The Upper Class in Ragtime
Ragtime written by Doctorow E.L. Doctorow explores the almost forgotten time period of the early 1900s. From the various threads present throughout the storym one thing remains constant: the rich being presented with irony. Doctorow shows the United States being in an interesting state where the rich “honor the poor” (Doctorow 34). The narrator describes how the rich decorate their poverty balls to look like the mines. They participate in these poverty balls to raise money for the poor, yet at the same time they need poor people to live in bad conditions to continue this form of entertainment. The tone of the passage shows the irony such as the way Doctorow writes about how the “bloody beef trailed around the walls on moving pulleys” and then ends this vivid description with “the proceeds were for charity” (35). While the tone doesn’t imply any sort of bias towards the descriptions, the way Doctorow ends the descriptions of the rich pretending to be poor with “the proceeds were f...