The biggest thing that I picked out of Ragged Dick was that while it was a rags-to-riches type of story, it was a more humbled version. While to me, it seems like this type of story has characters who are more greedily interested in the riches part of the story, while Dick in this story was more interested in getting there but being honest and moral on the way there. He focused on never stealing or cheating his way up in life, often choosing to instead suffer the reality instead. This is somewhat different than some other things that I have read where the character does not have strong morals. As said by Scharnhorst in his review of Horatio Alger’s work, “… a new type of literature, Work and Win, Upward and Onward…” (pg 194). Instead of the normal, fortune will fall upon those who deserve it (or those who the story is about), its about putting the work in and understanding that there will be ups and downs and how one handles them is incredibly important.
This also goes to show that change in how this type of story is told. It is much more interesting and relatable to read about an individual who is facing some sort of life struggle and instead of magically getting out of it, they have to continue to struggle and work at it. While it is nice to read about the ‘perfect ending’ it is more realistic to see struggle and it helps to link the reader to the text. This might also be why there was an exponential increase in sales of this book after Alger died, because more people wanted to read a book that they were able to relate to.
The writing style was also significantly different than a lot of things written around the same time or earlier. It seemed much more straight forward and simple to read, quite like what you would expect someone lesser educate of that time (similar to what Dick experienced) to be able to read. Which worked perfectly because it ended up being exactly what the target audience was able to read.
