The Day of the Locust is Nathanael West’s forth novel written in 1939. Like all West’s previous works, this novel makes a vivid emphasis on social issues, such as spiritual and material degradation of the American society at the time of the Great Depression. It is a story about a frustrated American Dream, about life in which the perception of the reality does not correspond to the reality itself. Researchers say that the idea of the corrupt American Dream introduced by Nathanael West in his stories resulted in the coinage of “the term "West's disease" to refer to poverty that exists in both a spiritual and economic sense” (SparkNotes). So, the reality that the characters of The Day of the Locust seem to see around themselves is the world of make-believe. Their life is only an illusion of happiness and success. Their prospects for the brilliant future have no ground. They believe they are living in the best place on the earth where prosperity is everywhere or just around the corner, but they do not realize that without efforts and talents they are worth nothing and so are their lives.
Researchers of The Day of the Locust often describe it as “the best novel ever written about Hollywood” (CliffsNotes). However, Hollywood depicted in Nathanael West’s novel is not the one that common readers expect to see. It is not glamorous and successful. It is not populated by stars and millionaires. Almost from the very beginning West introduces the population of his Hollywood – the mob of failures hating both the life they lead and people they meet throughout this life. As West relevantly puts it on the first pages of the novel, these people “had come to California to die” (West). The same mob is depicted at the very end; it engulfs the main character, Tod Hackett, and he seems to become a part of it. All of them, i.e. the mob, Tod, his friends and acquaintances, are present in Tod’s picture named “The Burning of Los Angeles.” The picture is a satirical representation of Los Angeles and its inhabitants where Tod explicitly shows the futility of all their efforts because the world these people have in their minds does not exist. Moreover, Los Angeles in the novel reflects the country in general. Americans are all lost in illusions and make-believe; they are all spiritually and economically bankrupt. West describes people as “poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence” (West). He does not believe that such people are able to achieve anything worthy in life. They expect miracles and when they do not get them they respond with aggression.
It is quite clear that the author wants to underline the discrepancies between real things and the things that exist in people’s imagination, between what people see and what the things actually are. For example, describing Tod, the author says that looking at him one can never say that the young man is truly gifted: “His large, sprawling body, his slow blue eyes and sloppy grin made him seem completely without talent, almost doltish in fact” (West). Tod is said to have the same variability in his character, too: “He was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes” (West). It seems you see one person, but he turns to be quite the opposite. The same is observed when West describes people in Vine Street. The ways people are dressed invoke associations that do not match the reality. For example, some people are dressed in sports clothes, but they are not sportsmen and are not going to any kind of sport activity. One lady has a yachting cap on, but she is actually on her way to shopping rather than yachting. When you see all this, it seems your eyes betray you. Thus, West seems to hint that in Hollywood your eyes should not be trusted.
West seems to assert that this discrepancy between real and imagined things might be the cause of the problems: people do not see the truth; they see what they want to see. The most straightforward example of this kind is Faye Greener, a girl whom Tod thinks he is in love with. She is not able to see the reality. She lives in an imaginary world, the world of make-believe. She dreams of becoming a star though she has no talent. She dreams of getting married to a wealthy and handsome man though she is not ready to do anything for that man herself. She makes up stories and believes they can help her become rich and famous. However, she cannot even put these stories on paper herself. She expects Tod to do it for her while she is not going to do anything for Tod. She is a selfish and self-complacent girl who thinks only about a material side of life and of her own comfort. Eventually, she happens to lose her “American Dream” in the face of Homer Simpson because she betrays him in the cruelest way for the sake of carnal pleasures.
In such a way, people in West’s novel see the outer side of everything and judge by the appearance. As a result, they feel frustrated because the beautiful picture which attracts them turns out to be ugly and disgusting since it is rotten inside. There are numerous examples of this kind in the novel. Firstly, it is Faye Greener again. She does attract men – with her beauty, her frivolous behavior, her vitality, etc. But all this is just the outer shell which is empty inside. The metaphor West uses to describe the girl is very talking. He compares her to a cork: “She was like a cork. No matter how rough the sea got, she would go dancing over the same waves that sank iron ships and tore away piers of reinforced concrete” (West). It means she is as empty and weightless as a cork. It does not matter to her where she is and what she is doing, or whom she is living with; she just drifts with the stream without any effort to change the direction of her flow.
