THE AMERICAN NOVEL IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE XX CENTURY
Curs optional anul III sem.2– suport de curs
Course description:
Study of six representative novels. Each book is reviewed as a unique work of art, as
an outgrowth of certain traditions, as a mirror of its time, and as an expression of one
author's personal vision of human nature and human condition
Contents:
1. Scott Fitzgerald – This Side of Paradise
2. Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
3. William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
4. Sinclair Lewis – Babbitt
5. John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
6. John Dos Passos – USA
1. SCOTT FITZGERALD - THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
The novel that launched Scott Fitzgerald’s career as a writer, This Side of
Paradise, is also in many respects the novel that Fitzgerald rewrote again and again
throughout his career. In the story of Amory Blaine, an idealistic youth in pursuit of
an ideal, Fitzgerald explored the themes and characters and experimented with the
narrative strategies and techniques that define his vision and characterize his style.
This Side of Paradise, like the majority of first novels, is not without its flaws and
weaknesses. Yet its importance to Fitzgerald's development as a writer is undeniable,
and it is “valuable,” as biographer Jeffrey Meyers observes, “both as autobiography
and as social history”. Moreover, with this novel that made his name synonymous
with the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald staked claim to territory that simultaneously nurtured
and constrained his literary career.
A decidedly autobiographical novel, This Side of Paradise recounts the life of
Amory Blaine from his wealthy and pampered childhood through prep school and
Princeton, charting the course of his moral education, sexual awakening, and romantic
disillusionment with life. Amory, a “romantic egotist”, has a fine sense of his own
immense possibilities and believes that a great destiny awaits him. His heightened
conception of self, however, is both his best and his worst quality, providing him with
a sense of mission but also convincing him of its easy attainment. Expulsion from
college and rejection by the woman he loves eventually lead Amory to discover that
his dreams are not enough to ensure his desires, and he grows disillusioned with life.
Yet that disillusionment does not cause Amory to lose faith in himself, and the novel
ends as it begins - with Fitzgerald's “romantic egotist” in pursuit of his great destiny,
beginning yet again the eternal quest that will define his life and existence.
Fitzgerald divides the plot of his first novel into two books, each of which
contains several chapters dramatizing the significant events in the life of Amory
Blaine. Separating the books is a brief "Interlude" that conveys in two letters Amory's
experience as a second lieutenant in World War I. The effect of this structure is to
suggest that the war separates Amory's life into two distinct halves. Yet the
organization of each book is essentially the same: Amory moves forward toward his
expected destiny, falls in love with a beautiful woman who disappoints him, plunges
into despair but ultimately recovers his essential self, and prepares to advance to the
next thing that will take him to his golden future.
A novel of manners
Since its publication, This Side of Paradise has also been considered a
chronicle of the Jazz Age, conveying the styles, themes, and fashions of a generation.
As the English novelist and critic Malcolm Bradbury observes, “No writer set out
more determinedly to capture in fiction the tone, the hope, the possibility, and the
touch of despair of the Twenties” than Fitzgerald. The novelist himself explained the
source of his tale by saying, “I was certain that all the young people were going to be
killed in the war, and I wanted to put on paper a record of the strange life they had
lived in their time”.
Clearly, then, This Side of Paradise is a novel of manners, a literary form
depicting the manners and mores of a class of people in a particular time and place. In
it, Fitzgerald, as Bradbury explains, “made sure that the Twenties was known as 'the
Jazz Age,' that the new goods and chattels, the new expressions and sexual styles,
made their way into fiction”. Indeed, the automobile, Prohibition, the flapper and the
sheik, the new woman and man of the age, all figure prominently in the novel's pages,
revealing the profound changes in the attitudes and mores of a modern generation.
While it may lack the comic tone characteristic of the novel of manners, conveying its
vision with a seriousness that frequently registers as pretentiousness, This Side of
Paradise does contain, as Meyers notes, “flashes of insight on a number of serious
subjects: wealth, class, sex, mores, fame, romance, glamour, success, vanity, egoism,
politics and religion”.
Fitzgerald deals frankly, for instance, with the new attitudes about sex. At a
time when casual kissing was considered immoral and a serious kiss was a prelude to
a marriage proposal, his flappers, such as Isabelle Borgé and Rosalind Connage,
display a boyish toughness that makes them utterly immune to the sexual prohibitions
of a previous age. Indeed, their “Victorian mothers” would have been shocked had
they “any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to being kissed”. In the
section on “Petting”, which is actually about kissing, and another entitled
“Restlessness,” Fitzgerald exposes the myth of sexlessness that makes hypocrites of
so many American men and women, and he is equally honest about attitudes toward
drinking and religion as well.
