In Ragtime, the Morgan Library is established as the stage, where this argument is made. The Morgan Library is significant because it houses a plethora of cultural property amassed by J.P Morgan: red silk damask (121), fancy paintings (121), ancient parchment covered with Latin calligraphy (124), a possible specimen of Hermes in the original cuneiform (124), and a coffin of a great pharaoh (125). Walker, who represents a radicalized member of a marginalized group, possesses the library. Walker is radicalized because he threatens to destroy the …show more content…
In addition, the possession of Morgan’s possessions is a tantamount to possessing him: “We wanted the man and so we have him since we have his property” (226). Walker’s marginalization is significant because he is an African-American that has suffered from racism. This ties back into Doctorow’s manipulation of the past, which allows him to use a post-reconstruction framework. What does it mean for a black man to engage in a hostile takeover of a place that has appropriated art at the orders of a white capitalist? One meaning is that the possession of cultural property has a cyclical nature. An offended black man’s possession of the library represents the slave past of America that possessed cultural property in the form of people. Therefore, Doctorow’s creation of this scene magnifies Walker’s request for the restoration of his car into a request for the restoration of black people. The possessed has become the possessor—and vice versa. Notwithstanding, repositories of cultural property are volatile because they represent unstable sites of power that place society in peril, when someone with malice intentions takes over. For this reason, the accumulation of cultural property serves as a metaphorical time-bomb that threatens to obliterate wherever place it is stored. Walker in Ragtime, is an example of