Rag Time Using The Word Escape

Im not entirely sure on why the book used the word escape so much when it was talking about Harry Houdini in small declaritive sentences. My best guess would be though that it had to do with the watergate scandal which took place when nixon was in office. Or it had to do with Vietnam. The watergate scandal happened when members of the Richard Nixon administartion planted listening devices all over the hotel. This ultimately led to Nixons down fall, because he was being threatened with impeachment at the time. instead on August ninth, 1974 he chose to leave office making him the only president to ever resign. nixon basically had to hire a whole new staff to help resolve the issue of watergate. the press was also a big factor too, exposing the people that were all involved. Some of the members of the CIA were involved also. The same time that htis humiliating scandal was occuring, the vietnam war was taking place. I believe the book Ragtime used the word escape so much, and people loved Harry Houdini so much is because they needed a way to escape from reality. Society was in a bind and needed someway to forget about all of the troubles of the world they live in around them. This is why they used harry Houdidni as an escape method. I believe after reading Ragtime that society was asahmed of their country, and their president in a way and needed someone like harry Houdidni to help them get their minds off of the war and the very dissapointing scandal that led to the presidents resignation. i got my information on the watergate scandal from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate.

Doctorows Twist to ragtime

As I read Ragtime I noticed that sometimes Doctorow would put a twist on some of his characters that some people may not pick up on unless you are a very careful reader. After doign some research about certain characters such as the characters Stanford White, Harry K thaw, and Evelyn nesbit. Even in real life these people all exist. Doctorow puts them in a fictional, very untrue setting though, and makes them out to be people that they they arent in real life. the seting and the surroundings that Doctorow makes up for thme in new York is not entirley true, and just about everyhting that happend to them is untrue. The question now is, is it ok to take actual peoples names, throw them in a fictional story and misconstrue their lives in ways that it never should have. Because when you think about it if you ever heard the name Harry K. Thaw or Evelyn nesbit after reading this book, and knowing nothing about their true life stories you might get the wrong idea about who they are. Another starnge thing to the whole character usage to me is, do you think that Doctorow expects everyone who reads the book that
some characters he uses are real?