U.S.A. by John Dos Passos
"U.S.A." by John Dos Passos is a multifaceted narrative that explores the lives of various characters in the context of early 20th-century America, particularly during and after World War I. The story intertwines personal struggles with broader social and political themes, reflecting the complexities of American life in a rapidly changing society. Characters like Mac McCreary and Janey Williams navigate their ambitions and disappointments against a backdrop of war, economic upheaval, and shifting cultural dynamics.
The novel delves into the interplay between individual aspirations and collective movements, showcasing a diverse array of experiences, from radical political activism to the pursuit of personal happiness. Through the lives of characters such as Benny Compton, a Jewish immigrant who faces imprisonment for his political beliefs, and Margo Dowling, a young actress seeking success in Hollywood, Dos Passos paints a vivid picture of the American landscape during the Great Depression.
The narrative structure employs a blend of fictional biography and historical events, offering readers a nuanced understanding of the era's social tensions and the disillusionment that marked the post-war period. "U.S.A." stands as a significant work that captures the essence of American identity, illustrating the contrasts between wealth and poverty, aspiration and despair, and the evolving nature of society.
U.S.A. by John Dos Passos
First published: 1930–1936; includes The 42nd Parallel, 1930; 1919, 1932; The Big Money, 1936
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Historical
Time of plot: 1900–1935
Locale: United States
Principal Characters
Fainy “Mac” McCreary , a labor organizerJaney Williams , a private secretaryJoe Williams , her brotherJ. Ward Moorehouse , a public relations executiveEleanor Stoddard , an interior decoratorCharley Anderson , an airplane manufacturerRichard Ellsworth Savage , Moorehouse’s assistantEveline Hutchins , Eleanor Stoddard’s partnerAnne Elizabeth “Daughter” Trent , a relief workerBen Compton , a radicalMary French , a labor workerMargo Dowling , a film star
The Story
The Spanish-American War is over. Politicians with mustaches say that America is now ready to lead the world. Mac McCreary is a printer for a fly-by-night publisher in Chicago. Later he works his way to the West Coast, where he gets work as a printer in Sacramento and marries Maisie Spencer, who can never understand his radical views. They quarrel, and he leaves for Mexico to work in the revolutionary movement there.
Janey Williams, who has grown up in Washington, DC, becomes a stenographer. She is always ashamed when her sailor brother, Joe, appears in her life, and she is even more ashamed of him after she becomes secretary to J. Ward Moorehouse. Of all Moorehouse’s female acquaintances, she is the only one who never becomes his mistress. Moorehouse’s boyish manner and blue eyes are the secrets of his success. They attract Annabelle Strang, a wealthy nymphomaniac whom he marries and later divorces. Gertrude Staple, his second wife, helps to make him a prominent public relations expert. His shrewdness makes him an ideal man for government service in France during World War I. After the war, he becomes one of the leading advertising executives in the United States.
Eleanor Stoddard hates the sordid environment of her childhood, and her delicate, arty tastes lead her naturally into partnership with Eveline Hutchins in the decorating business and eventually to New York and acquaintanceship with J. Ward Moorehouse. In Europe with the Red Cross during the war, she lives with Moorehouse. Back in New York in the 1920s, she uses her connections in fashion and becomes engaged to a member of the Russian nobility.
Charley Anderson, who had been an aviator in the war, becomes a wealthy airplane manufacturer thanks to a successful invention and astute opportunism. He marries a woman who has little sympathy for his interest in mechanics. In Florida, after a plane crash, he meets Margo Dowling, a young woman actor. Anderson’s series of drunken escapades ends in a grade-crossing accident.
Joe Williams, a sailor, meets Della in Norfolk, and she urges him to give up seafaring and settle down. Unable to hold a job, he ships out again and almost loses his life when the ship he is on is sunk by a German submarine. When Joe gets his third mate’s license, he and Della are married. Over the course of time he suffers illness in the East Indies, is arrested in New York for not carrying a draft card, and is torpedoed once more off the coast of Spain. Della is unfaithful to him. Treated coldly the few times he looks up his sister Janey, he ships for Europe once more. One night in St. Nazaire he attacks a huge Senegalese who is dancing with a girl he knows. His skull is crushed when he is hit over the head with a bottle.
