Towards the end of the novel Ragtime, we find that one of the more realistic, yet historically inaccurate characters, Coalhouse Walker, goes on a rampage after his car is destroyed and he is mistreated by the bigoted and uneducated Conklin. Overall, the loss of Sarah alongside an oppressive system which shields justice and punishes him for standing for his rights and property eventually push his to the brink of lunacy as he and his friends invade the Morgan library, while taking J. P. Morgan hostage. The main question, before reading this section of the novel, was what inspired Doctorow to incorporate such an unexpected ending to the novel?
The historical novel Michael Kohlhaas, written in 1811, which would later become the basis for Doctorow's ending to Ragtime, was based on the 16th century story of Hans Kohlhaas, a merchant traveling from Colln, in Berlin, to Leipzig fair of Saxony in 1532, who, upon having his prized horses seized as a toll for traveling through Saxony by the Junker von Zaschwitz, decides to seek for justice through the court system. After being denied the return of his horses, Kohlhaas and his newly-formed group rampage through Wittenberg, burning houses and committing acts of terror. Interestingly, Martin Luther attempts to reason Kohlhaas into abstaining from his terrorism to no avail.
In comparison, the Coalhouse of Ragtime finds himself in an era before civil rights such that he truly believes that he will achieve justice against Conklin in an oppressive system, and when justice cannot be found through the legal system, such as when the police officer refuses to take actions against Conklin and instead arrests Coalhouse, he decides to take actions on his own accord. In a similar act of terrorism, Coalhouse gathers a group of similar-minded individuals who decide to aid him in his quest for justice by destroying, or threatening to destroy, the Morgan library alongside its many valuable.
Therefore, it can be noted that Doctorow incorporates the age-long quest for justice turned into obsession into the Ragtime era, where the fight for equality by Coalhouse was developed from an ancient German story.
Your post reminds us of yet another level to the receding-mirror phenomenon of Coalhouse Walker's fiction provenance: he is a "fictional" character in that Doctorow is drawing on Kleist's novella as his inspiration, but then Kleist is basing his fictional character on an actual man's actions from 200 years earlier (so obviously there's a good deal of "fictional" development of the historical raw materials here). So to sum up: Doctorow's Coalhouse is like three degrees of separation from this 16th century German merchant. I'm getting dizzy.
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