Emperor Hadrian in Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian and E.L. Doctorow's Everyman figure of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. in Ragtime As Marguerite Yourcenar states in Memoirs of Hadrian, “. . . there is always a day where Atlas ceases to support the weight of the heavens, and his revolt shakes the earth.” (114) When Coalhouse Walker strides knowingly, even willingly, into his death, he is more powerful at that moment than he has been at any other point in his crusade. Because he has no regard