As a novel of manners, This Side of Paradise, as Meyers observes, expresses a
generation's "revolt against prewar respectability' and “both baptized the Jazz Age and
glorified its fashionable hedonism”. Chief spokesman for his generation is the novel's
protagonist, Amory Blaine. As one of “the chosen youth from the muddled,
unchastened world,” he will learn “the fear of poverty and the worship of success”
that support twentieth-century dreams and ideals.
2. ERNEST HEMINGWAY – THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is the deceivingly simple story of an
old Cuban fisherman who undergoes the most difficult struggle of his life. Despite
being a relatively short work, the novel is filled not only with drama but with the
parable of one man's perseverance through the hardest of times. In the title character,
Santiago, Hemingway depicts one of the most distinguished examples in American
Literature of an individual looking deep within to summon the courage necessary to
get through the triumphs and tragedies that life - represented by the sea - presents.
Alone on the sea, Santiago continuously struggles to find hope in several seemingly
hopeless situations. The old man exemplifies Hemingway's ideal of exhibiting “grace
under pressure,” as he refuses to submit to the overwhelming obstacles presented by
the sea. Santiago's attitude seems to be that although he is faced with tragedy - as
everyone is sooner or later in life - he will not cease struggling. Relying on memories
of his youth, news of the Great DiMaggio's recovery from injury, and thoughts of the
boy, Santiago finds the strength to physically and emotionally carry on throughout the
story.
After hooking the great marlin Santiago realizes he is unable to quickly kill
the fish, and it proceeds to tow him farther out to sea. Yet, throughout the test of
endurance between man and fish the old man begins to recognize a bond between he
and the marlin, repeatedly referring to it as his brother; he elaborates, “Now we are
joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us”. The
old man and the fish are both mere inhabitants among the diverse tropical life residing
in the Gulf Stream, bonded by the fact that they are at the mercy of the sea.
The fish, therefore, transforms from merely being Santiago's prey to serving as
a metaphor reflecting the old man's emotional and physical state. When the sharks
mutilate the dead marlin hanging off the side of the skiff as Santiago struggles to sail
home, the old man fights them off as if they were attacking him. Only when the
marlin's carcass has been entirely eaten away does Santiago give up, knowing he “was
beaten now finally and without remedy”.
Although the old man seemingly fails once the sharks steal his prize fish, they
cannot take away the fact that Santiago - the primary target for the jest and pity of
other fishermen - has done the unthinkable by staying with and catching a fish “bigger
than he had ever heard of”. According to the "Hemingway Code," based on principles
of courage and endurance, the old man has actually triumphed in spite of his loss. In
spite of not successfully bringing the fish back, Santiago fights with dignity - first to
land the marlin, then to protect his fish from the sharks - and in doing so asserts his
humanity. Santiago endures and successfully survives his supreme ordeal, fighting the
timeless battle of man vs. fate, with honor by remaining resilient in the face of
triumph and tragedy.
Characters
Santiago (The Old Man): The story revolves around this down-on-his-luck Cuban
fisherman, who serves as the novel's protagonist. In his youth Santiago had been a
sailor, and traveled to Africa, where he saw the lions which figure so prominently
in his dreams. The old man continually recalls the past - of a victorious armwrestling match, of previous fish caught, of the aforementioned lions - to give himself
the strength to persevere through his three days of suffering at sea. Despite his
simple, compassionate nature - most evident in his interactions with the boy Santiago remains one of literature's finest examples of a character exhibiting what
Hemingway called “grace under pressure.” Even though only his marlin's carcass is
left by the end of the story, Santiago may be considered victorious because he never
quit, valiantly fighting off the sharks until there was nothing left to fight for.
Manolin (The Boy): This is Santiago's loyal young sidekick, who helps take care of
the old man, even though his parents have ordered him to find a luckier fisherman to
sail with. Whenever Santiago is not sailing, the boy faithfully remains nearby to listen
to the old man's stories or bring him whatever Manolin thinks he may need. Although
he is not with the old man physically during Santiago's journey, Manolin provides the
old man with his primary inspiration to endure - as if he were praying to give himself
strength, Santiago continually meditates, “I wish the boy was here”. At the novel’s
end, Manolin appears to be the only character who realizes the significance of the
tragedy Santiago has just been through, as he breaks down and cries several times.
Fittingly, in the final image Manolin sits by the sleeping Santiago “watching him”.
