City of Destruction: Representation of New York City in John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer

FACULTAD de FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGÍA INGLESA Grado en Estudios Ingleses TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO City of Destruction: Representation of New York City in John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer Eduardo Sánchez Palencia Tutor: Jesús Benito Sánchez 2018 – 2019 “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the misery and the beauty in the world.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby ABSTRACT The modern city was negatively represented by the Modernists, who considered it to be the source of both the alienation and frustration that characterized the modern man. In the present study, an analysis of John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer is undertaken in order to determine if the way in which New York City is depicted in the novel falls within the Modernist perception of the modern metropolis as an abominable urban space. The analysis will focus on the various descriptions of New York City that are present in the novel, placing an emphasis on its representation both as a wasteland and as a modern Babylon, as well as on the influence that Oswald Spengler’s philosophical notions in relation to the modern city had on Dos Passos when writing the novel. Key Words: Modernism, modern city, New York City, urbanization, wasteland, Babylon. RESUMEN La representación que los Modernistas dieron de la ciudad moderna fue muy negativa, siendo ésta considerada la fuente de la alienación y de la frustración que caracterizaban al hombre moderno. En el presente estudio se realiza un análisis de Manhattan Transfer de John Dos Passos para determinar si la representación que se da de Nueva York en la novela entra dentro de la percepción Modernista de la metrópolis moderna como un espacio urbano abominable. El análisis se centrará en las diferentes descripciones de Nueva York que aparecen en la novela, haciendo hincapié en su representación como una tierra baldía y como una Babilonia moderna, así como en la influencia que las ideas filosóficas de Oswald Spengler en relación con la ciudad moderna tuvieron sobre Dos Passos a la hora de escribir la novela. Palabras clave: Modernismo, ciudad moderna, Nueva York, urbanización, tierra baldía, Babilonia. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 2. The Perception of the Metropolis in Modernism........................................................ 3 3. Analysis .................................................................................................................... 7 3.1. Representation of New York City in Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer ............... 7 3.2. Recreation of the Myth of Babylon in the Novel ............................................... 11 3.3. Recreation of the Wasteland Myth in the Novel ................................................ 17 3.4. Influence of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West on Dos Passos ........... 21 4. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 25 Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 27 1 1. Introduction The modern city played a major role in Modernism, being criticized and negatively represented by numerous Modernist authors and philosophers. It was perceived by the Modernists as a reflection of both the materialism and the mechanization that marked the twentieth century. According to Lehan, “as the city became more materialistic, it engendered a hostility in the literary imagination” (5). The modern metropolis was considered to be a mechanical wasteland that caused the sorrow of the modern man by separating him from the natural world. Several philosophers and literary authors, such as Oswald Spengler, T. S. Eliot, and John Dos Passos, blamed the modern city for the alienation and hopelessness that characterized the modern man. John Dos Passos’ novel Manhattan Transfer, published in 1925, revolves around the lives of a large number of characters who vainly attempt to achieve success in New York City in the early decades of the twentieth century. The fate of the characters is determined by the modern city, the “City of Destruction” (Dos Passos 327), which can be considered the antagonist of the novel, since it prevents them from fulfilling their aspirations and leads many of them to death. The novel is replete with extensive descriptions of New York City, which is represented as an abominable machine whose dehumanized and soiled appearance repulses its inhabitants. Dos Passos, who “spent his whole career depicting an urban America that was moving toward decline” (Lehan 241), therefore wrote Manhattan Transfer with the purpose of criticizing the modern metropolis, which, for him, was a symbol of the materialism and ambition that dominated the twentieth-century American society. The aim of this study is to analyse the way in which New York City is represented in Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer in order to demonstrate that the novel follows the Modernist tradition of portraying the modern city as a monstrous urban space, source of the alienation, frustration, and unhappiness of the modern man. The analysis will focus on the various depictions of New York City that appear in the novel, as well as on the use Dos Passos makes of both the Wasteland myth and the myth