51 pages 1 hour read

E. L. Doctorow

Ragtime

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1975

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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4, Chapter 40 Summary

Coalhouse Walker exits the Morgan library. Militiamen immediately shoot him to death. Later police reports say that Coalhouse tried to flee, although there are no witnesses to corroborate these claims.

After the incident, Coalhouse Walker’s followers are disillusioned. Mother’s Younger Brother takes the discarded Model T and drives freely with no destination. He goes all the way to Mexico and joins the Mexican Revolution. He fights and builds bombs for the revolutionaries, eventually going deaf from his work with weapons. Mother’s Younger Brother dies in Mexico, under unknown circumstances.

Pierpont Morgan travels the world. He notices a remarkable decline in the power and intelligence of royal families, emperors, and kings. He travels to Egypt, visits the Great Pyramid, and insists on sleeping in it overnight. He believes he will communicate with the god Osiris, but only finds himself swarmed by bedbugs. Morgan returns to Europe and is never the same again, disillusioned and in poor health. Soon after Morgan dies, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated in Sarajevo. Harry Houdini reads the headlines and is stunned. Houdini does a spectacular stunt over Broadway in Manhattan, but all he can think about is the murdered Archduke.

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By E. L. Doctorow

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