The Marlin: This 18 foot, 1500 pound fish serves as Santiago's first great obstacle
during his three day trial at sea. The marlin, who tows the old man's skiff across the
sea for two straight days, parallels Santiago's struggle to endure as it stubbornly and
honorably refuses to die. After the old man harpoons the marlin and attaches it to the
outside of his boat, a series of sharks mutilate the fish by tearing out chunks of meat.
By the end of the novel nothing remains but “the long backbone of the great fish that
was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide”.
The Mako Shark: This is the first shark - the first of a series of ruthless antagonists to attack the dead marlin attached to Santiago's skiff. Although the old
man successfully kills the Mako, the victory comes at a great price: the shark takes
forty pounds of marlin meat, Santiago's harpoon and rope, and, most importantly,
makes the marlin bleed again, ensuring that other sharks will soon appear.
3. WILLIAM FAULKNER – THE SOUND AND THE FURY
The Sound and the Fury is composed of four sections, each with a distinct
narrator who relates the events of a specific date in the Compson's history. The first
section consists of a monologue by Benjy Compson, a mentally retarded man whose
mind at the age of thirty-three is equivalent to that of a three-year-old child. In an
interview, Faulkner vividly described Benjy's character: “Without thought or
comprehension; shapeless, neuter, like something eyeless and voiceless which might
have lived, existed merely because of its ability to suffer, in the beginning of life; half
fluid, groping: a pallid and helpless mass of all mindless agony under sun.” Although
Benjy perceives his surroundings acutely and understands language, he remains
locked in his own solitary world, unable to speak, interpret his emotions, or
understand the passage of time. At the opening of the novel, he stands near a golf
course that was once his favorite pasture, but was sold to pay for his sister Caddy's
wedding and for the first year of his brother Quentin's Harvard education. As he
listens to the calls of the golfers on the course, his perceptions become intermingled
with intense childhood memories that he experiences as though they were occurring in
the present. Through mechanical yet powerful recollections that are aroused by
sounds, images, and smells, the reader discovers that Benjy's basic experience has
been one of loss and neglect. His mother, who rejected him when it was discovered
that he was retarded, changed his name from Maury, a family name, to Benjy, and his
brothers, Quentin and Jason, perceive him only as a nuisance and a source of
embarrassment.
Some critics have suggested that the Compsons' rejection of Benjy symbolizes the
moral deterioration of their family as reflected by their intrinsic lack of love, denial of
self, and aristocratic pride. Throughout The Sound and the Fury, Benjy howls with
grief when remembering his beloved sister Caddy, one of the few people who had
shown him compassion and understanding. Explaining Benjy's inability to understand
Caddy's absence, Faulkner stated: "Benjy wasn't rational enough even to be selfish.
He was an animal. He recognized tenderness and love though he could not have
named them.... He no longer had Caddy; being an idiot he was not even aware that
Caddy was missing. He knew only that something was wrong, which left a vacuum in
which he grieved." Some critics have also suggested that Benjy functions in some
ways as a Christ figure, his anguished wailing expressing an intense, universal
suffering.
In the second section of The Sound and the Fury Quentin Compson recounts through
first-person narration the events and turbulent emotions he experiences on the day of
his suicide. Like Benjy, he is immersed in a rigidly ordered private world and vividly
recalls his childhood. However, while Benjy is unaware of temporal progression and
hungers for affection, Quentin is incapable of love and is virtually paralyzed by his
perception of time as a destructive force he is obsessed with the past and the only
future he can imagine for himself is death. Throughout Quentin's narrative, feelings of
fear, dread, and meaninglessness are emphasized by images of death-like stillness as
well as exhaustive references to watches and clocks. Many critics have suggested that
the watch Quentin inherits from his aristocratic grandfather, General Compson,
symbolizes his inability to relinquish the outdated values of honor and purity that
characterized the old South. For example, Quentin is obsessed with Caddy's sexuality;
he associates her loss of virginity to a brief lover by whom she becomes pregnant with
the loss of Southern nobility and pride. However, it has also been suggested that
Quentin's fixation on his sister stems from his own incestuous feelings and his longing
to reclaim the closeness they shared as children. Conceiving of the Compson estate as
a closed Edenic paradise, Quentin refuses to accept Caddy's pregnancy and her
subsequent marriage to Herbert Head, whom she weds to conceal the illegitimacy of
her pregnancy. Tormented by guilt and despair, Quentin tells his father that Caddy's
unborn child is his. Mr. Compson, an alcoholic fatalist who emotionally manipulates
his children, rejects Quentin's story, recognizing his son's desire to preserve an
impossible relationship with Caddy and to sustain the intensity of his emotions from
the dissolution caused by the passing of time: "[You] cannot bear to think that
someday it will no longer hurt you like this." Extensive critical discussion has focused
on Quentin's suicide. David Minter summarized the range of possible motives:
"Quentin kills himself in part as punishment for his forbidden desires.... But he also
kills himself because he fears his own inconstancy. What he discovers in himself is
deep psychological impotence. He is unable to play either of the heroic roles; as
seducer or as avenger.... What he fears is that he will ultimately fail, too, in the role of
the despairing lover. What he cannot abide is the prospect of a moment when Caddy's
corruption no longer matters to him."
