Bibliographic Citation
- Alger, Horatio. Ragged Dick. New York City: Penguin Books, 1868.
Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks
America in the late 19th century was an era of Depression, Social Struggle, Reconstruction and Industrial growth. The novel, Ragged Dick, tells an inspirational story about a young poor boy that transformed himself into an industrial and powerful man; which he accomplished through hard work, influential advice, education and determination. The purpose of the book is to tell the story of a young boy who overcame the obstacles of growing up in poverty in New York City, in the 1800’s. Ragged Dick is a novel written in 1868 by Horatio Alger. It is a story about a young boy named Rich Hunter, also known as Ragged Dick, as he progresses through his childhood. Ragged Dick is a typical rags to riches story where Dick struggles through the hardships of city life, trying to achieve the “American Dream”. In Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick, Alger sends valid messages; hard work and determination can take anyone from the bottom to the top despite one’s economic class. Dick, the main character in Ragged Dick,
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The book is written in both, the first and third person point of view with the author functioning as the narrator in each case. Most of the book is written in the third person point of view, which allows the author to provide the background information that the reader requires. The reader's knowledge is not limited to the knowledge of the storyteller, a limitation the use of the first person point of view imposes on the story. The author uses the first person to express his own views on social values in telling boys not to smoke or drink or to waste time and money on certain kinds of entertainment. In this way the author is talking directly to the
Unable to conform to society’s norms, Richard Eugene Hickcok is raised by his parents who are modest farmers. In spite of his family’s hardship Dick’s childhood is pretty typical, he is popular throughout high school, plays sports, and he dreams of going to college. Due to his family’s lack of resources, Dick is unable to fulfill his dream of attending college. In spite of Dick’s unfortunate drawbacks Dick lives an average life, he marries has three children, and becomes a mechanic. Dick lives a typical American life, but soon after his third child is born Dick has an extramarital affair which ends his marriage. Shortly after his divorce from his first wife Dick remarries, but his second marriage ...
The beginning influential essay examines the Revolution through the experiences and recollections of Hewes who, in the 1830s, had two biographies written about him as Americans were trying to re-appropriate and reinterpret the era to reflect their own perspectives. Hewes never becomes rich but he was still known as a humble man. One of Hewes earliest memories, that Young mentions, is a meeting with John Hancock, one of the wealthiest men in Boston. Hewes became a shoemaker which was, in Young’s assessment, among the lowliest and least respected occupation. For Hewes, the American Revolution became about social equality, where a poor cobbler was as important as a wealthy merchant to the body politic. This is represented when Hewes recounts that even the wealth John Hancock was throwing crates into the water next to him. Young gives Hewes a partial justification in believing this by stating “American Revolution was not a plebian revolution” there was nevertheless “a powerful plebian current within it”
One of Horatio Alger’s books was called Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York, this book featured a young boot black named Dick Hunter and his friend Henry Fosdick. Dick in the beginning is living on the street and is never sure where he will sleep from one night to the next. He is fairly happy but wishes to be respectable. One day he offers Mr. Whitney, a businessman, to show his nephew, Frank, around New York City because Mr. Whitney is too busy to do it himself. After this day Dick’s life begins to change from a boot black with an uncertain life to a clerk who rents a room and earns ten dollars a week.
...y as “the root of all evil” would be too simplistic; what she suggests, rather, is that the distribution of wealth in mid-nineteenth-century America was uneven, and that those with money did little to effectively aid the workers whose exploitation made them rich in the first place. In her portrayals of Mitchell and the “Christian reformer” whose sermon Hugh hears (24), she even suggests that reformers, often wealthy themselves, have no useful perspective on the social ills they desire to reform. Money, she seems to suggest, provides for the rich a numbing comfort that distances them from the sufferings of laborers like Hugh: like Kirby, they see such laborers as necessary cogs in the economic machinery, rather than as fellow human beings whose human desires for the comfort, beauty, and kindness that money promises may drive them to destroy their own humanity.
Horatio Alger's “Ragged Dick” is a story which expresses the morals found within a fourteen year old homeless boy. This young boy is quite different because of the morals and actions he showcases to others. Unlike other homeless individuals, Ragged Dick is a boy who puts forth honesty while acting in courteous ways which represent a true level of dignity. Although Ragged Dick is such a prideful and respectful young boy, he is also known as a “spendthrift.” Spendthrifts are individuals who are careless with their actions in terms of their spending as they have little no regard for their money. One example of this can be seen as we read, “Dick's appearance as he stood beside the box was rather peculiar. His pants were torn in several places, and had apparently belonged in the first instance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. He wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. To complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity” (Alger).
By structuring his novel where time is out of joint, Dick is able to illustrate that one’s perception of reality is entirely based on what one believes to be fact. This point is illustrated through Ragle Gumm, who, “from his years of active military life” in the beginning of the story, “prided himself on his physical agility” (Dick 100). It is not until time is mended again toward the end of the book that he realizes that it had been, in fact, his father that had served in the war. This demonstrates how one’s firm belief can turn into a reality, as it did for Ragle Gumm for the two and a half years he lived in the fabricated city of Old Town.
