Jaime Schwalb

Eng. 444

Horatio Alger Jr.’s work strikes a nerve in every one of his readers and even those who have never read him through his appeal to the American dream. He touches on the everlasting human ideal for good fortune to stumble upon us through his use of themes of luck and coincidence.

Horatio Alger was a unique author who demonstrated many of the characteristics that he attempted to teach in his novels. Throughout his writing career, Alger wrote over a hundred novels whose aim was to "teach young boys how to succeed by being good (ix)." While all of these books have a "family resemblance," Alger used them to install Protestant ethics into his young readers and provided examples of good overcoming evil. He was not only telling a tale of "rags to respectability," he was giving life instructions.

In all of his works, Alger emphasized two very similar Protestant ethics: "honesty [is] the best policy" and "besides being advantageous, honesty [is] right." For example, his main character, Dick, repays a customer the change he owes him from boot blacking. Because of his honesty, the grateful (and very impressed) customer later offers Dick a job. As a result of Alger’s teaching while also entertaining, "parents responded readily to the moral teachings so colorfully dressed (xvi)."

Overall, the story of Ragged Dick can be easily defined as one boy’s struggle to achieve a better life for himself and become a respectable young man. He begins as a bootblack, one of the lowest professions in Manhattan, and seems perfectly content with his position until he finds a way of bettering himself. Dick was always decent and honest and, when he could, he shared his earnings with others in order to help them make ends meet. He never steals or cheats people and he is very hard working; this pays off for him when he brings the customer mentioned above his change at his office—an act of honesty that is surprising for most people, bootblack or not. The customer is so impressed that he vows to help Dick become a more respectable man. The businessman encourages Dick to become educated, establish a residence and eventually move away from the bootblacking business to a respected career. With these ideas in his head, Dick starts his mission and so begins the tale of Dick’s "rags to respectability" journey.

Ragged Dick was written in 1868 in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, a time of great flux in society. Factories had disastrous working conditions and employed children as young as six. The pay was minuscule and the hours were extremely long and difficult. The Industrial Revolution expanded urbanization and increased social mobility between classes. An emphasis on education began to grow and the seed for public schools was sewn. Literacy rates were rising and the lower classes were attempting to climb the social ladder. People needed something to cling to: some hope a dream for a better life, anything to keep them going, and that’s where Horatio Alger came on the scene.

With his "rags to respectability" novels, Alger became a breath of fresh air amidst the soot and smog of the Industrial Revolution. His plots are easy to follow and his characters are easy to relate to. Dick is only fourteen years old and works as a bootblack, but he has aspirations and is an honest boy. These stories inspired people to work hard and to be fair and restored in them the hope for a better life. Alger painted a picture of the American Dream and dangled it like a carrot in front of boys and girls everywhere, planting in them the desire to pursue their dreams.

While the Horatio Alger myth of "rags to riches" is ever prevalent, his books sway more into the "rags to respectability" realm and because of the hard, honest work done by the main character, Ragged Dick. The emphasis in this book is not about money but about becoming a respectable addition to society. Similar to the idea that in realism the characters are more convincing than the plot itself, Dick, like all of Alger’s characters, along with his actions is the most important part of the book. He is constantly referred to as a "real boy" and in this case, he is a "real boy" on the streets of Manhattan and must overcome the temptations of his rough surroundings to "grow up ‘spectable."

Through great descriptions of Dick’s surroundings, a walk across town becomes an adventure through clattering traffic, bustling pedestrians and evils of the streets. Alger lived in these parts of Manhattan and spent a considerable amount of time in the notorious ‘Five Points’ slum to familiarize himself with the atmosphere. It was here that Alger met Johnny Nolan, a local bootblack who inspired his writing of Ragged Dick and is even featured in the story. Johnny Nolan serves as one of Alger’s ever-popular foil characters. While Nolan is a decent fellow, he doesn’t work as hard nor is he nearly as honest as Ragged Dick. In fact, Dick implies this in the story when in several places he says, "If Johnny Nolan could only see me now, I don’t believe that he’d even recognize me." Alger also points out the difference between Johnny Nolan and Dick in the first chapter: "Dick was energetic and on the alert for business, but Johnny the reverse. The consequence was that Dick earned probably three times as much as the other (8)."

In terms of other foil characters, Alger includes Micky Maguire:

This boy by his boldness and recklessness, as well as by his personal strength, which was considerable, had acquired an ascendancy among his fellow professionals, and had a gang of subservient followers, whom he led on to acts of ruffianism, not unfrequently terminating in a month or two at Blackwell’s Island (64).

Micky is constantly creating obstacles for Dick and tries to pick fights with him without success. Instead of allowing a confrontation to take place, Dick says, "I ain’t fond of fightin’. It’s a very poor amusement, and very bad for the complexion, "’specially for the eyes and nose (66)." When Micky attempts to strike Dick, he simply moves out of the way and sends his foe sailing into the sidewalk.

Another foil character Alger presents is Roswell Crawford, a young aristocrat who is very selfish and immediately takes Dick for a rival. Dick’s roommate, Fosdick, is applying for a job (the same job that Roswell is going for) as a hat store clerk and ends up getting it due to his careful handwriting and recommendation by Mr. Greyson with whom they attend church. This is a perfect example of Alger’s inspiring the lower classes to break through social barriers and become "’spectable." Fosdick got the job instead of Roswell because Fosdick works hard on his studies and attends church services. Once again decency prevails.

Fosdick himself serves as another example of the ‘rags to respectability’ ideal. He, like Dick, has a plan to move up in society and together they achieve their goals. Each of the young men has something to offer the other so they make a deal, which provides a specific service for each of them. Dick needs an education, something that Fosdick already has, and Fosdick needs a place to stay, which Dick has recently obtained. So their deal begins with a handshake and ends up in friendship. The similarities between these characters can be best described by their names.

The central theme in Ragged Dick as well as many other Horatio Alger novels has to do with good overcoming evil. There is a constant battle between right and wrong in which generosity, compassion and hard work prevail over greed and indolence. Ragged Dick serves as an etiquette manual of sorts through which the reader can observe the changes in Dick while practicing themselves. It teaches people that they must overcome societal boundaries in order to truly appreciate and achieve the American Dream and gives them the hope and courage to do so.

It is not surprising that Ragged Dick hasn’t been the winner of many literary awards. Alger relies more on a formula when writing his books than on deep philosophical events and reasoning. He doesn’t involve his emotions or portray things that have happened to him, but instead Alger writes about the way that he thinks things should be. Despite the few literary downfalls, Alger’s books demonstrated pure optimism and became the guiding light of people everywhere. This book is a very small, but bright star in the somewhat bleak galaxy of Realism.