Destruction of One’s Self Identity

In Nathanael West’s novella Day of the Locust, it follows a young, bitter artist named Tod Hackett who discusses how he views the people and the experiences he has in the city of Los Angeles. Throughout the novel he paints the city in chaos named “The Burning of Los Angeles” that is constantly brought up until the end of the novella where the mob he is experiencing imitates his painting. In the mob the people do not only destroy the city they inhabit, but also destroy their self identities and a sense of their own individuality.

Tod’s perception of the city shifts back and forth from being both interested about the city itself to being disgusted by the inhabitants of the city. Throughout the novella he elaborately describes his surroundings “The edges of the trees burned with a pale violet light … outlines the tops of the ugly, humped-backed hills and they were almost beautiful.” Despite Tod describing his surrounding in a mostly negative way, he is still elaborately looking at his surroundings and even admitting it is beautiful compared to how he describes the people. For instance, in the beginning of the novella when Tod meets eyes with others in the city he describes their eyes as “filled with hatred”. Tod is disgusted by the people in Los Angeles and cannot even see the good in people compared to how he describes his surrounding.

The way Tod views people is also seen in the painting he is constantly working on throughout the novella. When Tod thinks about his painting during the mob he describes the people  “spilling into the middle foreground, came the mob carrying baseball bats and torches… No longer bored, they sang and danced joyously in the red light of the flames.” Tod paints the main focus on the people of the city by putting them in the foreground and the destruction in the background. This foreshadows the ending of not only the destructive mob that gets out of hand, but the destruction of how Tod views all of society. Tod describes the faces of the people in the painting as “innumerable sketches he had made of the people who have came to California to die”. Tod does not see individuals as people with complex characteristics and goals anymore. He views them merely as sketches in his painting that only know how to destroy the things around them. The mod has destroyed their sense of individuality and Tod only sees the mob as one, destructive thing.  

All in all, “The Burning of Los Angeles” not only foreshadows the ending of the novel, but how Tod views society at the end of the novel. The different disaster the transpires is the mob destroying their self identity. They are not people with complex feelings capable of love anymore, they are now sketches just filled with hatred and that only know how to destroy the things around them.