Politics of the Individual, the Power of the Machine

In this thesis I argue that Dos Passos's politics, at least as they are manifested in his writing, do not follow any one party line, and that producing novels which suggested a strict adherence to any single political group would be anathema to the goal of his writing. Dos Passos's writing, I argue, is grounded in certain ideologies that remain constant—ideologies that were grounded in the rights of individuals who struggled against corrupt systems—and it is only his belief about which political philosophy best upholds these ideologies that changes. I begin by reevaluating and defining Dos Passos's politics within the U.S.A. trilogy so that they can be compared to his stance following the trilogy, after his much-lamented shift in political loyalties. In my first chapter I show that Dos Passos's politics are driven more by a concern for the individual worker than they are by adherence to any particular doctrine. In fact, Dos Passos distrusted institutions, especially hierarchical institutions, since he felt that they all essentially exploit individuals and force them to live within an artificial, mechanical framework. In my second chapter, I explore Dos Passos's concern with the growing mechanization of society, both the literal mechanization which is the product of modernity and innovation and the political mechanization which seeks to optimize citizens for production by weakening their human response. I argue that Dos Passos's politics are driven by a desire to help the individual worker escape the political machine while taking control over his physical machinery. In my third chapter I analyze Midcentury, the final novel of Dos Passos's published during his lifetime, as a continuation of the themes and political motivations of the U.S.A. trilogy. My intention is to show that Dos Passos's detractors who have criticized his later work as right-wing propaganda have failed to read his final novel closely; in fact the critical preoccupation with Dos Passos's "swing," I argue, has focused almost exclusively on Dos Passos's personal life rather than his writing. Critics have read Dos Passos's novels through the lens of his political affiliations and in doing so have portrayed the author as a polarizing figure, when in fact the texts themselves are politically moderate.