The third section of the novel is narrated by Jason Compson, whose monologue has
been variously described as suspect, egocentric, and grimly satiric. Devoid of
introspection, Jason's caustic wit, avarice, and harsh rationalism contrast sharply with
Benjy's confused observations and Quentin's melancholy narrative. James M. Cox
observed: "[Jason's] long lamentation, though a monologue, is not spoken to himself;
rather it is his self-dramatization of his plight in a language devoted to reckless and
exaggerated criticism of all the ills his flesh is heir to." Unlike Quentin, Jason has no
reverence for his lost childhood or the irretrievable past; according to Vernon T.
Hornback, time for Jason is a commodity "to be used; saved, not wasted; expended in
a calculated fashion, like money or goods." While Jason is free from Quentin's
excessive nostalgia and guilt, many critics have suggested that he is victimized by his
own worry, fear, and suspicion associated with his utilitarian efforts to control time.
Jason also contrasts with Quentin in his undisguised contempt for family members. In
addition to his derision and sarcasm, Jason's habit of regularly stealing money from
his family has prompted some critics to assert that his habitual cruelty indicates the
moral collapse of the Compsons. At the time of his narrative, Caddy's husband has
divorced her after discovering that her child is not his. Consequently, she sends her
illegitimate daughter, whom she has named Quentin in honor of her brother's memory,
to live at the Compson household. Acting as Miss Quentin's guardian, Jason
embezzles the money Caddy entrusts to him for the child's care. He becomes the
victim of his own scheme, however, when Miss Quentin, tormented by the callous
treatment she has received in the Compson household and infuriated by Jason's
continuous verbal abuse, breaks into his room, steals back her money as well as a
substantial portion of his savings, and runs away.
The final section of The Sound and the Fury focuses on Dilsey, the Compson's black
housekeeper. In a posthumously published introduction to The Sound and the Fury,
Faulkner described Dilsey as a figure of endurance and stability: "There was Dilsey to
be the future, to stand above the fallen ruins of the family like a ruined chimney,
gaunt, patient and indomitable." This section contrasts with the three preceding
monologues in that it is related from an omniscient, third-person perspective that
many critics have associated with Dilsey's freedom from obsessive self-involvement.
A sense of community, rather than entrapment within the self, is emphasized by the
clear, objective description of characters and surroundings. A figure of strength,
Christian morality, and humanistic decency, Dilsey encourages peace and order in the
embittered Compson household. Her acceptance of reality is symbolized by her
sensible attitude toward time; the only member of the Compson household who can
tell time by the one-handed and inaccurate clock in the kitchen, she focuses
predominantly on the present. Critics have also discussed the religious aspects of
Dilsey's character, observing that the last section of The Sound and the Fury occurs
on Easter Sunday and ends with Dilsey taking Benjy to church with her. Despite the
objections of her fellow worshippers who are offended by the presence of a retarded
white man in a black church, Dilsey states, "Tell um de good Lawd dont keer whether
he bright er not." In the novel's climactic scene, she is moved to tears by a powerful
sermon that many critics regard as the one meaningful act of ritual presented in The
Sound and the Fury. Robert Griffin stated: "Dilsey represents the `old verities' of
Christianity not Christian rites or theological dogma but the fundamental Christian
ethic
forbearance and endurance and love and brotherhood."
The Sound and the Fury continues to rank among Faulkner's most frequently
interpreted novels and is often regarded as one of the most significant prose works of
the twentieth century. Isadore Traschen echoed the opinions of many critics and
influential writers in designating The Sound and the Fury "the greatest American
novel of the century, our prose Waste Land," an essentially "tragic work, comparable
in its dimensions and intensity to the family tragedies of the Greeks, the houses of
Atreus and Laios." This underlying sense of tragedy may lie in the grim fact that, as
Arthur Mizener noted, "the sound and fury of temporal existence whether it be
Caddy's passion or Quentin's defiance or Mr. Compson's despair signify, for all their
pathos, nothing."
