WHITE PEOPLE
Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo both contain characters meant to represent young white liberals in the form of Mother's Younger Brother and Thor Wintergreen respectively. Both are treated differently by their author, but their stories both end in some form of failure.
Younger Brother is portrayed as reclusive and unsure of his own identity at the beginning of Ragtime. He wanders around, latching onto different women until he is radicalized by Emma Goldman's speech. After playing out his role in Coalhouse Walker's group, Younger Brother meets his end fighting for the Zapatistas in Mexico. Doctorow seems to have a negative view of white liberals like Younger Brother, suggesting that they are directionless and just associate with revolutionaries without really understanding the cause. It's not hard to say that by the end of Ragtime, nothing has really changed for Black civil rights, despite Younger Brother's efforts.
In Mumbo Jumbo, Thor seems initially very committed to Berbelang's group, even when confronted by the other members. In a cafe, Berbelang talks about the bokor and the houngan, and how they must purge the bokor from Thor in order for him to be truly accepted to the cause. According to Google, bokors are voodoo priests who "serve the loa with both hands." From the book, we know that the left hand is destructive and the right hand is benevolent. These facts suggest that Thor is double-sided: able to contribute to the cause as well as destroy it. However, before the bokor can be purged from Thor, he sabotages the group during the raid on the art museum. Thor sobs uncontrollably as he frees Biff Musclewhite, showing that he is clearly conflicted about what he's doing. Through the characterization of Thor, Reed says that young white liberals, while having good intentions, still have Atonism at their core.
In the end, it seems as if Doctorow has a more negative view of white liberals than Reed. Even though Thor's actions end up in Berbelang's death, Reed makes a point that white liberals can improve if only they purge their inner bokor. On the other hand, Younger Brother accomplishes nothing meaningful in Ragtime.
Yeah, I remain unsure what to think of the idea that Thor is somehow Atonist "at the core," as if in support of Fuentes's claim that it is "in his blood," somehow "genetic," for him to betray the cause of the Mu'tafikah and align himself with Biff Musclewhite. It would sure seem to work against the optimistic idea that Jes Grew can indeed "enliven" a white "host" and potentially lead them away from a narrow Western view of the world, if there's something in Thor's "blood" that keeps him from being a trustworthy member of the resistance.
ReplyDeleteBut in the scene with Biff, we see the ex-cop/museum curator make a case for Western *cultural* supremacy, as if tapping into Thor's allegiances to the Great Books he'd been taught in college (before he took that radicalizing art class with Berbelang). He is especially stricken with the idea that a Black literary critic has presumed to discuss _Moby-Dick_. So maybe the allegiance is more cultural than "genetic," and in this view, maybe there is some hope for these radicalized white boys after all. But for this reader, Thor is not a very encouraging character--his "loyalty" crumbles like a biscuit under the slightest pressure! And the miscalculation costs Berbelang his life.