California

In Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust and Julian Marias' "California as Paradise" we are given a portrait of Californian (specifically Los Angeles) that breaks the myth of Los Angeles as paradise found. Instead, we get in both the novella and the essay a portrait of Los Angeles which is paradise only so long as one does not scratch the image any deeper than the surface. For, in reality, both the novella and the essay inform us that Los Angeles paradise is a myth that appears attractive to those who wish to escape the meaninglessness of their lives. In an attempt to escape the existential dilemma, the inhabitants of Los Angeles avoid death by pursuing the mythic illusions of this fabricated paradise, illusions which never become reality and ones that leave them unfilled and worse off than the empty former lives they came to Los Angeles to escape.

In West's novella we are treated to the "mob" which is already dead, and the main characters who possess some individual talents, but who still end up as dead as the mob from their unfulfillment. Homer, Faye, Tod and others may have ability and talent, but, since they are pursuing a dream that does not exist in reality, they still end up as empty, unfulfilled and dead as the walking dead "mob." Perhaps Homer Simpson best exemplifies this as he pursues the caring and loving relationship of which he knows he is capable but cannot find. When he discovers only hatred and violence in the peo

Related Essays

California History Monroy, Douglas. Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. .... (669 3 )

California and Race Present-day California has become one of the most racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse societies in the world. Eastern cities .... (2364 9 )

Affirmative Action in California In 1996, California voters struck a decisive blow against affirmative action. In passing the California Civil Rights Initiative .... (1398 6 )

The California Lottery The California Lottery is today a well-established institution, seemingly accepted throughout the state, with millions of customers each week paying money to .... (1329 5 )

Issues in California I. 2. One of the major themes in California politics and economics is water, and this has been true for some time. It contributes .... (1871 7 )

lated by those who have come from somewhere else to find a better life but end up feeling betrayed and even emptier when they discover no location holds such a utopian reality. The studio sets that Tod wanders through remind us of this as do the descriptions of the clothing worn by individuals that give an impression on the surface that has nothing to do with the reality underlying it, "Their sweaters, knickers, slacks, blue flannel jackets with brass buttons were fancy dress. The fat lady in the yachting cap was going shopping, not boating; the man in the Norfolk jacket and Tyrolean hat was returning, not from a mountain, but an insurance office; and the girl in slacks and sneaks with a bandanna around her head had just left a switchboard, not a tennis court" (West 242). The main characters have talent, like Tod's painting and Faye's beauty, but they are also pursuing illusions not reality. While West may appear to admire them more than the mob who have come to Los Angeles to die and are incapable of living, they all are incomplete individuals. Where the mob is concerned, all of them are really people who have boring, lonely or unfulfilled lives and they come to Los Angeles hoping to find meaning and escape from those lives

Category: Economics - C