Themes
All of the characters are outcasts who have come to Hollywood in search of a fulfillment of some dream or wish: "The importance of the wish in West's work was first noted by W. H. Auden, who declared (in one of the interludes in The Dyer's Hand) that West's novels were essentially "parables about a Kingdom of Hell whose ruler is not so much a Father of Lies as a Father of Wishes"." In this respect, Light suggests that Day falls in with a general project that pervades West's fiction: namely, exposing certain hopeful narratives that pervade modern American culture as frauds.
As some critics point out, West's novel was a radical challenge to modernist literature. Modernists set themselves up in opposition to mass culture; West depicts it and makes it an integral part of the novel.
Furthermore, West's usage of grotesque imagery, and situations, firmly establishes this novel as a work of Juvenalian satire. His fierce critique of Hollywood, and the mentality of the masses, depicts an America that is both sick with vanity, while also harboring a malignant sense of perversity.
Read more about this topic: The Day Of The Locust
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)