What is Ragtime about?

with thanks to students for their discussion in class and their papers, for my colleague Gary Gisselman who is directing the musical at Park Square in St. Paul:

1. American society on the cusp of the 20th century.
2. the ways in which historical figures interact with "generic" ones and thus shed light on the open questions of their day.
3. Winslow Homer's painting?  It is at the beginning and the end of the novel so I've gotta think it matters, but how?  The sea and the sky as open in contrast to the city?  Younger brother standing there at the water's edge like a fish coming out of the brine: is that something about evolution?
4. Father's diminishment next to Mother's coming into her own and Coalhouse's demise next to Tateh's rise seem to provide some focus for the social forces at work.  And these lead to.....Little Rascals?  A new vision of America?
5. No doubt Houdini could be the key: an escape artist who can't escape.  
6. So....maybe....like so much of American art in various genres, this is an exploration of freedom and not freedom, of the forces and structures that bind people and the ways in which they try to or actually do get free.