4. SINCLAIR LEWIS – BABBITT
Sinclair Lewis was the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for
Literature. Four years before he was awarded this honor in 1930, however, Lewis was
also the first author in history to decline the Pulitzer Prize. In a 1926 press statement
reprinted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series, Lewis justified
this refusal by explaining his objection to the provision that the Pulitzer be given to
the book "which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and
the highest standard of American manners and manhood." The conditions could not
be applied, Lewis felt, to an author such as himself who had satirized American
lifestyles in such works as Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, Babbitt,
Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth; and he objected to the American
Academy of Arts and Letters and other institutions that upheld the illusion of a perfect
America.
Babbitt (1922) is Lewis's best novel, his greatest claim to continued attention
and respect. While working on it, Lewis wrote to his publisher that this time he hoped
to overcome some of the limitations thought to inhere in Main Street - namely its
superficiality - by revealing the complexities of his central figure. George F. Babbitt
would give us a surprise by breaking away from the standardized life he had
heretofore led. He would want passionately "to seize something more than motor cars
and a house before it's too late." Thus Lewis was attempting once again, but now with
greater thought and skill, to undertake his constant subject of the lonely and sensitive
outsider, longing for freedom and searching for a meaningful life. Lewis's excitement
during the writing was so great that he vowed to his publisher that soon he would
have everyone talking of "babbittry," and indeed one contribution of the book is that
the word babbitt has entered common parlance.
Lewis had also put into practice a method of development which he would use
thereafter. He visited various appropriate locales - Cincinnati, especially; he
researched the operation of a real-estate business; he wrote biographies of his
characters, made a summary of their actions, drew maps of his fictional city, and
compiled notes on furnishings, cars, clubs, and clothes. For this novel he invented the
city of Zenith, which would also be the setting for a number of scenes in Arrowsmith,
Elmer Gantry, The Man Who Knew Coolidge, and Dodsworth.
The first quarter of Babbitt recounts one day in the life of the protagonist, who
is forty-six years old in the year 1920. It opens as George awakens on his sleeping
porch (he-men sleep in the open air) from dreams of a fairy-girl, and it takes us
through breakfast with his wife and three children, his attentions to his car on his
drive to work, negotiations at his real estate office, lunch with his best friend Paul at
the Zenith Athletic Club, more work, supper, after-dinner talk and reading (his teenage son discusses enrolling in a correspondence course in how to be a detective), and
finally bed, with another dream of his golden girl.
Lewis's plans had announced that Babbitt would be the typical "TBM," the
tired businessman. From the start Babbitt is discontented. He is irritable in the
morning; he is puzzled by what suit to wear; he is quarrelsome with his wife and
contradictory to his children. He complains to his friend Paul that he has all the things
he is supposed to have: a family, a car, a house, a business, virtue. He belongs to a
church; he keeps trim with prudent exercise. Yet he is not satisfied. He suffers from
self-contradiction. He opposes alcohol, yet drinks; he is pledged to traffic laws, yet
speeds; he is dedicated to truth, yet cheats in business and advertising. He is pledged
to fidelity, yet he begins an affair. Thus caught between forces, he is constantly tired.
Unsettled by the affair, Babbitt is open for a political shift from right to left when he
becomes reacquainted with an old socialist friend named Seneca Doane. Throughout a
lengthy and detailed section of the book, a compassionate Babbitt emerges from his
doubts, confusions, and fatigue, just as Lewis intended. But the conception does not
go far enough. The satiric impulse behind the book cannot be overcome. Nor could
Lewis face the prospect of carrying Babbitt completely out of his milieu. Thus,
though the political rebellion has a substantial foundation, the rebellion through love
is permitted to have no substance at all. Babbitt's lover and her friends (called the
"bunch") are a mockery, and quite predictably they have no power to tap new
resources in Babbitt, who might thereby change and grow. His friends call him back;
in fact, they terrorize him. At the end he is in the fold again, compliant once more.
Reviewers of Babbitt praised it as better than Main Street. H.L. Mencken said that
Babbitt, "plausible and natural, simply drips with human juices." Later critics have
sustained the praise, though some admit to reservations. Frederick J. Hoffman sees
"two Babbitts" - a booster and a doubter; he praises Lewis's skill in portraying each
"Babbitt" but wonders if Lewis could expect to successfully combine them in a
unified characterization. Schorer endorses Constance Rourke's insight that Lewis was
less a realist than a "fabulist." Indeed, the triumph of this book is that it brought
before us an enduring perception of an American type.
