From the Outside Looking In

“I have no peers” J. P. Morgan says to a seagull on his way to Europe. Regardless of if this is pathetic, introspective, or deep, the phrase is certainly telling. J. P. Morgan really has no peers, and unfortunately, he isn’t the only lonely character in this novel. There are a number of characters we see that feel like outsiders looking into a social situation, where even if they are with a group of people they should theoretically fit in with, they feel incredibly out of place. There are three main cases of this: Houdini, Morgan, and Father. Their detachment gives all three of them a unique perspective that allows the reader to understand the world in the book better – for who can better describe a situation than an outsider?

First, Houdini feels like an outsider to the American elites. A foreign-born, Jewish, self-made magician seemingly has no place among the elites of the fine art world. But if we forget his name is Houdini, and think about him simply as an artist, his social class and public standing drastically shift. The story of a struggling artist fighting his way to the top, pioneering a new art form, and earning the respect and awe of thousands – that sounds legendary. It evokes Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso – people who changed art forever. But all the upper classes see is an immigrant magician, basically just a side show. An example of this is Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish’s treatment of Houdini when she puts him alongside a circus of “freaks”. Even during that scene, he performs for the circus people and then refuses to do so for Mrs. Fish, showing that although he is invited by the elites, his best audience are just normal people. Houdini has the wealth and fame of an elite (which can be seen, for example, in his fancy automobile), and yet prefers to interact with and feels most comfortable with the middle/lower classes. He doesn’t fit into a strict socioeconomic class, and then paired with the fact that he is on one hand an ideal American (athletic, smart, doesn’t drink, etc.) and on the other hand not American at all (because he is an immigrant), creates a disconnect on multiple levels of his personality.

Next comes J.P. Morgan. For the sake of this blog post, I’m going to suspend my disbelief and buy into Morgan’s theory that he is a reincarnation of pharaohs. If this is true, he is very much an outsider, someone of a completely different moral caliber than your average human being. He describes the reincarnations as a “tribe of heroes … regularly born into every age to assist mankind”, making it seem as though not only is he an incredibly smart, special person, perhaps he is not even human, but rather something beyond (page 142). This gives him an outsider’s perspective to the American elites, seen in the scene with the millionaire dinner party, where he is appalled at the lack of refinement and stupor of his “peers”. His perspective shows the readers what is located behind the mask of extravagance that the elites put forward, and both he and the reader are disappointed with the truth about these successful men – they are just normal people, who drink and get constipated, and sometimes don’t make any sense.

Last, Father is another character with this “outsider looking in” trait. Despite how problematic he can be, some aspects of Father are sympathetic. His story arc as a whole is a little sad: he was lucky enough to go on an expedition to the North Pole, but after being gone for years, he returns to find his entire world turned upside down and his place in his family erased and filled in by other people. He could hardly even recognize his own face in the mirror, which only adds to the feeling of being out of place. In the beginning of chapter 14, Father struggles to reconcile his past life with his life in the Arctic with his present situation. This can be seen most clearly when he tries to put on his old clothes. Doctorow describes: “He put on clothes from his closet that ballooned from him as shapeless as the furs he had worn for a year” (page 110). You can see him trying to fit back into his old life (by trying on his old clothes), but because of his time in the arctic (his thinness), he cannot quite assimilate to American life again (the ballooning of the clothes). He becomes an outsider to his own life, feeling “childlike beside [his son]”, and replaced by Mother in the business. This perspective distances him from Americans, and allows the reader to better see the comforts of ordinary life they would normally take for granted.

Although there are other examples of character with this trait (Evelyn Nesbit, Mother's Younger Brother, and Coalhouse Walker come to mind), these three are the most affected by their isolation, and provide the most insight into the book. So what does this mean? This book has so far focused a lot on undermining the idealistic American perspective of history, and I think this might just be another manifestation of that. By showing these complicated, uncomfortable relationships characters have to society I think Doctorow is trying to paint an alternative picture of history.