The Day of the Locust | Themes
In this world, like that of Miss Lonelyhearts, only violence, West shows, can awaken the lost crowd from its comforting delusions. The people flee their dream-drugged incapacity through cockfights, pugnacity, hatred, and the final riot and siren. This result of false dreams will bring about Hollywood's fall (and that of the America and the civilization it misleads); meanwhile, it distorts the present characters and landscape. Meanwhile, the true dream, Tod's painting of "The Burning of Los Angeles," and the whole endeavor of art itself cannot communicate, prevent, modify, or heal...
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