The Day of the Locust

The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scenic design and painting. While he works he plans an important painting to be called “The Burning of Los Angeles,” a portrayal of the chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city. While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose “eyes filled with hatred,” and “had come to California to die.” This undercurrent of society captures the despair of Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, the American dream was more illusive than they imagined. Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premier erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos.

    In the introduction to The Day of the Locust, Richard Gehman writes the novel was “more ambitious” than Miss Lonelyhearts, and “showed marked progress in West’s thinking and in his approach toward maturity as a writer.” Gehman calls the novel “episodic in structure, but panoramic in form.”

Miss Lonelyhearts

Miss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West’s second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.

    In the story Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column the newspaper staff considers a joke. As Miss Lonelyhearts reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional bar fights. He is also the victim of the pranks and cynical advice of Shrike, his feature editor at the newspaper.

    Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches to escape the terribly painful letters he has to read: religion, trips to the countryside with his fiancée Betty, and affairs with Shrike’s wife and Mrs. Doyle, a reader of his column; however, Miss Lonelyheart’s efforts do not seem to improve his situation. After his sexual encounter with Mrs. Doyle, he meets her husband, a poor crippled man. The Doyles invite Miss Lonelyhearts to have dinner with them. When he arrives Mrs. Doyle tries to seduce him again, but he responds by beating her; Mrs. Doyle tells her husband Miss Lonelyhearts tried to rape her.

    In the last scene Mr. Doyle hides a gun inside a rolled newspaper and decides to take revenge on Miss Lonelyhearts. Miss Lonelyhearts, who has just experienced a religious enlightenment after three days of sickness, runs toward Mr. Doyle to embrace him. The gun ‘explodes,” and the two men roll down a flight of stairs together.