SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE SELECT NOVELS OF JOHN DOS PASSOS

A few American writers, who have seen man and society in proper proportion, and who have had the power to realize their vision in terms of the novel, seem to have chosen two principal methods of coping with the peculiar difficulties presented by the vastness, newness, shapelessness and instability of American society and by their own inescapable self-consciousness about it. Dos Passos novels might be said to have attempted a development of this second method by putting down a series of sample borings all over the surface of America. In the novels of Dos Passos, the fate of individuals becomes ensnared inthe complex transformations of American society and politics. Indeed, the fierce of change and its oppressive influence on people bring Dos Passos to the brink of determinism: His characters seem incapable of bucking these coercive trends. The most successful characters adapt to change, allowing their principles and temperaments to be guided by the fluctuations of fashion. The present study focuses on social and political consciousness in the novels of Dos Passos