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.