The way Faye is shown in the photo Tod has in his room also says a lot about this girl: “She was supposed to look inviting, but the invitation wasn't to pleasure” (West). The author wants to say that the girl’s inviting beauty cannot really bring satisfaction and pleasure but rather brings “struggle, hard and sharp, closer to murder than to love” (West). In other words, you see something pleasant, but it is not pleasure. Being clever enough as well as more realistic, at least in comparison with other characters of the novel, Tod understands Faye’s essence almost immediately, though it does not prevent him from desiring her physically. The other character, Homer Simpson, is of a different kind and, therefore, he is often depicted in the novel in contrast to Tod. Tod is unattractive, but quite interesting as a person; Homer is handsome enough, but he is not a man who can truly attract a woman. It is said that Homer “seemed to be perfect; but only physically the type” (West). And these examples show another discrepancy between what you see and what the things are. Like Tod, Homer also falls for Faye’s outer look, but he does not feel her insincerity. Even when he sees her betrayal with his own eyes, he cannot walk out on her himself. It is she who leaves him. Similarly, she is also attracted by beauty and fun rather than by sincerity and affection.
The above mentioned opposition of the real and the imagined is everywhere in the story. The author wants to emphasize the idea that the real world is just make-believe. People are insincere and pretend to be someone else. Therefore, there is no meaning in this world because nothing that you see can be trusted. The signs have lost their meanings. There are bridges, but they bridge nothing. There are people who pretend to have bellies, but they have no bellies at all, such as Claude, for example. There are women with 18-year-old faces and 35-year-old necks, such as Mrs. Schwartzen. People laugh, but “it wasn’t a real laugh” (West); it is just make-believe. The word-combination “make believe” is very frequent in West’s novel. The author uses it more than 10 times. It can be seen as an additional emphasis on the idea that the reality of the novel is just a kind of make-believe which cannot be taken seriously. Even the very last sentence of the novel leaves the reader with a feeling that everything around is unreal and everyone pretends: “he began to imitate the siren as loud as he could” (West). The reader makes a conclusion that the world is nothing but the imitation of the reality.
Probably, due to this constant confusion of real and imagined things, the author feels it necessary to clarify the images to his readers. Therefore, the novel abounds in similes which describe characters, their emotions, the things they see, etc. Similes are everywhere because it appears to be difficult to understand the novel’s reality without them. For example, trying to explain his feelings towards the girl he has been courting, Tod says: “I’ve been choosing a girl and it’s like carrying something a little too large to conceal in your pocket” (West). The comparison is felt in almost all descriptions the author includes in his story-telling. Such adjectives as “dwarflike”, “swordlike”, etc. provide more information than any lengthy word-combinations. At the same time these comparisons, along with everything else, underline the fact that the reality that West depicts is hard to understand; it is disturbing due to its incomprehensiveness.
So, it is clear that Nathanael West succeeds in depicting the falsities of the American Dream, Hollywood, and America itself. The world which he creates in The Day of the Locust is the world of make-believe. This world is worth nothing and, therefore, brings no joy and satisfaction. This world is empty, though densely packed with people – the mob representatives of which have no individuality due to their insincerity and superficiality. In respect to this, Alissa Valles writes at the end of her review to West’s novel: “When you close this edition, you find the mob right there, battening on the green field of the cover in the shape of a swarm of locusts” (Valles, 108). This is exactly what Nathanael West wants his readers to realize – these locusts ruining the world we live in are here among us. Perhaps, we are these locusts that ruin everything around without thinking twice. We are these insects with no souls and no feelings. We thrive and populate the world, but we bring nothing into this world. And if the reader understands that message, something can be changed for the better. The make-believe world can turn into the world of true feelings and real personalities.
Works Cited
“The Day of the Locust.” CliffsNotes. CliffsNotes, n.d. Web. 18 March 2016. <http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/d/the-day-of-the-locust/about-the-day-of-the-locust>
“The Day of the Locust.” SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 18 March 2016. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/locust/context.html>
Valles, Alissa. “The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West.” Arion Press 2013: 107-108. Print.
West, Nathanael. “The Day of the Locust.” Project Gutenberg Australia. Project Gutenberg Australia, Nov. 2006. Web. 14 March 2016. <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0609041.txt>
