Prof. Beagle on The March

CL201, Jan31,2008

Prof. Beagle's lecture on The March will be posted and we should have a link to it. The lecture was a commentary that wraps up our reading of the book. The main point of the lecture is that the noble cause of freedom's war against slavery is definitive, and yet there is ambiguity in the conduct of the war. The lecture explores the conflicting emotions and moralities through the course of the novel, telling us how it felt as opposed to the historian's question about why it happened.

As we leave the story behind I wonder about its aftermath. The "class war" was aimed at dismantling the plantation system, to uproot the socio-economic basis of slavery, but what would replace it? In the context of the time, "freedom" was bringing forth the "free-market" economy, but not right away. First the vacuum is filled by a reversal to an "ancient economy" of independent producers, family farms with only their own labor, to begin with. (Remember Scarlett O'Hara getting blisters on her hands from holding the plow towards the end of "Gone With the Wind"?) Sharecropping would become prevalent, putting poor whites and freed slaves into an economic structure that would breed the next stage of racism, on the very grave of slavery. And when Capitalism's "free market" does flourish, we cling to the image of freedom to this day, even as we sell our life's duration by the hour.

One of the discussants at the end of the lecture pointed out a link between The March and the next reading, "Ragtime". There is a minor character in The March named Coalhouse Walker. In Ragtime Coalhouse Walker Jr. is a major player, arguably the central character. Although The March is E. L. Doctorow's most recent novel and Ragtime was written over thrity years ago, the writer is able to put them in chronological order with a connecting link in the name of Coalhouse Walker.