Atonism

I'll just admit it, I am still thoroughly confused as to what Atonism is, so I decided to look it up online... which still didn't really help me. First off, I could barely find anything about Atonism itself, but I did find out that Atonism has to do with Aten. To sum up what I found in a nutshell, Aten was a radiant sun disk that was a manifestation of the sun god, Ra. During the reign of pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1367-1350 BC) Aten was taken to be the one, supreme god. The worship of Aten was manifested in the momentary monotheistic religion of Atenism in Egypt (after the reign of Amenhotep the Egyptians turned back to polytheism). So Atenism is supposedly one of the first monotheistic religions, but I still don't see how this ties into modern Atonism. All I know is that Atonism today has to do with Christians and Muslims, who are monotheists, but that's really the only connection I see.

When Atonism was first brought up in class, I felt as if the book portrayed Atonists badly, which led me to believe that the book was portraying Muslims and Christians badly. If you know me well, you know that I cannot stand anybody mocking my religion and its followers, or any of the other major religions, but what was I to say in class when I had no idea what Atonism was to begin with? I was also confused as to whether the book was actually portraying Atonists negatively in the first place or not (I'm currently pretty stuck on the answer being that the book does portray Atonists badly). And does the book portray all Muslims and Christians as being Atonist? Should I be offended about how this book portrays Atonists?

Postmodernism!

Is it just me, or did the first few chapters of Mumbo Jumbo scream Postmodernism? In class today, we talked about how the first chapter is like the first scene of a movie. The way the the wording is and the scene we can so vividly imagine just makes it seem as if we're watching a scene from a black and white movie. Now, this idea of the first chapter being like the first scene of a movie hit me immediately after I finished the chapter. I felt as if I was reading the opening credits to a movie after the climactic first scene that ended with 10,000 being dead by morning.

So, the first chapter is like a movie scene. Well that's not all. Towards the end of the first chapter, we get two italicized paragraphs. These two paragraphs, in a way, seem like an excerpt from a diary at the time. So Mumbo Jumbo moves from a climactic first scene onto a diary entry? Oh we're not done yet. We get a Louis Armstrong quote kinda in the middle of nowhere, followed by the definition of Mumbo Jumbo. And then we get the tiny chapter two that's narrated in a histroy textbooky kinda tone. The book does settle down after the first few chapters and starts to develop a more follow-able storyline, but this isn't to say that Mumbo Jumbo isn't postmodern because it  simply jumping from one type of media to another and constantly switching tones is just one of the many ways it screams Postmodernism.

Do the Revolutionists Just Die Off...?

In the last few chapters of Ragtime, we come across the ends of many characters, half of which are the revolutionists like Younger Brother and Coalhouse Walker. On the one hand, a reader can simply look at these deaths and say that Doctorow is following his characters to the end, after all, he is bringing the "era of ragtime" to an end. But I cannot help but think that maybe Doctorow is making a statement. In a  way, the causes that Coalhouse and Younger Brother fought for were quite noble ones, regardless of the way they fought for them. But the truth is, their fighting for the causes didn't do much on a large scale. Coalhouse ends up surrendering and getting shot. He dies, life moves on. End of that story. Younger Brother moves to Mexico. We don't even know exactly how he died. So in a way, the revolutionists die off without making significant changes on society.

This idea of the revolutionists just dying off gives off the sense that the society for which Ragtime takes place in doesn't change [drastically] itself, and that those who try to change society, fail (at least within the era of the book. Coalhouse would have totally made a statement had he lived at a later time). If you think about it, Tateh was also a revolutionist at the beginning and middle of the book. But later in the book Tateh gives up strikes and goes into movie making, making him the very successful Baron. It's not that Tateh switches sides and joins the capitalists, he (in a way) gives into society and decides to focus more on himself and his family, like most ambivalent middle-class men do.  Houdini, although thought of like a circus freak, pulls off a stunt and has to go slower so that it looks believable to the people. Harry K Thaw gets out of jail and joins the parade, for him being more upper-class means he basically gets what he wants. By the end of the book, so many characters have simply given into society. To generalize, the only characters to survive are those who just focus on their individual lives instead of the injustices of society.