Unlike Doctorow's best-selling novel Ragtime, the movie concentrates on just one of the several important stories. Instead of telling dozens of stories and how each one somehow relates to another, like in the novel, the film is mostly concerned with the story of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a black piano player who insists that justice be done after some white volunteer firemen insulted him. The movie traces the ways in which Coalhouse Walker enters and affects the lives of an upstate New York family. A young black woman gives birth to Coalhouse's son, and then the family takes in both the woman and her son, hiring her as their maid. Coalhouse comes calling. He wants to marry the mother of his child. He has earned en

In the early 20th century political revolutionary, Emma Goldman was becoming popular and so were her opinions. Some of her main points focused on women's rights. For example, she believed that women were equal to men, and that they could do the same job as well or better than any man could. Emma Goldman also believed in free love. Her view of free love affected two of the main characters in Ragtime. Her influence is very important in the novel and the absence of this in the movie brings down the quality of the film. Not only did she highly influence Mother but she also had an impact on the famous model, Evelyn Nesbit. Both of these characters were affected in different ways. First Evelyn, after meeting Emma at a rally, she had a sexual revolution of her own influenced by Goldman. Evelyn who is basically considered a whore by Goldman was never interested in fulfilling her own sexual needs or desires, discovered her sexuality and craved to have it satisfied. With the money she gained in her divorce from Harry K. Thaw (her husband who she whored herself off to for money), Evelyn donated the money to help supporters of Goldman and fulfilling her own pleasures. Evelyn almost like the opposite of Mother grew away from the generalizations of a pretty young woman. She let people take advantage of her and didn't have enough intelligence to understand the world around her. Goldman helped to change this and this is completely lost in the film

While her husband was away on his one year Alaskan expedition, she expanded and opened her mind. It seemed that she quietly rebelled against all that society says is right for a woman to be doing at that time. During the absence of her husband she made a social breakthrough and became mo

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