Luca's History As Fiction Blog

 Throughout the novel, I found myself asking the same question over and over: "What is Jes Grew?" At first, I interpreted Jes Grew as a way of life inspired by the long-lost text that everyone is searching for. People suddenly began to groove to the jazz music that swept New York City and New Orleans. I thought these people started to just groove uncontrollably and that this new wave called Jes Grew was the mentality of "forget everything and just groove to the music." I later discovered that Jes Grew symbolizes grooving to the upbeat tempo of jazz but also describes this movement.  In 1974, Ishmael Reed spoke at the Brockport Writers Forum in Brockport, New York. He discussed some of his works, including Mumbo Jumbo. During the discussion, Reed alluded to the meaning behind Jes Grew. He made a connection to the ragtime era of American history, which I found especially interesting. Reed speaks of ragtime as something that had no fabricated origin; it simply "ju...

In the popular film  Forrest Gump,  a fictional young man named Forrest travels through the world, bumping into various historical events along the way. Whilst reading  Ragtime,  I noticed Doctorow inserting fictional characters into real historical situations.  The most interesting example of this was towards the end of the book in part four. Doctorow has seemingly ended the plot of the book with Coalhouse's death, yet he continues with the narrative of Mother's Younger Brother. After he is gifted Coalhouse's newly restored Model T, he embarks on a road trip that lands him in the middle of the Mexican Revolution. MYB uses his knowledge of explosives to aid Pancho Villa and later Emiliano Zapata in their revolutionary endeavors.  Similarly, in the movie  Forest Gump,  Forrest, who is a fictional character, also embarks on a journey that lands him in the middle of several important historical events like the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movemen...