Floundering in a sea of Deus Ex Machina

Ragged Dick 11-27:

Ok, so the "Exciting Adventure" experience was so incredibly inane and trivial that I was almost painful to read. Alger seemed to run out of things for Dick to do and created a magical event to tie all the loose ends of the plot, or at least tried to. The ending he presents though is so contrived and petty that it loses some of it's meaning.

Just a quick recap of events;
1. Boy falls off boat, and father cannot help him because, for some reason, a well educated, aristocratic man does not know how to swim, even when his own son's life is at risk.
2. Dick saves him, despite the dangers and "doesn't hear" the reward offered by the man
3. Boy's father takes Dick and Fosdick in to his lavish home
4. Dick is offered an amazing job, given new clothes, and changes his name to the more "respectable" Richard.

Alger seems to be insinuating that if you try hard, such as Dick has an "earnest desire to improve" (86), that a magical series of events will allow you to succeed. It's almost as bad as the ending of the Twilight novels (Yes I read them, you can judge me latter); Bella becomes a super-special vampire with super-special powers, and wins the not-battle at the not-climax, just as Dick is a super-special boy with no real flaws, improves himself to become a super-special "respectable" person, and attains status after a not-climax with no real hardships. Dick faces no real challenges and succeeds in everything he does, how boring is that?

Of course we can call Alger just a poor writer, but I'd like to hope that he's oversimplifying the story for simplicity's sake, and for the sake of hammering in his message. Dick is successful because he works hard and is aided by certain members of a higher social class, just as Alger wants his readers to help "empower" the lower classes so that they too can become rich. Even just after Dick rises from the ashes of his old life, shedding his "Ragged" title in the process, he already turns around to help those he's left behind, "Somebody needs to look out for [Johnny Nolan]" (115).

So my question is anyone else disappointed in this ending? Should Alger have made the journey more difficult for Dick? And what if Dick hadn't succeeded, would that change the message of the story too drastically?

հրաժեշտ,
Jon