The third and final book in his USA trilogy, The Big Money looks primarily at the post-World War 1 United States, as people return home and chase the almighty dollar, and the belief their happiness and success is out there, just waiting.
In practice, this means an endless series of the characters pursuing the same things, again and again, and for it to fail, again and again. They meet someone, are instantly enamored, then just as instantly disenchanted. Or they marry them, and live in misery for years. They chase jobs, money, and leave a string of broken friendships behind. Always justifying it, of course, and shocked if anyone treats them the same way.
So it's a situation where I'm reading about characters I mostly don't like, making decisions I think are stupid, for nearly 500 pages. I keep wanting one of them to figure out that what they thing is a ladder their climbing, is actually just a hamster wheel. They've all been convinced what matters is wealth and status, but they're in a system where they can't really get to it.
Even when one of them is financially successful, like Charley Anderson, it's a house of cards that comes crashing down with almost no stress. But again, it's hard for me to feel bad for him when it does, because I think he had it coming. He got some success, and immediately began stepping on people, and claiming these folks intended to step on him.
Dos Passos also continues to look at the struggle of labor, through both the Communist movement in the U.S., and just strikes in general. As always, the era of prosperity leaves some people behind, and the people who benefited are in no hurry to address that. Unless you count discrediting the strikers as un-American in the press and giving the police free reign to beat the shit out of them. Not much has changed in a hundred years, obviously.
'And Agnes would tell about the wedding and the orangeblossoms and the cake and how Margie's mother Margery died when she was born. "She gave her life for yours, never forget that."; it made Margie feel dreadful, like she wasn't her own self, when Agnes said that.'
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