of 8 The novel contains numerous depictions of building sites, construction machinery, and skyscrapers being erected. New York City is continuously being developed and modified with the purpose of increasing its size and functionality. The transformation of the metropolis has a negative impact on its inhabitants, who remember with nostalgia the times when the land was covered with vegetation instead of with skyscrapers: The leaden twilight weighs on the dry limbs of an old man walking towards Broadway. Round the Nedick’s stand at the corner something clicks in his eyes. Broken doll in the ranks of varnished articulated dolls he plods up with dropping head into the seethe and throb into the furnace of beaded lettercut ligh. ‘I remember when it was all meadows,’ he grumbles to the little boy (Dos Passos 227). The old man laments the fact that what used to be a marvellous natural land has been turned into Broadway, a dreadful heated oven in which he and his grandson are going to be baked. Since people were cheerful living in the wilderness, the massive expansion and refurbishment of the metropolis is thus the cause of their sorrow. New York City is also represented in Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer as a hideous modern metropolis that makes its inhabitants feel nothing but repulsion. The city is compared in the novel to a landfill, since its streets are filthy and full of dust, its air is polluted by the exhausted fumes from vehicles, and its waters are cloudy and strewn with rubbish: “Three gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds, spoiled cabbage heads that heave between the splintered plank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as the ferry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gulps the broken water, slides, settles slowly into the slip” (Dos Passos 15). New York City is also described in the novel as a dreary and tedious metropolis where all the buildings look the same: “On the way back to the station the grimy brick and brownstone blocks dragged past monotonously like the days of his life” (Dos Passos 235). The wearisome aesthetics of New York City negatively affect the emotional state of the characters, who dream of a colourful city: “Imagine this city when all the buildings instead of bein dirty gray were ornamented with vivid colors […] If there was a little color in the town all this hardshell 9 inhibited life’d break down” (Dos Passos 234). New York City is thus represented in the novel as a modern city whose inhabitants are grieved by its hideousness. Another depiction of New York City in Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer is that of a living monster whose only purpose is to devour its inhabitants. The metropolis seems to come to life at certain moments in the novel: “Seeping in red twilight out of the Gulf Stream fog, throbbing brassthroat that howls through the stiff-fingered streets, prying open glazed eyes of skyscrapers, splashing red lead on the girdered thighs of the five bridges, teasing caterwauling tugboats into heat under the toppling smoketrees of the harbor” (Dos Passos 332). The city is described as if it were a gargantuan living creature with anthropomorphic features. It is a malevolent urban machine that perpetually monitors and controls the characters and also torments them with its grotesque shrieks. The characters in the novel are nothing but food about to be swallowed by the monstrous metropolis: “Gates fold upwards, feet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse, crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press” (Dos Passos 15). New York City is thus represented as an evil mechanical beast in Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer. The metropolis is also compared in Dos Passos’ novel to a prison from which the characters are not able to escape. The characters in the novel emigrate to New York City with the purpose of achieving happiness and success but in the end they realize that the city is not going to make things easy for them. It is then that they start feeling as if they were prisoners from a modern metropolis where their dreams are never going to come true: “The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage” (Dos Passos 202). New York City makes the characters feel frustrated and helpless to such an extent that all of them dream of escaping from it: “I’m going to light out of it all […] and go to Mexico and make my fortune … I’m losing all the best part of my life rotting in New York” (Dos Passos 165). Nevertheless, Jimmy Herf is the only character who is able to liberate himself from the chains of the city. The rest of the characters continue living their miserable and meaningless lives in a modern metropolis 10 where they are nothing but little birds trapped in a cage made of steel. Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer thus depicts New York City as a prison in which the characters are incarcerated. 