-narrative in the story the same amount of validity. It does not put the central narration above the narration of specific characters, relating to the postmodern idea that there is no singular truth which prevails over another, not even in the traditional sense of narration in a novel.
To take the idea of equal meta-narratives further, Doctorow often equates the thought processes of the characters with the narration by blending narration with character perspective, sometimes taking perspectives over. For example, in Chapter 21, we slowly get a picture of Coalhouse through different characters' perspectives and narration. In class we talked about how the boy's description of Coalhouse (He was a Negro) differs from Mother's description (...there was something disturbingly resolute and self-important in the way he asked her if he could please speak with Sarah). These descriptions are different, but not necessarily different enough to tell us for certain that they come from different perspectives altogether, which makes us wonder who's perspective the descriptions are really from. Are these the opinions of the boy and of Mother, or is this Doctorow slowly describing Coalhouse the way he sees him? Trying to figure out the source of perspective is even more difficult when we factor in Doctorow's tendency to use satire and irony. Because they are so indistinguishable, perspective and narration become equal in importance. Nevertheless, for some reason we never get Coalhouse Walker's perspective in the same way that we hear from the boy, Mother, Evelyn Nesbit, Tateh, you name it. His meta-narrative is different for some reason. It's missing from the cacophony of other meta-narratives. This has been bugging me for a while and I'm not sure what to do with it.
Younger Brother was sitting with his elbow on the arm of his chair and his head propped in his hand. His index finger was extended and pointed at his temple. He watched his brother-in-law. Are you going out to find him and shoot him? he said. I'm going to protect my home, Father said. This is his child here. If he makes the mistake of coming to my door I will deal with him. But why should he come here, Brother said in a goading tone of voice. We did not desecrate his car. Father looked at Mother. In the morning I will go to the police and have to tell them this murdering madman was a guest in my home.
In this conversation, although the context clearly specifies who's talking, it takes longer for a reader to realize when one character has stopped talking and another has started, or narration has resumed, because there are no quotations to mark the beginning or end of a speech. The quote Father looked at Mother. In the morning I will go to the police... tripped me up for a few split seconds, which is short but arguably important in creating an impression when reading text for the first time. The words In the morning do not suggest immediately that speech has resumed, blending the lines between narration and speech.
I'm not sure what the purpose of omitting the quotation marks is, but I think it is distinctly postmodern for a few reasons. For one, it's a postmodern idea because it challenges the traditional ideas of how novels should be written. No doubt, the lack of quotations is unique to the writing in Ragtime - or at least I've never seen it before (let me know in the comments if you've seen it in another book!). However, I think the lack of quotations is even more postmodern in its equating of speech with the central narration of the novel. A character's speech and the narration share the same importance when the speech is not segregated by quotation marks - something Houdini says to his mother is not separated from the narration which gives it context. I would characterize this as postmodern because it gives every meta-narrative in the story the same amount of validity. It does not put the central narration above the narration of specific characters, relating to the postmodern idea that there is no singular truth which prevails over another, not even in the traditional sense of narration in a novel.
To take the idea of equal meta-narratives further, Doctorow often equates the thought processes of the characters with the narration by blending narration with character perspective, sometimes taking perspectives over. For example, in Chapter 21, we slowly get a picture of Coalhouse through different characters' perspectives and narration. In class we talked about how the boy's description of Coalhouse (He was a Negro) differs from Mother's description (...there was something disturbingly resolute and self-important in the way he asked her if he could please speak with Sarah). These descriptions are different, but not necessarily different enough to tell us for certain that they come from different perspectives altogether, which makes us wonder who's perspective the descriptions are really from. Are these the opinions of the boy and of Mother, or is this Doctorow slowly describing Coalhouse the way he sees him? Trying to figure out the source of perspective is even more difficult when we factor in Doctorow's tendency to use satire and irony. Because they are so indistinguishable, perspective and narration become equal in importance. Nevertheless, for some reason we never get Coalhouse Walker's perspective in the same way that we hear from the boy, Mother, Evelyn Nesbit, Tateh, you name it. His meta-narrative is different for some reason. It's missing from the cacophony of other meta-narratives. This has been bugging me for a while and I'm not sure what to do with it.
I also found it a little jarring to read without quotation marks whenever a character spoke. You make a good point about it being postmodernist, and it would make sense that this was done for the purpose of raising the importance of the spoken word to the same level as the rest of the narrative. As for perspective, it's true we never get to see into Coalhouse Walker's mind quite like the rest of Doctorow's fictional characters. Perhaps Doctorow wanted us to create our own image of Coalhouse rather than have him tell us his point of view, as Coalhouse Walker is a very complex character.
ReplyDeleteI also found it really interesting that Doctorow never gets into Coalhouse's head like he does for the other characters. One reason could be that he's one of the only characters who is not either a historical figure, or basically a stock character ("Mother", "Little Boy"). I think also that Doctorow's view here is similar to Younger Brother's when he recognizes that he only feels 1/100th of Coalhouse's rage. Doctorow knows he can never understand what Coalhouse is going through, and doesn't presume to try--emphasizing the seriousness of his struggle
ReplyDeleteThe last part of your post really set my brain off thinking about bias in this novel. We think of quotation marks as being in some way more “truthful” than narration – after all, they are direct quotes. But the way Doctorow frames his novel, its almost as if all of the dialogue is summarized by the narrator – if there are no quotation marks, we as readers have no guarantee that these are direct quotations from characters. In that case, the narrator could twist character’s words however they want, because of the narrator’s bias (especially with a narrator this sarcastic, it would be hard to imagine them staying truly objective). Its interesting to wonder how different characters’ preconceptions may color what we perceive as “dialogue” – if we are viewing a scene from Mother’s point of view, how the dialogue might change vs if the scene is from Coalhouse’s.
ReplyDeleteThis post is really interesting, and now it's making me think about why we also don't have quotation marks in Mumbo Jumbo. Anyways, I like your point about metanarratives and how Doctorow's choice in not using quotes might be him making us question the topic of perspective. As Solomia said above, in books that come from a single perspective I view the quotation marks as the only form of truth. I'm wondering if this is Doctorow saying that even quotes aren't objective forms. But then again, the very beginning of the book starts from the perspective of the little boy, so I don't know what to make of how the lack of quotation marks fit in with the different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteIt's super interesting how you relate the lack of quotations to postmodernism, because while I also found fascinating and a little bit jarring, as you said, I never thought much about its purpose. I liked your point about how the effect is one where narration and the characters' own words carry equal importance to those of Doctorow. Their dialogue is not separate from the general narration of the book.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how the idea of postmodernism with grammar and punctuation tactics is echoed in Mumbo Jumbo now. Reed seems to go much beyond Doctorow, though, with his spelling mistakes and lack of commas to separate items in lists.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't know if this was deliberate, but I love the postmodernism of your occasional lack of quotation marks in this post!