Teachers encourage Dick Savage in his literary talents. During his teens, he works at a summer hotel, and there he sleeps with a minister’s wife who shares his taste in poetry. A government official pays Dick’s way through Harvard, where Dick cultivates his aestheticism and mild snobbery before he joins the Norton-Harjes ambulance service and goes to Europe. There, some of his letters about the war come to the attention of censorship officials, and he is shipped back to the United States. His former sponsor gets him an officer’s commission, and he returns to France. In Italy, he meets a relief worker named Anne Elizabeth Trent, who is his mistress for a time. When he returns to the United States, he becomes an idea man for Moorehouse’s advertising agency.
Eveline Hutchins, who has a small artistic talent, becomes Eleanor Stoddard’s partner in a decorating establishment in New York. All her life she has tried to escape from boredom through sensation. Beginning with the Mexican artist who was her first lover, she has had a succession of affairs. In France, where she is Eleanor’s assistant in the Red Cross, she marries a shy young soldier named Paul Johnson. Later, she has a brief affair with Charley Anderson. Dissatisfied, she decides at last that life is too dull to be endured, and she dies from an overdose of sleeping pills.
Anne Elizabeth Trent, known as Daughter, is the child of moderately wealthy Texans. In New York, she meets Webb Cruthers, a young anarchist. One day, seeing a police officer kick a woman picketer in the face, Daughter attacks the officer with her fists. Her night in jail disturbs her father so much that he makes her return to Texas, where she works in Red Cross canteens. Later she goes overseas, meets Dick Savage, becomes pregnant by him, and learns that he has no intention of marrying her. In Paris, she goes on a drunken spree with a French aviator and dies with him in a plane crash.
Benny Compton is the son of Jewish immigrants. After six months in jail for making radical speeches, he works his way West through Canada. In Seattle, he and other agitators are beaten by deputies. Benny returns to the East, where one day police break up a meeting where he is speaking. On his twenty-third birthday, Benny goes to Atlanta to begin serving a ten-year sentence. Released after the war, he lives for a time with Mary French, who is also politically active.
Mary French spent her childhood in Trinidad, where her father, a physician, did charity work among the native miners. Mary, planning to become a social worker, spends her summers at Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago. She goes to Washington as secretary to a union official and later works as a union organizer in New York City. There she takes care of Ben Compton after his release from prison in Atlanta. While working with the Sacco-Vanzetti Committee, Mary falls in love with Don Stevens, a fellow Communist Party member. After he is summoned to Moscow with a group of party leaders, Stevens returns to New York with a wife assigned to him by the party. Mary goes back to her committee work for laboring men’s relief.
Margo Dowling has grown up in a run-down house in Rockaway, Long Island, with her drunken father and Agnes, her father’s mistress. At last, Agnes leaves her lover and takes Margo with her. In New York, Agnes becomes the common-law wife of an actor named Frank Mandeville. One day, while drunk, Mandeville rapes Margo. Margo then runs off to Cuba with Tony, an effeminate Cuban guitar player whom she later deserts. She is a cheerful companion for Charley Anderson, who gives her a check for five thousand dollars on his deathbed. In Hollywood, she meets Sam Margolies, a successful producer, who makes a star of her.
Jobless and hungry, a young hitchhiker stands by the roadside. Overhead drones a plane in which people with big money ride the skyways. Below, the hitchhiker, with empty belly, holds his thumb up as cars speed by. The haves and the have-nots—this is America in the Depression-era 1930s.
Bibliography
Casey, Janet Galligani. Dos Passos and the Ideology of the Feminine. New York: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.
Hook, Andrew, comp. Dos Passos: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Print.
Landsberg, Melvin. Dos Passos’ Path to U.S.A.: A Political Biography, 1912–1936. Boulder: Associated UP, 1972. Print.
Ludington, Townsend. John Dos Passos: A Twentieth Century Odyssey. Rev. ed. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998. Print.
McGlamery, Tom. Protest and the Body in Melville, Dos Passos, and Hurston. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Moglen, Seth. Mourning Modernity: Literary Modernism and the Injuries of American Capitalism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. Print.
Nanney, Lisa. John Dos Passos Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998. Print.
Pizer, Donald. Dos Passos’ U.S.A.: A Critical Study. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1988. Print.
Stratton, Matthew. "Start Spreading the News: Irony, Public Opinion, and the Aesthetic Politics of U.S.A." Twentieth Century Literature 54.4 (2008): 419–47. Print.
Strychacz, Thomas. “Reading John Dos Passos Reading Mass Culture in U.S.A.” Modernism, Mass Culture, and Professionalism. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Dos Passos: Artist as American. Austin: U of Texas P, 1979. Print.
Wainwright, Michael. "Figuring the Financier: Dos Passos and Pierpontifex Maximus." Papers on Language and Literature 46.1 (2010): 79–92. Print.