The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene design and painting. While he works he plans an important painting to be called "The Burning of Los Angeles", a portrayal of the chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city. While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred", and "had come to California to die". This undercurrent of society captures the despair of Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was more elusive than they imagine. Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premiere erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos.
In the introduction to The Day of the Locust, Richard Gehman writes that the novel was "more ambitious" than West's previous novel Miss Lonelyhearts, and "showed marked progress in West's thinking and in his approach toward maturity as a writer." Gehman calls the novel "episodic in structure, but panoramic in form".
Characters
Major characters
Tod Hackett – an Ivy League-trained artist who comes to California to find inspiration for his painting and experiences a violent re-visioning of the painting in a nearly literal sink-or-swim moment that nearly claims his life during the mob scene outside Mr. Kahn's Pleasure Dome. Tod is hired by the movie studio to paint and decorate sets. Homer Simpson – a former accountant at a hotel in Iowa who comes to California at the recommendation of his doctor to restore his health. Soft-mannered, sexually repressed, and socially ill-at-ease, Homer's almost constant inner turmoil is expressed through his huge hands which have an uncontrollable and detached nature to them. He acts as a sponsor to Faye Greener. Faye Greener – an aspiring Hollywood actress who realizes that she has the face and body for Hollywood, but cannot admit that she lacks a significant talent and struggles to compete for even extra parts.
Secondary characters
Abe Kusich – an adult dwarf bookmaker/hustler and friend of Faye and Harry Greener. Claude Estee – a successful but very cynical screenwriter. Earle Shoop – a fake California cowboy who makes a scant salary working at a western wear and novelty shop. He camps out in the hills above Los Angeles. Earle and Faye have a sexual relationship. Miguel – a Mexican-American who plays a Native American, and Earle's sidekick at the store. Miguel keeps roosters for cockfighting. Faye sleeps with Miguel to make Earle jealous. Mrs. Jenning – runs a prostitution service and pornographic film parlor. Harry Greener – Faye's father, a third-rate vaudevillian from the East who is chronically ill. When he cannot get a performing gig he peddles home-made silver polish, but it is more of an opportunity to work his clowning and schtick than to provide a meaningful income. Adore Loomis – a precocious child actor who teases Homer until he snaps. Homer's stomping Adore to death coincides with the eruption of mob violence outside the blockbuster film premiere.
West's characters are intentionally shallow, stereotyped stock characters, and "derive from all the B-grade genre films of the period" (Simon, 523). They are what Light calls "grotesques". In the first chapter of the novel, the narrative voice announces: "Yes, despite his appearance, Tod was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes."
Plot summary
Tod Hackett is the novel's protagonist. He moves from the East coast to Hollywood, California in search of inspiration for his next painting. The novel is set in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Most of the characters exist at the fringes of the Hollywood film industry, but Hollywood is merely the backdrop for Tod Hackett's revelation. Tod is employed by a Hollywood studio "to learn set and costume designing." During his spare time, Tod sketches scenes he observes on large production sets and studio back lots. The novel details Tod's observation of the filming of the Battle of Waterloo. His goal is to find inspiration for the painting he is getting ready to begin, a work titled "The Burning of Los Angeles."