Dec 23, 2009

The Day of the Locust | Characters

The characters in The Day of the Locust (like those in Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933) make less sense as individuals than as aspects of personality dissolving in the mob-thinking of the betrayed crowd. Except for Tod, they are not really people; many are faceless, with incomplete physical description, or are portrayed mechanically as systems of look (Abe) and gesture (Fay, Homer). All are based on people West observed. A similar mechanization of speech creates a Fay who affects a movie magazine vocabulary to go with her empty sensuous gestures, a Harry whose language comes out of...