Doctorow has portrayed pride it 3 main ways in Ragtime and for the most part, they apply to three different characters . He starts out by talking about Ford watching the results of the assembly line. He portrays Ford as proud of his work but makes his reaction seem robotic. He writes it where he has Ford give himself a set amount of time to celebrate which makes his life seem so structured that he seems robotic. However, he also acknowledged Ford's genius in the creation of the assembly line but is ironic when talking about his views of the workers. This creates the sense that Ford's pride is deserved because of his genuis but Doctorow mocks how far it goes because Ford thinks he is so much better.
The next person Doctorow writes about and portrays as proud is Morgan. He starts off by talking about Morgan's search for the reason he is so much better than everyone else. However, when Doctorow is writing about Morgan he uses a much more ironic tone and makes fun of him. Doctorow writes about how he took his prexisting wealth and increased it by being cutthroat. In this way he doesn't acknowledge the fact that he deserves to be proud of what he has accomplished unlike Ford, and even uses Ford to make fun about his great discovery about reincarnation.
The last proud person that Doctorow has written about is Coalhouse Walker. Unlike the other two Coalhouse isn't rich but he still is a respectable person with a good job. The way Doctorow tells the story of how his car got vandalised makes it seem like Coalhouse did the reasonable thing. Doctorow also writes it in such a way that shows how much he respects Coalhouse's pride. Doctorow also uses irony when other people complain about Coalhouse's pride to make it seem like they were the ones being riduculous. Since Doctorow seems to respect Coalhouse completely, his pride seems to be the most deserved in the boook.