Babbitt is the book, moreover, in which Lewis was most skillful in his satiric
representation of American speech. Examples could be drawn from the earliest pages
(in which Babbitt mutters to himself in the bathroom, "By golly, here they go and use
up all the towels, every doggone one of 'em, and they use 'em and get 'em all wet and
sopping ...") or from his breakfast-table lecture to his daughter (that her "uplift and
flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering
wedge for socialism") or from his whine of fatigue ("Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd like to
quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad.") or from his
lengthy speech to the real-estate board ("Our Ideal Citizen--I picture him first and
foremost as being busier than a bird-dog...," continuing in bits and pieces gleaned
from editorials and advertising slogans). Lewis had been tuning his ear and practicing
his technique for this mimicry all through his apprenticeship, and he achieved his
greatest success with it in Babbitt.
5. JOHN STEINBECK – OF MICE AND MEN
Main Themes
-
loneliness
-
violence
-
dreams
-
nature
Loneliness
Loneliness affects many of the characters, and Steinbeck seems to show that it
is a natural and inevitable result of the kind of life they are forced to lead. The
itinerant workers are caught in a trap of loneliness - they never stay in one place long
enough to form permanent relationships. Even if such relationships existed, they
would probably be destroyed by the demands of the itinerant life.
Candy is lonely because he is old, and is different from the other hands. His
only comfort is his old dog, which keeps him company and reminds him of days when
he was young and whole. He has no relatives, and once his dog is killed is totally
alone. He eagerly clutches at the idea of buying a farm with George and Lennie, but
of course this all comes to nothing. Candy's disappointment is expressed in the bitter
words he utters to the body of Curley's wife, whom he blames for spoiling his dream.
George is also caught in the trap of loneliness. Just as Candy has his dog for company,
George has Lennie (who is often described in animal-like terms). Continuing the
parallel, George too is left completely alone when Lennie is killed.
The dream farm is his idea, and he says 'We'd belong there ... no more runnin' around
the country...'.
Another lonely character is Curley's wife. Newly married and in a strange
place, she is forbidden by Curley to talk to anyone but him. To counter this, she
constantly approaches the ranch hands on the excuse of looking for Curley. The only
result is that the men regard her as a slut, and Curley becomes even more intensely
jealous. Finally, her loneliness leads to her death as she makes the ' serious error of
trying to overcome it by playing the tease with Lennie.
Curley himself is lonely. His new wife hates him as do all the ranch hands
who despise him for his cowardice. He has married in an attempt to overcome his
loneliness, but has blindly chosen a wife totally inappropriate for the kind of life he
leads. His feelings are all channeled into aggressive behavior which further isolates
his wife and leads to the incident with Lennie where his hand is crushed.
Crooks is another who is isolated because he is different. He copes with it by
keeping a distance between himself and the other hands. When he does allow himself
to be drawn into the dream of working on George and Lennie's dream farm, he is
immediately shut out by George's anger.
Violence
The novel has many examples of a kind of needless violence. For example,
Candy relates how the boss gave them whisky and allowed a fight to take place in the
bunkhouse. Curley is the most obviously violent character, however, and whenever he
appears there is a feeling of tension. He is described as pugnacious when we first meet
him, and causes George to remark '...what the hell's he got on his shoulder.'
Candy explains that Curley often picks on big guys ( a sure sign of trouble for
Lennie). We are prepared for Curley's later anger, which culminates at the end in his
wish to '... shoot him in the guts.'
Carlson is another character associated with violence. He is unconcerned
about killing Candy's dog (and in fact callously cleans the gun in Candy's presence).
He goes to watch the fun when Curley thinks Slim may be with his wife, and later
goads Curley more, threatening to '... kick your head off.' Later he is very keen to get
his gun to join in the hunt for Lennie. The last words in the book belong to Carlson,
and it is little surprise that they reveal his complete inability to understand George's
feelings about the death of Lennie.
Compared to the other characters, Lennie reveals an unintentional violence.
He does not even think to fight back when Curley attacks him, but when he does, it is
with immense and uncontrollable force. He has so little control over his own strength
that he accidentally kills his puppy, and then minutes later snuffs out the life of
Curley's wife. His actions on these occasions are compared to those of an animal,
powerful but thoughtless. Ironically, Curley's wife is attracted to him because of the
violence he had shown in crushing her husband's hand. It is the threat of violence to
be used against Lennie that causes George to take the final step of killing his friend.
