Between the Iron Bars

          A recurring theme in Doctorow’s Ragtime is the idea of captivity and what it exactly  means to be contained. One of the book’s main focuses is Harry Houdini, who is a master of escape. Houdini, born Ehrich Weisz in 1874, started performing magic at 17 in New York. He volunteered to be bound up and put in chains because he enjoyed the thrill of escaping, and so did the crowd. On one specific escape, he agreed to be locked up in a new pair of leg irons and put away in a jail cell. After performing his impressive escape, he saw a man in the jail cell across the way. Here, the reader sees the opposite end to life behind bars. As Houdini finished his escape and began to dress, the prisoner undressed and “in a shockingly obscene manner he thrust his hips forward and flapped his penis between the bars.”(30) The man in the cell turned out to be Henry Thaw, who is in jail for the murder of Stanford White. It is an interesting comparison that Doctorow draws up here: the juxtaposition between willing and unwilling imprisonment. This strange interaction begs the question as to whether or not it actually happened. Records show that Houdini did perform a jail escape from a prison in Boston, near the Keith Theater, which the book claims he was performing at that night. Another account says how he escaped a jail cell on Murderers Row in Washington, D.C. Reports say that Thaw was kept at Matteawan Sate Hospital for the Criminal Insane, in White Plains. History shows that Houdini did in fact escape a jail cell near Keith Theater (Boston), and an escape on Murderers Row (Washington D.C.), while criminals watched from their cells. Doctorow seems to tie these facts together, and that of Thaw being insane, into one interaction. This makes the reader wonder what other events did Doctorow tamper with in order to fit his story.

By Henry Bird

"Harry Houdini." www.apl.org. Appleton Public Library, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2011.

"Harry Thaw Back in State Asylum." New York Times 19 Aug. 1909: n. pag. Print. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10D10F73F5912738DDDA00994D0405B898CF1D3

Mulin, Rita Thievon. Harry Houdini: Death Defying Showman. N.p.: Sterling, 2007.

Print. http://books.google.com/books?id=dOU2Sn9A8_gC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harry+houdini+death+defying+showman&hl=en&ei=1d_CTaq3JsPUgQeFlN3vAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false