11 3.2. Recreation of the Myth of Babylon in the Novel John Dos Passos’ novel Manhattan Transfer recreates the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel by representing New York City as a modern Babylon where the principles that once formed the basis of American society have radically changed. David L. Vanderwerken writes that “[t]he myth’s attractiveness for Dos Passos lies in the way it lends itself to his special understanding of American experience. Essentially, the myth provides him a convenient framework for drawing historical parallels” (254). According to the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (1776), “[l]ife, [l]iberty and the pursuit of [h]appiness” are the major “unalienable [r]ights” that men have been granted by God. Thus, the Founding Fathers’ ideal when releasing the United States from the yoke of the Kingdom of Great Britain was to create a nation where the individuals could be free and happy. Nevertheless, Manhattan Transfer depicts New York as a modern metropolis where the morals of society have been rotten by its inhabitants’ obsession with money and success. Instead of seeking happiness, the characters in the novel are so desperate to be prosperous and become rich that they have fallen into a spiral of depravity and misery. For Dos Passos, “the original idea and the original promise of America have been diverted into an empty and superficial materialism” (Vanderwerken 264). While gargantuan skyscrapers that recreate the Tower of Babel are erected in an ambitious attempt to make New York the greatest metropolis in the world, a large number of apocalyptic plagues threaten to submerge the city into chaos. Therefore, Dos Passos’ purpose when reproducing the myth of Babylon in his novel is to criticize the corruption of modern American society. According to The Bible, the construction of the Tower of Babel dates back to ancient times when “the whole world had one language and a common speech” (New International Version, Genesis. 11-1). In their migration to the Orient, men found a flatland in the region of Mesopotamia where they decided to build a settlement that eventually became the city of Babylon. Their ambition was so great that they aspired to erect a colossal tower “that [reached] to the heavens” in order to “make a name” for themselves (Genesis. 11-4). When God descended from Heaven to witness the raising of the tower, He realized that men’s strong desire for success would eventually corrupt their souls. Therefore, God decided to “confuse their language, so that they [would] not 12 understand each other” (Genesis. 11-7) and He “scattered them from [Babylon] over all the earth” (Genesis. 11-8) in order to make men unable to continue building the tower and the city. The majority of characters in Manhattan Transfer are people who emigrate to New York in order to start a new life just like the men who migrated to the East and found the city of Babylon in the Book of Genesis. The characters in the novel come from different parts of the world but all of them share the same objective: achieving success. Consequently, New York City is the ideal place to fulfil those dreams as it is one of the largest metropolis in the world and “if a man’s a success in New York, he’s a success” (Dos Passos 114). The novel is filled with statements made by different characters which show how all of them share the same hopes and aspirations. For example, Emile is a French young man who moves to New York City because he is “through with [the] dog’s life” he is living and he believes that “[in] America a fellow can get ahead” (Dos Passos 30). The characters’ ambition increases throughout the novel and what began as an innocent dream turns into an obsession that tortures their minds. An instance of this is a thought that haunts Jimmy when he is arguing with Ellie about whether he should look for a job at an editorial company: “In the empty chamber of his brain a doublefaced word clinked like a coin: Success Failure, Success Failure” (Dos Passos 274). As a consequence of this fixation with money and prosperity, the characters cease to worry about their moral principles and their relationships with other people and they become miserable and deranged beings. For Dos Passos, “the behaviour of modern Americans […] would disappoint [the] founding fathers” (Vanderwerken 267). Jimmy is the only character who is aware of how society is falling apart and he criticizes the New Yorkers’ ambition throughout the novel: “Why the hell does everybody want to succeed? I’d like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That’s the only sublime thing” (Dos Passos 163). Characters in Manhattan Transfer therefore symbolize the men who migrate to the Orient and whose enormous ambition leads them to build the Tower of Babel. The novel compares New York City and Babylon in the sense that the former is fraught with mammoth skyscrapers similar to the Tower of Babel. In one of his letters, 13 Dos Passos tells Germaine Lucas-Championnière that New York is identical to “Nineveh and Babylon, [to] Ur of the Chaldees, [to] the immense cities which look like basilisk behind the horizon in ancient Jewish tales, where the temples rose as high as mountains and people ran trembling through dirty little alleys to the constant noise of whips with hilts of gold” (qtd. in Ludington, 200-201). Throughout the novel there is a large number of descriptions of gigantic skyscrapers that invade the city and fascinate and even terrorise the characters. As the skyscrapers are the fruit of the New Yorkers’ aspirations to make New York City the greatest metropolis in the world, they are the direct materialization of the hunger for power and success that characterize the modern man. In the chapter called “Skyscraper,” Jimmy Herf is wandering through the city streets when he has a vision of a particular skyscraper that has a strange influence on