Ragtime Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

During Thaw’s incarceration Harry Houdini visits the Tombs to test newfangled leg irons developed by two of its guards. He also proposes a stunt for the newspapers. With the warden’s permission, the guards place a naked Houdini in a locked cell on murderer’s row, with his clothes just out of reach but nearby on the walkway. Houdini claims he will escape in less than five minutes. After the guards and reporters retreat to the office, Houdini picks the lock under the watchful eye of Thaw. Thaw undresses as Houdini dresses. Then he makes lewd gestures at the performer through the bars of his cell.

For all intents and purposes, Houdini is the man in the better spot here: he’s adored by the public and—more importantly—he’s free to come and go from the jail as he pleases. But Thaw’s obscene display constitutes an assertion of his own dominance. His inherited wealth places him, at least in his own opinion, permanently above men like Houdini who have worked their way up from the bottom.

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This horrifies Houdini, who has always coveted but never achieved the real respect of the wealthy. For example, New York socialite Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish recently hired him to perform an escape at one of her society balls. When he arrived, he learned she’d grouped him in with a circus sideshow—including famous 19th-century little person Lavinia Warren Thumb—hired to shock and titillate her guests. His pride wounded, he quickly stormed out of the house.

Tellingly, Houdini agrees with Thaw’s assessment of their relative social worths, even though he hates himself for doing so. So-called “freak shows,” or sideshows—exhibitions of people with various forms of physical or mental differences—were popular and commercially successful in 19th-century America. Houdini knows that elites like Thaw and Fish consider him little better than a human oddity. His celebrity cannot transcend class barriers.

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Houdini lives in a Brooklyn brownstone with his mother, whom he adores. Within a generation, the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud will render such adoration pathological in the eyes of the American public. But at this moment, Freud’s theories haven’t yet gained much traction.

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The first part of the book does little to develop the stories of its fictitious characters. Instead, it pirouettes through a series of quasi-historical vignettes as it surveys the massive upheavals getting underway in the early 20th century. Houdini’s mother allows the book to loop in Sigmund Freud’s psychological theories.

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Ragtime: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis