Coalhouse: The Bridge Between History and Fiction
As many others have discussed, Doctorow’s choice to leave characters named or unnamed is directly in relation to their status in “reality” or history. Doctorow builds his unnamed characters through the cracks of history, just like he crafts the webs of unlikely but unknown interactions between Nesbit and Goldman, Morgan and Ford. Although Doctorow frequently warps or builds on historical characters, their role in both “reality” and the plot is semi-absolutely true. The fundamental property of the named characters is that they are grounded into “real” history, and their actions are typically both restricted and enhanced by this knowledge. This is the juxtaposition of historical fiction – limited by what is real, but empowered by it simultaneously. Unnamed characters are similarly constrained by Doctorow to maintain the air of plausible deniability whilst constructing the connections that make up a character. Younger Brother didn’t “need” to meet Nesbit, to be catalyzed by Goldman, and to end up in the midst of a revolution. Arguably the anonymity makes it such that they could have been entirely different people, if those people existed at all – but Doctorow ties them all into one character and builds a story on it. It is entirely clear that unnamed characters must stay unnameable, and named characters must stay true to their history, as such is the restriction of historical fiction.
It is with this knowledge that we tackle the enigma of Coalhouse Walker Jr. He is given a very real name, and serves to continue “history” in the same manner that the various named characters have. However, he is entirely and undeniably fictional. Coalhouse, then, serves as a tool for Doctorow to shape and mold the plot in the blatant manner that he avoided for so long in the book. Doctorow tries to maintain some semblance of plausible deniability – trying to make it realistically “canonical,” as it were, that nobody knows who he was or where he came from – and yet Coalhouse’s heavy hand in the flow of history seems to render this unnecessary. Thus, he is the embodiment of the constant balance or constant mixing of history and fiction in historical fiction. Bridging the two, his character is truly unique. While there are historical, named characters that do very little besides providing perspective or a small contribution to the plot – such as Houdini or Ford – Coalhouse is the only fictional character that has such a heavy influence. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that Coalhouse is the most influential character, overall – both by driving the plot and climax but also by the repeated rewriting of history in a way that the small, plausibly deniable interactions between named characters before never did.
Coalhouse as a character seems to be indicative of being Doctorow’s vessel. To reiterate, Coalhouse is the one character through which Doctorow can make the heavy, reality-reshaping actions that were impossible through the meek, “between-the-cracks” characters & interactions of the rest of the story. He serves as the bridge between the “plausibly-historical” to the “undeniably-fictional,” and rather than be limited by the “true” historical nature of a character, like the rest of the named characters, or the necessity of being kept in the cracks of history, like the unnamed ones, he is unusually transcendent: the embodiment of an ideology, an amalgamation of the political and social and cultural opinions and thoughts at that time. His uniqueness in the plot, a Black man who “didn’t know he was,” would evolve into the incarnation of anger against injustice by Black people (Doctorow 162). The general actions of rage that might have been done, not because of one man but because of the unanimous animosity of the people, became tied directly to him as the figurehead of a revolution. Thus, Coalhouse is both named and unnamed, historically fictional, and the emblematic character and tool by which Doctorow is allowed to mold history without restriction.
I agree with your stance on the enigmatic nature of Coalhouse Walker - what was Doctorow's logic in making HIM the fictional character within this novel so full of both familiar and unknown historical figures? By summarizing him as this "both named and unnamed" character is an effective way to, essentially, situate him rightfully into the text.
ReplyDeleteCoalhouse, as you mention, seems to be a tool that Doctorow uses to manipulate the story. He becomes so infused into the plot that the reader may forget the rather blatantly fact that Coalhouse, is but a concept of an author, a perspective. With this paradox, we also arrive at the fact that the difference between history and fiction but appear to be the the initial goal of the author and not the content.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if we dwelt on it enough in our discussions, but the ways that Doctorow makes Coalhouse seem "historical" within the novel are really interesting and profound in their effects. By claiming to have limited knowledge about his past, and his motives, Doctorow acts like a historian who has to piece together evidence into a coherent narrative, often filling in gaps with speculation and surmise. And indeed this method reflects the historical reality that public records were NOT assiduously kept when it came to Black communities in the early twentieth century--these gaps in Coalhouse's public records would have been true of numerous other Black people at the time. But there's a neat trick whereby the limitations of the author's knowledge contribute to the *illusion* of reality--Coalhouse seems MORE historical and "real" when we are convinced that there IS an underlying reality that we simply don't have access to. He DID exist (the illusion suggests), and we know this because the author is now a historian who has to go on limited sources to reconstruct the past. Somehow, this manages to trick us into believing that particular hidden "past" actually exists, more than if he'd just confidently narrated every detail about Coalhouse's upbringing.
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