Dreams
Dreams are one of the ways in which the characters combat the loneliness and
hopelessness of their existence. The most obvious example is the dream farm, a dream
shared at first only by George and Lennie, but which later spreads to include Candy
and Crooks. Crooks reveals that it is the favourite dream of the itinerant ranch hands:
'Seems like ever' guy got land in his head.'
It is a powerful dream, however, and even the cynical Crooks falls under its
spell for a short time. To Lennie, the dream is an antidote to disappointment and
loneliness, and he often asks George to recite the description of the farm to him.
Curley's wife is another who has dreams, her fantasies of a part in the movies and a
life of luxury. Part of her dissatisfaction with her life is that it can never measure up to
her dreams. Significantly, none of the characters ever achieve their dreams.
Nature
Steinbeck shows the world of nature to be a beautiful and peaceful one, but
threatened by the actions of men. The beginning of the novel sets this pattern, as the
creatures at the pool are disturbed by George and Lennie's approach.
The ranch and its buildings, being created by men, are in contrast with the natural
world. Notice that the bunkhouse, for example, is quite bare and stark.
Even more unnatural is that Candy and Crooks are both deformed or unnatural
in appearance. Contrasted to these two characters is Lennie, who almost seems a part
of the natural world as he is described in animal terms.
In fact, one of Lennie's dreams is to go and live by himself in a cave. Maybe
this would be the only way in which the natural world of Lennie would not come into
conflict with the world of men.
6. JOHN DOS PASSOS – U.S.A.
Considered Dos Passos's masterpiece, U.S.A. presents a fiercely critical and
pessimistic portrait of American society during the first three decades of the twentieth
century. The trilogy stands as his most forceful presentation of his central concerns:
the failure of the American Dream, the exploitation of the working class, the loss of
individual freedom, and America's emphasis on materialism. The novels also
represent Dos Passos's most successful experiments in narrative form. Building on the
innovative techniques of his earlier works, Dos Passos interspersed the narrative with
prose poem passages, excerpts from newspapers and popular songs, and biographical
portraits of famous Americans, thus evoking multiple layers of detail and realism.
Described as an epic novel as well as an historical study, U.S.A. established Dos
Passos's reputation as an important literary innovator and as a major chronicler of
twentieth-century American life.
Dos Passos began work on U.S.A. in 1927. Although it is not clear that he
envisioned his new work as a trilogy, he intended from the beginning to craft a long
narrative, combining fiction and history, which would examine the entangled lives of
several Americans during the first three decades of the twentieth century.
Summarizing his concept of fiction in his “Statement of Belief” written in 1928, Dos
Passos wrote that “the only excuse for a novelist, aside from the entertainment and
vicarious living his books give the people who read them, is as a sort of second-class
historian of the age he lives in.” With U.S.A. Dos Passos refined the technical
innovations he introduced in Manhattan Transfer, where he juxtaposed prose poems
against popular songs and diverse images to create a cinematic collage of New York
City society from 1900 to the 1920s. Commenting on Dos Passos's method of
composition for U.S.A., Donald Pizer has postulated that Dos Passos worked on each
mode as a separate entity, beginning with the biographical and narrative sections, and
then alternated segments of the different forms for ironic effect. Early critical reaction
to the three novels was overwhelmingly positive. Although a few reviewers faulted
them as excessively pessimistic and lacking in warmth and emotion, most
commentators lauded the trilogy's innovative style and wide-ranging, satirical portrait
of American society.
The style, form, and scale of U.S.A. render any type of concise plot summary
impossible. In terms of the periods covered, The 42nd Parallel deals with events from
1900 to 1917; 1919 focuses on World War I and its immediate aftermath; and The
Big Money covers the 1920s. Dos Passos relied primarily on the juxtaposition of the
four modes - the fictional narratives, Newsreel segments, Camera Eye sections, and
biographies - to create irony and convey meaning. Indeed, A. S. Knowles, Jr. has
noted that the fictional narratives, in isolation, are "deliberately verbose, tedious,
banal, and unselective, meant to give a precise effect of real people thinking, talking,
and acting their way through series of experiences to which they can bring only a
limited understanding." Dos Passos covers, in varying levels of detail, the lives of
over a dozen characters through the narratives. J. Ward Moorehouse - a pompous,
opportunistic public relations expert who rises to prominence in the first two novels
and then declines to moral bankruptcy in The Big Money - emerges as the trilogy's
principal character. In the Newsreels, which are excerpts from popular songs as well
as actual newspaper headlines and articles, Dos Passos presents mass culture as a
cacophony of fads and events. The Camera Eye segments are impressionistic prose
poem passages in which Dos Passos describes his feelings and observations at specific
moments during his life. The biographies, which many critics consider his best
writing in the trilogy, recount the lives of famous Americans businessmen,
entertainers, inventors, philosophers, and politicians through often-ironic layerings
of various details that culminate in final, telling portraits of Dos Passos's subjects.
