The Day of the Locust: Surrealist Satire, Research Paper Example

Surrealism burgeoned as a movement and a literary genre that is still actively utilized in the present day. It emerged as a potent mechanism for the liberation of the unconscious through artistic and literary modes, as it bridged together imagination and reality. Indeed, surrealist writers sought to transcend various contradictions and paradoxes of the unconscious and conscious minds via the creation of bizarre or fictive stories that were rife with juxtapositions and contradicting ideas and images. This technique is utilized in order to force readers to expand the reader’s reality and forcing him or her to make innovative connections via free association and other poetic techniques so that the reader divorces himself or herself from any societal or cultural influences. As such, surrealist literature is purposely unusual and shocking in order to force people to think outside of their comfort zone within the realm of ideas, which is why surrealist products often incite riots. The use of tropes and images is carried out in order to foment deep, critical thinking that would result in the germination of subconscious meaning. Surrealist writers thus eschew an over reliance on plot in favor of underscoring the characters’ development, imagery, and various discoveries within the subconscious realm.

Nathaniel West’s hailed work The Day of the Locust details the story of Tom Hackett, a young artist who is an archetypal individual from the East coast who migrates west in order to chase his dreams as a set designer in the entertainment capital of the world: Los Angeles. Hackett lives at the margins in California where he befriends various misfits, including his love interest Faye, who is an aspiring actress; her vaudevillain father; various television extras who are unemployed; a dwarf; and Midwesterners who came to California “to die” (West 60). Unfulfilled and false dreams cause profound agony in the characters because American society has become so morally and spiritually bereft. Such pathological dreaming spawns various allusions and passages that are surrealist in nature  The Day of the Locust is an apocalyptic, surrealist satire posing as a realistic novel of life during the interwar period. Many scenes contain symbols and allusions that foreshadows the end of the novel and evince various elements of modernism.

West’s descriptions of paintings and lithographs in the novel convey apocalyptic visions, which the name of the novella itself alludes to as it refers to the locust plague that is discussed in the Book of Exodus. Three times in the novella West describes Tod’s The Burning of Los Angeles, a vast painting he aspired to complete everyday as a scathing critique of Hollywood and the film culture that burgeoned there during the 1920s and 1930s(Myers 52). This painting is filled with tropes and symbols at the hands of Hackett, who is a naïve outsider who was thrown into the fast-paced film industry. The protagonist deftly observes how inane, superficial, and duplicit individuals were in the renowned town, noting that the human soul rotted once immersed in this culture. He painted The Burning of Los Angeles as the holocaust was in its nascent stages, and it symbolizes his views of Hollywood as juxtaposed with the cataclysmic infestation of locusts that takes place in the Book of Exodus. Hollywood is thus discursively framed as sinister, as it is limned as a moral wasteland that is inhabited with rotting and denigrated human souls. The protagonist so badly wants to sleep with Faye, although this sexual tension is unrequited. The conflation of politics and sex in Hollywood is clearly portrayed, as West notes: “He wanted to beg her for a kiss but was afraid, not because she would refuse but because she would want to make it meaningless” (West 61). As a result, Tod includes Faye in his painting as a naked female in the foreground, and a woman and a mod of men chase her (West 65). The protagonist intended to show in this painting the city of Los Angeles as being marred by a terrible firestorm, which is the fate of a city that has been constructed upon manipulation, sex, greed, and all sins that Tod commits throughout the novella. West describes the image as showing Los Angeles in flames at high noon that appeared more like “bright flags flying from roofs and windows than a terrible holocaust” (West). As such, it seems that this image was appropriated from the story about the burning of Babylon in the Book of Revelation. Such morbid imagery is tinged with surrealist intimations that undergird modernist discourses.

Various natural images in the novella invoke images of animals that convey surrealist intimations. West decries the natural world and the denizens of Los Angeles, which is evident through various descriptions of the natural world that force readers to think critical and unconventionally about the meaning therein. While the beauty of the natural world is minimally described, West’s descriptions also suggest that the natural world in Los Angeles was filled with danger. West describes a hummingbird that, “like a ruby bullet,” pursued a blue jay (West 113).  This image foreshadows the rape that takes place in the next scene, suggesting that the hummingbird acting in such a way was a clear example of deviance. Indeed, the hummingbird pursues the blue jay not because the two share a mutual affection but out of a desire for sexual dominance and violence. West underscores the ubiquity of deviance in Los Angeles. Such an expression of sexual violence is transposed onto human interactions. Such violent images in pastoral settings reflects how the provocation of desires in various characters spawns destruction and volatility that characterizes modern life. The image of the dead horse placed at the bottom of the pool during a mogul’s party is another surrealist image that retains a sense incongruousness. Although the horse was placed there for spectators to gaze at, its placement there was far more nefarious in nature. It invokes a sense of American humor and satire within modern contexts.

Works Cited

Myers, Jeffrey.”Paintings in The Day of the Locust.” Heldref Publications 22.1(2009): 50-55. Print.

Volpe, Edmond L. “The Waste Land of Nathanael West.” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Miss Lonelyhearts: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Thomas H. Jackson, 81- 92. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Print.

West, Nathaniel. The Day of the Locust. United States: Random House Publishing, 1939. Print.

Zaidman, Laura M. “Critical Evaluation of The Day of the Locust.” N.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. chrome-extension://bpmcpldpdmajfigpchkicefoigmkfalc/views/app.html