The first relationships with the upper-class that Ragged Dick builds are with Mr. Whitney and his nephew Frank. “I may be rash in trusting a boy of whom I know nothing, but I like your looks…” says Mr. Whitney (Alger 23). Dick’s appearance at the time could not be called proper by any means; he truly lives up to the name Ragged. Whitney talks more about his inner features rather than his physical ones; he could see Dicks accountability and honesty. Before he lets Dick give his nephew a tour he lets him take a bath, gives him a new suit, and even grants him five dollars. Mr. Whitney leaves Dick with some advice, “your future position depends mainly upon yourself” (79). The next person of the upper-class Dick becomes acquainted with is Mr. Grayson. The day before he acquires the suit from Mr. Whitney, Mr. Grayson employs Dick to shine his shoes; he doesn’t have time to wait till Dick gets back with his change. When Dick comes by to drop off Mr. Grayson’s change the next day, dressed in his new suit, he is invited to attend Mr. Grayson’s Sunday school class where Mr. Grayson would “do what he can to help [Dick]” (102). Dick probably would not have gotten the invitation to Su...
Both Douglass and Ragged Dick had very difficult lives never had it easy. They had a rough life where they weren’t treated like human beings or a part of the civilization. Since they were slaves and vagabonds, many people didn’t trust them. For instance, at the beginning of Ragged Dick, the boy was going to exchange money for a man and didn’t know if he could trust the young boy by saying, “I wonder whether the little scamp will prove honest”. Not only were these children not trusted, they were looked down upon similar to being a slave. Even when Douglass, was traveling in the Northern States, people were convinced that such an eloquent man was still a slave. This was because people looked down on slaves and thought of themselves higher than others, especially slaves and boot-blacks. In addition, both boot-blacks and slaves weren’t given nice clothing. They wore clothing that had holes and rips which was just one of many ways that illustrated their lack of social status. In Ragged Dick they describe the boys attire as a hand-me-down that was falling apart, “his pants torn in several places” and didn’t have proper clothing for the
Of the four members of the Richard Wagamese’s Ragged Company (2009), Richard Richard Dumont, otherwise known as “Double Dick” underwent a traumatizing event in his life. Wagamese (2009) tells the story of Dick as he grew up on reserves, and was subsequently denied the opportunity of education for Dick. As Dick turned to alcohol to cope with his life after entering his father’s moonshine manufacturing business, his life finally led up to the moment that caused him to leave his family home, and forced him into poverty. Although Ragged Company is a narrative of four homeless people, the novel also reflects social determinants of health. Davidson (2015) defines the determinants as underlying factors of health disparities. Furthermore, the historical distal determinants, such as colonialism, inevitable affects the personable, individualistic proximal determinants such as income. Together, these two variant of determinants shape the lives of Aboriginal peoples, such as Dick. After the life-defining moment, Double Dick Dumont in Richard Wagamese’s
At the early 20th century before the World War I, American society was undergoing a cultural revolution. People were constantly looking for their identity and the meaning of life in these changes. Mingling the historical reality with fiction, Doctorow’s Ragtime perfectly grasps the struggles of Americans with different social classes. People in the novel either welcome the changes and complete the transformation or hang on to the old social norms and become deserted by society. Mother, one character from an upper-class family living in New Rochelle, belongs to the former and experiences many changes throughout the story as a wife and simply as a woman.
Having Christopher narrating the book in first person is important because it is easier for the reader to understand his written account of the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Sheers dog (Wellington); A step by step investigation is projected and shown to the reader when narrated in first person.
...d by a difference in wealth. The difficulty to provide for a family, much less make more money to rise above the working class, caused children born into working class families to feel like they were “stuck” because they did not have the extra time or money to devote to an education. Instead of being able to learn and grow during childhood, children in the working class focused on the survival of themselves and their family. This contrasts the middle class where children had the possibility to earn an education before working in the future. Horatio Alger argued that anyone can change their situation by a little extra work and by improving their behavior, but Ragged Dick was an unrealistic character. Children born into poverty often faced a cycle, where guidance and luck could not even help the escape the working class because they were committed to their families.
This literary study will analyze the importance of technological power in the context of late 19th century American society in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The main character of this story, Hank, has been thrust into the medieval world of King Arthur’s court, which provides him with a futuristic understanding of industrial technology to gain power in primitive European society. Twain’s depiction of Hank as an industrial tycoon exposes the exploitation and control that he wields over feudalistic society and the power that it brought down onto the nobility and peasant classes. Hank’s power is
Throughout the early 1900s of the United States, the daily life of American citizens consisted of several social hardships such as racism, sexism, and other types of oppression. Furthermore, the ordinary folk experienced adversities like the struggle to obtain a steady position at an occupation. Thus, simply collecting capital and making a living was rather difficult. One writer by the name of John Steinbeck precisely demonstrates such living conditions in his novella, Of Mice of Men. The story contains unfortunate and grim occurrences that simulate the reality some people had to face in the United States during the 1930s. John Steinbeck’s utilization of foreshadowing in Of Mice of Men develops the tragic ending of the novella. Throughout the
Imagine that you were on the streets and no one was willing to help you. The story of “Not Poor, Just Broke” written by Dick Gregory. Tells a story about a little boy, named Dick Gregory, who lived in the city slums of New York in the 1930s. There are several reasons that cause his hardships and his views of the world The reasons were he does not have a dad to help his mom, his envionment, and his background of being an African American.