Modern Hollywood does not stop striking with its brilliance and luxury. Bright colors of gorgeous mansions and the scarcity of the most exquisite cars, what do all of them hold in their stores? Hundreds of people with their dreams and burning desires to make all of them come true, how far can they go to achieve them? Is this luxury an appropriate symbol of the grandeur of Hollywood with its majestic power to excite the most cherished dreams in humans’ minds or is it a constant reminder of how easily people’s dreams can be crushed as soon as the light goes away?
All these questions are examined in Nathanael West’s novel The Day of the Locus. Being a kind of test of the American dream, this work remains one of the most striking examples of the “Hollywood novel” in American fiction. The novel depicts Hollywood along with its corrupting power with which Hollywood can turn the far-promising American dream into a sun-drenched California nightmare.
The novel shows the destinies of the people who are, on the one hand, are common representatives of American society of 1930’s and, on the other, who are strange and rather different from the other part of America. Taking into account historical context of the novel, we should admit that the 1930’s were Hollywood’s golden age. During this period the American movie industry has flourished both technically and artistically. The years are marked by releases of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, King Kong and other famous films. West could not neglect the importance of these events being inspired by them when the novel was being created.
A lot of people West depicted in The Day of the Locus get drawn to Los Angeles in the 1930’s, this was the time when Hollywood studios employed people crews of extras, writers, and various technicians, everyone striving for one’s own place in the Hollywood sun. Being “the land of sunshine and oranges” (West, 123) Hollywood can both build people’s dreams and with the same power ruin them. “Once there they discover that sunshine isn’t enough.
They get tired of the oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for pleasure…there boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment…the sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded pallets. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing” (West, 156).
According to West, Hollywood is not so much a place, as it is a destination. Those who seek for fame and fortune in this historical center of movie studios and movie stars, as well as those who yearn to restore their physical, mental and spiritual health find Hollywood as a starting point for their new lives, they expect to change their way of living deeply through but not always manage to do it. Whereas the first group is widely represented in The Day of the Locus, the latter is personified in the character of Homer Simpson. This is an acquaintance of the main character, Tod Hackett, he is a repressed lowan, they both have fallen in love with one and the same woman.
Tod Hackett may be called the main character of the novel. He is an artist and scene designer, his assumption of Los Angeles is revealed in his extracurricular plan to paint a canvas called The Burning of Los Angeles. He is going to depict there people who come to California to die. These people who he sees on the streets are poorly dressed and shock him with the hatred that their eyes are full of. Tod’s painting serves as a metaphor for the novel under consideration, emphasizing that Tod Hackett is a representative of West himself.
Tod’s background, thoughts, and actions are the main concern of the narrator at the beginning of the novel, the Hollywood is described as Tod sees it. In the eighth chapter the focus of the story shifts to Homer mentioned above. Having moved into a new house on Hollywood, this man still cannot forget his past connected with Iowa. His hopes for a new life in California are revealed in the chapters from eight to thirteen. Then, the narrative is again concentrated on Tod’s life.
While the narrator’s voice follows these two characters the reader experiences Hollywood of the 1930s, its bizarre and grotesque manifestations through the characters’ eyes. The Day of the Locus is essentially episodic (the episodes either introduce a character or describe interconnections between the characters) and this helps the author to show Hollywood from various perspectives.
Also, the reader is expected to notice the theme of illusions that forms the basis for much of what happens with the characters of The Day of the Locus. The author claims that it is fantasies and dreams that keep Hollywood functioning. Throughout the novel he includes unreal and illusory images to prove his point.
West compares life in Hollywood with the movie sets that Tod deals with: it is as one-dimensional and flimsy as they are. Hollywood is an artificial place where there is nothing that comes from here. For example, the idea of architecture for Hollywood buildings is borrowed either from Irish cottages or Spanish villas. Characters also lose their identity, often they imagine themselves as someone who they have never been and will never become. Their losing their identity is like losing their dreams that were ruined in Hollywood. In the novel, the latter is a symbol of the monster that does not allow getting some unrealistic dreams, or, in case they appear, they are destined to break against the rocks of reality that never gives another chance to succeed.
Though we have discussed only two literary elements of the novel that helped the author to develop his view of Hollywood, namely, characters and themes, there are also settings, plot and other literary elements that helped the author to present Hollywood in its beauty and ugliness. Though written more than seventy years ago, the novel is still relevant today: as long as Hollywood exists, as long its double nature will both amaze and horrify the observers and the actual participants of the events that “California Holly” life is full of.
Works Cited
West, Nathanael. The Day of the Locust. Signet Classics, 1983.