Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick focuses on “Ragged” Dick Hunter’s ascent to middle class respectability from his origins as a lowly boot-black. Dick’s meeting Frank Whitney and Frank’s uncle is the catalyst for this transformation, but it is Dick’s own drive and ambition that lead him to success. Money and business sense are prominent concerns of the book, but education is also championed. Dick cannot rise above his origins without getting some sort of an education. Frank informs Dick that: “You’ll make a smart man if you only get a little education,” (p. 40). He does this when discussing what sort of future Dick wants, trying to get his new friend to resolve to be respectable.
Before meeting Frank, Dick was industrious enough, but he never held onto his money, at the beginning of the novel “...Dick was careless of his earnings,” (p. 6). It is only after Frank that Dick beginnings saving his money. However, saving one’s money is not enough to enter middle class respectability. His earnings from being a boot-black were such that “...not a few young clerks… scarcely earned as much as he…” (p.6). The real difference between Dick and these clerks was education, not money. As much as the novel fixates on financial matters, education is the true key to the respectability part of “middle class respectability”.
Dick realizes that he must improve his mind to move up in the world. He wishes to “... be an office boy, and learn business…” in order to “...grow up ‘spectable…” (p.29). Therefore he offers to share his room with Fosdick, a educated boy who has fallen on hard times. Fosdick’s share of the rent comes in the form of lessons in matters that would allow Dick to become respectable, such as reading and writing. Dick is a smart boy, and able to pick up reading and writing very quickly. However, Alger is quick to remind his readers that it is Dick’s hard work and perseverance that allows him to learn so swiftly.
This concentration on education, Alger’s choice to have Dick room with a tutor, demonstrates how crucial education was to respectability. In order to be a clerk or a shop boy, Dick’s final goal, one would have to be able to read and write well. Fosdick and the other boys applying for the job at the hat and cap store are required to submit a handwriting sample as part of the interview process. At the end Dick is submitted to such a test, that he would have never passed at the beginning with his “hens tracks” (p.120). However, because of Dick’s determination to learn, he is able to produce an example that “Mr. Rockwell surveyed ... approvingly” (p. 130). He manages to get a job in a counting work as a clerk, in part because of his good nature, but also because of his education. Education is what seals Dick’s rise to middle class respectability and his transformation from “Ragged Dick” to “Richard Hunter” (p. 130).
Kylie’s post strengthened my belief that education is a central theme in this novel. The importance of education is stressed multiple times to Dick by many different characters. It is first mentioned when Mr. Whitney tells Dick about how he himself was once a printer apprentice and is now a successful businessman. Mr. Whitney tells Dick that there is one thing he learned while being an apprentice that he values more than money. When Dick asks what that is, Mr. Whitney replies, “A taste for reading and study. During my leisure hours I improved myself by study, and acquired a large part of the knowledge which I now possess. Indeed, it was one of my books that first put me on the track of the invention, which I afterwards made. So you see, my lad, that my studious habits paid me in money, as well as in another way” (Alger 55). Dick takes this advice to heart and later finds himself a personal tutor. This move proves beneficial because while Dick considers himself ignorant, Fosdick notes that Dick is a quick learner and will soon become a quick reader because of his perseverance. Dick later goes on to earn himself a job as a counting-room clerk using his new knowledge of arithmetic.
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