Critics generally agree that Dos Passos intended U.S.A. to encapsulate the
essential characteristics of America during the early twentieth century. Indeed, the
Newsreels capture the mood of the period, and many commentators note that
characters in the fictional narratives represent archetypes rather than unique
individuals. J. Ward Moorehouse and Margo Dowling, for instance, are exploiters;
Mac McCreary and Janey Williams are exploited; while Mary French and Ben
Compton are examples of those who work for a cause beyond personal interest but
prove ineffectual. The hollowness of capitalism, the pervasiveness and destructive
power of greed, and the betrayal of the ideals and values of the founding fathers
emerge as the trilogy's overriding themes. For instance, the biographies portray
businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan as villains; the narrative
depicts the moral collapse of Moorehouse and Charley Anderson, the owner of an
aircraft manufacturing company; and Camera Eye (50), near the conclusion of The
Big Money, expresses Dos Passos's profound sense of despair over the execution of
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti two Italian immigrants who, Dos Passos and
many others believed, were wrongly convicted of murder and electrocuted in 1927.
Although Dos Passos was associated with the Left in American politics during the
1920s and 1930s and clearly condemned capitalist excesses in U.S.A., contemporary
critics emphasize that the trilogy should not be interpreted as a proletarian novel since
the book lacks an explicit political message, characterizes the Communist Party as
exploitative, and suggests that individuals from the proletariat can be as morally
bankrupt as the people who exploit them. In summarizing Dos Passos's themes, Alfred
Kazin has argued that in U.S.A. "the only defense against the ravages of our century is
personal integrity" and that "Dos Passos makes it clear that ... democracy can survive
only through the superior man, the intellectual aristocrat, the poet who may not value
what the crowd does."
The style and tone of U.S.A. have generated much critical analysis. In
assessing Dos Passos's style, many commentators have focused on his ironic
juxtaposition of the four modes. Critics assert that although Dos Passos did not invent
the styles employed in the different modes, his use of these varying styles in a single
work was innovative, and the skill with which he arranged the novels' various parts
represents his foremost artistic achievement in U.S.A. For example, in The 42nd
Parallel the narrative account of Mac eating at a train station lunch counter and
traveling coach is contrasted with the Camera Eye image of Dos Passos, as a child,
traveling in luxury in a private railroad car. The subsequent Newsreel contains an
excerpt from a speech by Michigan Governor Hazen Pingree, who warns that
inequality will result in revolution. The following Camera Eye segment concludes
with Dos Passos's mother discussing, in a trivial manner, the shooting of a workingclass Mexican. The story about the Mexican is then interrupted by the phrase “Lover
of Mankind,” which is the title introducing the biographical sketch of Eugene Debs, a
prominent American socialist. Critics have disagreed about the overall tone of U.S.A.
Commentators who consider the trilogy negative and deterministic emphasize the lack
of psychological growth in the characters from the narrative sections, the empty and
unhappy endings to these character's lives, and their apparent lack of free will in the
face of social conditions. Providing a contrary interpretation, others argue that the
Camera Eye sections reveal the psychological development of an individual whose
sense of identity and understanding of the world is increasing. These critics also
contend that the biographies depict individuals who do indeed affect history, shaping
their lives and those of others. In summarizing the trilogy's critical reception, Robert
Rosen has asserted that “diverse political perspectives lurk somewhere behind ...
critical evaluations of U.S.A., but few would disagree with Alfred Kazin's praise that
Dos Passos brings energy to despair.”
Bibliography:
Bloom, Harold, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Chelsea House,
1999
Dooley, D.J., The Art of Sinclair Lewis, University of Nebraska Press, 1967
Fiedler, Leslie, Love and Death in the American Novel, Stein and Day, 1966
Hatcher, Harlan Henthorne, Creating the Modern American Novel, Farrar &
Rinehart, 1935
Hoffman, Frederick, The Modern Novel in America, 1900-1950, Henry Regnery
Publishing, 1951
Johnson, Claudia Durst, Understanding Of Mice and Men, the Red Pony, and the
Pearl: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents,
Greenwood Press, 1997
Maine, Barry, John Dos Passos: The Critical Heritage, Routledge, 1997