Unlike his previous novels, E.L. Doctorow’s The Waterworks reads as a mystery or detective novel. The novel takes place in New York during the 1870s, during the last years of Boss Tweed’s shady rule over the city, but the narration is set decades later. The story is told through the reminiscences of an aging newspaper man McIlvaine. As one reads, the narrator is describing the past, which at the time seemed to him like the very edge of the future. MacIlvaine states: “You may think you are living in modern times, here and now, but that is the necessary illusion of every age” (11). Throughout the novel Doctorow uses different circumstances and characters to show that the past was at one point in time actually the future.
The first example that …show more content…
In honor of science Sartorius uses these stray children as part of his medical experiments to keep the rich men, like Augustus Pemberton alive. In his eyes the doctor is doing no harm to the children. It is said in the novel that no procedure ever harmed a child. If the child died it was accidental or from fear. This is the doctor’s illusion of the procedures he is conducting on the children. In reality the lives of innocent children are being lost daily. In terms of past versus present the operations that Sartorius preforms are common in the narrators present, but were seen as a form of morbid science during the late 1800’s.
In conclusion The Waterworks shows the reader how the past and present can at times conflict. Through the characters of McIlvaine, Martin, and Sartorius; Doctorow paints a picture of how a person’s viewpoint changes overtime and how the technology of the time allows things and people’s ideas to progress and develop. In the end of the novel the narrator sums this idea up stating: “reality slips” (235). No matter the time, past or present, reality will be seen differently based on the person who is interpreting what they
The first example that …show more content…
In honor of science Sartorius uses these stray children as part of his medical experiments to keep the rich men, like Augustus Pemberton alive. In his eyes the doctor is doing no harm to the children. It is said in the novel that no procedure ever harmed a child. If the child died it was accidental or from fear. This is the doctor’s illusion of the procedures he is conducting on the children. In reality the lives of innocent children are being lost daily. In terms of past versus present the operations that Sartorius preforms are common in the narrators present, but were seen as a form of morbid science during the late 1800’s.
In conclusion The Waterworks shows the reader how the past and present can at times conflict. Through the characters of McIlvaine, Martin, and Sartorius; Doctorow paints a picture of how a person’s viewpoint changes overtime and how the technology of the time allows things and people’s ideas to progress and develop. In the end of the novel the narrator sums this idea up stating: “reality slips” (235). No matter the time, past or present, reality will be seen differently based on the person who is interpreting what they