him: Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit … right to life liberty and … […] All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears. Faces of Follies girls, glorified by Ziegfeld, smile and beckon to him from the windows. Ellie in a gold dress, made of thin gold foil absolutely lifelike beckoning from every window. And he walks around blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door [...] Young man to save your sanity you’ve got to do one of two things […] one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what’s the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind reeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words (Dos Passos 327). Jimmy Herf is aware of the way in which the principles of happiness and liberty are no longer the pillars of American society and he “realizes that America has built its own Tower of Babel when he has his vision of the skyscraper” (Vanderwerken 264). In his vision, Jimmy imagines the skyscraper as a modern Tower of Babel full of prostitutes. Ellie in particular symbolizes the Whore of Babylon, who, according to The Bible, is the “mother of harlots” and the originator of the vices and sins of men (Revelation. 17). Jimmy’s vision thus illustrates that “he is bewildered, disordered, and confused” 14 because “no relationship exists between the ‘old words’ 1 and this towering symbol of modern America” (Vanderwerken 265). Manhattan Transfer thus represents New York City as a modern Babylon overrun by skyscrapers that, just as the Tower of Babel, are the objectification of men’s desire for success. The novel recreates the destruction of Babylon by foretelling the annihilation of New York City as a consequence of the ambition of men. It is told in The Bible that Babylon was destroyed by God because He was furious with men as their hunger for power had perverted their souls and they were living a sinful and immoral life: “Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her” (Revelation. 18- 8). Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer contains numerous references to the Apocalypse suggesting that New York is doomed to an inevitable devastation. Arrington writes that Dos Passos compares New York City to Babylon and Nineveh, “cities corrupted by their own wealth and success” and that he is “warning New York, and America of a similar fate” (438). The “apocalyptic and prophetic tone [that] informs the novel” (Vanderwerken 253) is discernible in the chapter “The Burthen of Nineveh” when a tramp predicts the way in which New York will be annihilated by God: Juss set here a minute an look at her Gabriel … Look at the old bitch if you’ll pardon the expression. Earthquake insurance, gosh they need it dont they? Do you know how long God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabbotah will take to destroy New York City an Brooklyn an the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven seconds” (Dos Passos 340). The boys who are told the tramp’s divination believe that they are just listening to the hallucinations of a crazy old man. Nevertheless, it can be seen throughout the novel that New York City is being ravaged by both fire and sickness in the same way as Babylon, which was “consumed by fire” and devastated by “plagues” (Revelation. 18-8). The city is experiencing a wave of arson attacks. The novel includes numerous descriptions of 1 The principles of “[l]ife, [l]iberty and the pursuit of [h]appiness” that appear in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (1776). 15 burning buildings, fire engines crossing the streets at full speed, and firebugs being arrested by the police: A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him, shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house […] Two policemen were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables […] ‘They caught the firebug’ (Dos Passos 110). At the end of the novel, Ellie witnesses how Anna, a girl who works at a clothing boutique, bursts into fire: Red hands clutch suddenly out of the tulle, she cant fight off the red tulle all around her biting into her, coiled about her head. The skylight’s blackened with swirling smoke. The room’s full of smoke and screaming. Anna is on her feet whirling round fighting with her hands the burning tulle around her (Dos Passos 355). A high proportion of New Yorkers are dying from different types of diseases that are spreading throughout the city. It is said in the novel that “fiftyfive percent of the people you meet on the street have a syphilitic taint” (Dos Passos 260) and it is also said that a large number of people have cancer: Cancer he said. She looked up and down the car at the joggling faces opposite her. Of all those people one of them must have it […] FOUR OUT OF EVERY FIVE … A trainload of jiggling corpses, nodding and swaying as the express roared shrilly towards Ninetysixth Street (Dos Passos 266). Thus, the novel depicts New York City as an apocalyptic metropolis that, just like Babylon, is about to be annihilated by God because of its inhabitants’ undeterred ambition. Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer can be regarded as a modern jeremiad because the novel laments the immorality and corruption of American society and prophesises that New York City is condemned to destruction. The jeremiads were sermons used by Puritans in New England during the sixtieth and seventeenth centuries to convince people that the depravity of their souls had provoked the wrath of God and that the only 16 way to prevent the downfall of society was to behave morally. “Taking their texts from Jeremiah and Isaiah, these orations followed – and reinscribed – a rhetorical formula that included recalling the courage and piety of the founders, lamenting recent and present ills, and crying out for a return to the original conduct and zeal” (Elliott 257). Over the course of centuries, jeremiads continued to be composed in the form not only of sermons, but also of “other texts that rehearse the familiar tropes of the formula” (Elliott 257). Manhattan Transfer reads as a modern jeremiad that reflects Dos Passos’ preoccupation with the decadence of American society. Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer thus creates an analogy between the biblical Babylon and New York City with the purpose of criticizing modern society. Babylon was founded by men who wanted to become famous and for that reason they decided to erect the Tower of Babel, an immense building that would allow them to reach God Himself. In the same way, New York is inhabited by people whose only desire is to be successful and the city is replete with gigantic skyscrapers that are a symbol of the power and wealth of the metropolis. Just like God devastated Babylon by sending plagues and setting the city on fire, Dos Passos suggests that New York City will be annihilated in the same way. 17 3.3. Recreation of the Wasteland Myth in the Novel John Dos Passos recreates the Wasteland myth in Manhattan Transfer in order to illustrate his Modernist vision of the American city as a destroyed and barren land. In the novel, John Dos Passos represents the modern American metropolis as “a correlative of the mythical Waste Land” in order to symbolize “the chaos, desolation and hopelessness” (Gualberto 215-216) that the Modernists saw in life after the Great War. New York City is depicted in the novel as a modern wasteland inhabited by frustrated and miserable people who do not want to have children. The female characters are negatively affected by the barrenness of the city to such an extent that when some of them become pregnant, they resort to abortion instead of having their babies. The novel creates a contrast between New York City and Europe, the latter being depicted as a natural and fertile land where the characters are cheerful and want to have children. T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, in which the world is represented as a chaotic and sterile land after the First World War, had a major influence on Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer. The novel is replete with references to the poem. Both works are similar in several aspects, such as the fire and water symbolism and the descriptions of the wasteland and the city. Therefore, Dos Passos makes use of the Wasteland myth to epitomize his negative vision of the modern American metropolis. The Wasteland is a myth of Celtic origin that associates the barrenness of a territory either with a jinx or with its ruler’s health problems. During the Middle Ages, the myth was used in a large number of Arthurian romances. The most relevant one is Chrétiene de Troyes’ Perceval, the Story of the Grail, in which a land that is infertile because its king has been wounded in the genitals needs to be saved by the knight Perceval (Lacy 506). The myth had a great influence on Modern literature and it was used by numerous authors to represent their hopeless vision of the world as a wasteland after the First World War. One of the most illustrative examples is T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, which “appropriates the wasteland as a metaphor applicable to the city, the modern world, and the human condition” (Lacy 506). Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer represents New York City as a barren land where people do not want to have children. The female characters in the novel are 24 25 4. Conclusion The analysis of John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer clarifies that, like many other works written by Modernist authors and philosophers, the novel represents the modern city in a negative way. As seen throughout this essay, Dos Passos’ novel contains a large number of descriptions of New York City, this being portrayed as a deadly machine, as a prison, and even as a living monster. The metropolis is depicted as a hostile urban space that causes the despair of its inhabitants, who are unable to give meaning to their lives. Dos Passos makes use of myths in order to establish a connection between the modern metropolis and the legendary cities that are portrayed in them. Dos Passos’ purpose when comparing New York City to the Biblical city of Babylon is to illustrate that history is repeating itself, since the ambition of the modern man has doomed the modern metropolis to destruction. By the same token, Dos Passos relates New York City to the Arthurian wasteland in order to demonstrate that the modern city is the cause of the modern man’s misfortunes and sorrows. It is clear that Dos Passos was influenced by Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West when writing Manhattan Transfer, since the novel reflects a large number of the philosopher’s views. It is therefore observable that Dos Passos shared the predominant perception that the Modernists had of the modern city. 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