Structural and artistic unity in the novels of Nathanael West.

Abstract

This study shows how Nathanael West achieved structural and artistic unity in his four novels: The Dream Life of Balso Snell, Miss Lonely hearts, A Cool Million, and The Day of the Locust. The fictional devices West uses to help structure his novels are many and varied. The first is antithetical images, particularly appearance-reality, clothing-nakedness, sex-violence, human-animal, flesh-spirit, and performer-audience. The dream and journey motifs are two more favorites for West.• In attempting to portray the sterility and decadence of man, West utilizes devices which highlight this concept: sick and sordid sex, sterile phallic symbols, wasteland settings, bizarreness and grotesqueness, disillusion and despair, pain, cruelty, and violence. Connected with this idea of perversity is West's use of religious inversion. Probably the most obvious technique that West employs in his"novels is surrealism, both in his images and in his style. Finally, West uses the microcosmic method; in each of his novels, there is one pivotal scene that binds, culminates, and reflects the themes and techniques of the entire novel. These, then, are the main thematic and unifying devices West employs, and they underscore and illuminate the structure and meaning of his four novels. West's novels are a study of human nature and the myths which makes its existence bearable. The novels are panoramic in scope and kaleidoscopic in view.