U.S.A.: Analysis of Major Characters
"U.S.A.: Analysis of Major Characters" explores a diverse cast of individuals navigating the complexities of early 20th-century American society. Central to the narrative is Fenian O'Hara McCreary, an Irishman whose journey from a printing trade to becoming a labor organizer reflects the struggles of working-class individuals during that era. His relationship with his wife, Maisie Spencer, reveals conflicting views on radicalism and domestic life.
The narrative also examines Janey Williams, a determined stenographer who rises in the business world, and her brother Joe, a free-spirited sailor whose choices lead to tragic consequences. Other characters, like J. Ward Moorehouse, illustrate the moral ambiguities of ambition and personal relationships, while women like Eleanor Stoddard and Eveline Hutchins seek social mobility through various means, often facing grim outcomes.
Additionally, characters such as Margo Dowling, a film star, and Charley Anderson, an aviator, display the intersection of fame, fortune, and personal failure. Through these interconnected lives, the analysis provides insights into themes of ambition, love, and societal expectations, offering a multifaceted view of American life during a transformative period.
U.S.A.: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: John Dos Passos
First published: 1937 (includes The 42nd Parallel, 1930; 1919, 1932; and The Big Money, 1936)
Genre: Novel
Locale: United States
Plot: Historical
Time: 1900–1935
Fenian O'Hara McCreary, called Fainy Mac, a young Irishman who learns the printing trade from an uncle. His uncle's bankruptcy puts McCreary out of a job and makes a tramp of him. Because of his skill as a printer, McCreary is able to find jobs here and there, one with a shoddy outfit called the Truthseeker Literary Distributing Co., Inc., and he travels from place to place, usually riding on freight trains. During his travels, he falls in with members of the Industrial Workers of the World and becomes an earnest worker in that labor movement. He marries Maisie Spencer, but eventually they quarrel. He leaves his family in California to become a labor organizer in Mexico, where he lives a free and easy life.
Maisie Spencer, a shopgirl who marries Fainy McCreary. She is unable to share his radical views, and they part.
Janey Williams, a girl who wants a career in business. She becomes a stenographer and through her luck and skill is hired as secretary to J. Ward Moorehouse, a prominent man in public relations. She becomes an efficient, if sour, woman who makes a place for herself in business. Her great embarrassment is her brother Joe, a sailor who shows up periodically with presents for her.
Joe Williams, Janey Williams' brother, a young man who cannot accept discipline. He loves life at sea and becomes a merchant seaman after deserting from the Navy. Although he is in and out of scrapes all the time, he manages to qualify as a second officer during World War I. His life ends when a Senegalese hits him over the head with a bottle in a brawl over a woman in the port of St. Nazaire.
Della Williams, Joe Williams' wife. Although she is cold to her husband and claims that she is modest, she comes to believe during World War I that it is her patriotic duty to entertain men in uniform all that she can, much to her husband's chagrin.
J. Ward Moorehouse, an opportunist who becomes a leading public relations and advertising executive. He is eager to succeed in life and to have a hand in many activities. His first wife is Annabelle Strang, a wealthy and promiscuous woman; his second is Gertrude Staple, who helps him in his career. Although he succeeds as a businessman, he is unhappy in his domestic life, to which he gives all too little time because he prefers a whole series of women to his wife. A heart attack finally convinces him that the life he leads is not a fruitful one.
Annabelle Strang, the wealthy, amoral woman who becomes J. Ward Moorehouse's first wife.
Gertrude Staple, J. Ward Moorehouse's second wife, a wealthy young woman whose family and fortune help her husband become established as a public relations counselor. She becomes mentally ill and spends many years in a sanatorium.
Eleanor Stoddard, a poor girl from Chicago gifted with artistic talent. She sets herself up as an interior decorator and succeeds professionally. She becomes a hard and shallow but attractive woman. While serving as a Red Cross worker in Europe, she becomes J. Ward Moorehouse's mistress for a time. Always climbing socially, she becomes engaged to an exiled Russian nobleman in New York after World War I.
Eveline Hutchins, the daughter of a liberal clergyman, a young woman who spends her life seeking pleasure and escape from boredom. She becomes Eleanor Stoddard's erst-while business partner. Her life is a series of rather sordid love affairs, both before and after marriage. She commits suicide.
Paul Johnson, Eveline Hutchins' shy and colorless soldier husband, whom she meets in France while doing Red Cross work.
Charley Anderson, a not very promising youth who becomes famous as an aviator during World War I. He cashes in on his wartime reputation and makes a great deal of money, both as an inventor and as a trader on the stock market. His loose sexual morality and his heavy drinking lose him his wife, his jobs, his fortune, and finally his life. He dies as the result of an auto accident that occurs while he is drunk. He has a brief love affair with Eveline Hutchins.
Margo Dowling, the daughter of a ne'er-do-well drunkard. Using her beauty and talent, she makes her own way in the world and becomes a film star after many amatory adventures. For a time, she is Charley Anderson's mistress.
Agnes Mandeville, Margo Dowling's stepmother, friend, and financial adviser. She is a shrewd woman with money.
Frank Mandeville, a broken-down vaudeville actor and Agnes' husband. A lost man after the advent of motion pictures, he spends much of his time trying to seduce Margo Dowling and eventually rapes her.
Tony de Carrida, Margo Dowling's first husband, an effeminate Cuban musician who is finally reduced to being Margo's uniformed chauffeur.
Sam Margolies, a peculiar but successful producer who “discovers” Margo Dowling and makes her a film star. He becomes her second husband.
Richard Ellsworth Savage, called Dick, a bright young man and a Harvard graduate who wishes to become a poet. He meets J. Ward Moorehouse and ends up as a junior partner in Moorehouse's firm. He is Anne Elizabeth Trent's lover for a time.
Anne Elizabeth Trent, called Daughter, a wild young girl from Texas who makes the wrong friends. In Europe as a relief worker after World War I, she falls in love with Richard Ellsworth Savage and becomes pregnant by him. She goes for an airplane ride with a drunken French aviator and dies when the plane crashes.
Mary French, a bright young Vassar graduate interested in social work. She becomes a radical and a worker for various labor movements sponsored by communists. She loses her lover, Don Stevens, who returns from a visit in Moscow with a wife assigned to him by the Party.
Don Stevens, a Communist organizer who for a time is Mary French's lover. In Moscow, he marries a wife of whom the Party approves.
Benny Compton, a Jewish boy from New York who drifts into labor work and becomes a highly successful labor organizer and agitator. He turns Communist and gives all his energy to work for the Party. Sentenced to the penitentiary in Atlanta for his activities, he is released after World War I. He lives for a time with Mary French.
Webb Cruthers, a young anarchist who for a brief period is Anne Elizabeth Trent's lover.