Name
As we've observed and discussed, Doctorow goes out of his way to only use full names for characters who actually lived. Harry Houdini and Evelyn Nesbit are given full names, while Tateh and Sarah are only ever referred to with their first names. Father, Mother, and Mother's Younger Brother aren't even given names at all. However, there is one exception: Coalhouse Walker Jr. In class today, we briefly touched on the origins of Coalhouse as a character. He is based on another character, Michael Kohlhaas, from a book of the same name by Heinrich von Kleist. Kohlhaas has his horses unfairly confiscated, and is unable to get them back. He then wages a mini-war, killing several, as revenge. However, Kohlhaas is also a fictional character. So why is Coalhouse given a name? Perhaps Doctorow believes von Kleist's work to be historically significant enough to give a spin-off character a full name. I think this is unlikely, as Coalhouse is only an adaptation of Kohlhaas, not a...