"Oh, I know everything is dead." That's what Billy Waldron says to Ruth Prynne in chapter two, "Nickelodeon," of the third section of John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer." This statement embodies several techniques used by Dos Passos throughout his novel - such as an almost insignificant "throwaway" line of dialogue, a stark comment, an observation made about people that is representative of the city as a whole, an example of foreshadowing whose importance comes into play later on techniques that sometimes only linger on one scene before their payoff arrives, while others linger for several chapters before we understand their purpose. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay “Oh, I Know Everything Is Dead.” Billy says these words after Ruth tells him that she had "had terrible bad luck." We sympathize with Ruth - she has a sore throat, she feels "like the wrath of God", and when she meets her old friend Billy and he tells her that he hasn't heard from her in a good moment, she knows that he registered her "as a background number". She is not in very good health, feels tired, has been cut off from her former partner and is going through difficult times. However, rather than assuaging Ruth's bad luck or ill health, and rather than allowing this reunion between Billy and Ruth to delve into sentimental reminiscences of good times past, the author tightens the screws further after Ruth admits to Billy that she had her throat. x-rayed. “Ruth, I wish you wouldn’t take that x-ray treatment,” Billy told her. "I've heard it's very dangerous. Don't let me alarm you, my dear...but I've heard of cases of cancer being contracted this way." Ruth dismisses this as "nonsense", but later, "sitting on the downtown express train", her fears play on her. "She looked up and down the car at the faces jogging in front of her. Of all these people, one of them had to have it. FOUR OUT OF FIVE GET... She put her hand on his throat. His throat was terribly swollen..Maybe it was worse. It's something alive that grows in the flesh, eats your whole life, leaves you horrible, rotten. , we recall those uttered earlier by Billy: "Oh, I know everything is dead." Ruth's reunion with Billy and the events surrounding them illustrate the way in which Ruth is slowly, slowly crushed by her society. by Dos Passos depicts Ruth as a "human animal." She leaves the doctor's office, passed out, calls a taxi and realizes that she doesn't have much money. The taxi driver doesn't have any change. . "All right, keep the change," she says, only to discover that she only has thirty-two cents left. Then she meets Billy, who is "fatter and whiter than before" - and so,. it's implied, richer - and Billy, in turn, points out to Ruth that she herself looks "distinguished" in her fancy hat. After their separation, Ruth, made increasingly obsessed and paranoid by Billy's comments about cancer, takes a crowded train home alongside "a train full of quivering corpses". The author's emotional distance from Ruth allows us to peer into Ruth's life as if she were an animal in a zoo, and we actually witness a short vignette that is representative of Ruth's entire downfall: as if to illustrate how poor She is, a character from her past reappears in her life, is visibly well off, compliments her on the onlysymbol of wealth on his person, then tells her that her situation may be worse than she suspected, and finally he leaves. let her languish among the population of living corpses on the way back. With his emotional distance from his subject under control, Dos Passos is able to inflict on Ruth the harsh and unforgiving twists of "real life" that are the typical problems of real people more than just characters, so we can better sympathize with him. in our way than we would have done if the author had passed some kind of authorial judgment on it; and Ruth then becomes one of “us,” while we, as readers, become part of her. Dos Passos further distorts this notion by cutting to – and contrasting Ruth's story with – a scene of growing fortune for another character. From a crowded, jostling train to the confused, disorganized thoughts of a woman who might be dying and whose once-good fortune is gradually deteriorating, Dos Passos shifts in a flash to a comparatively more serene setting, a fog-covered bench on the Brooklyn Bridge. where Dutch Robertson sits, looking through a newspaper looking for a job, and where, with his fortune already dwindling, he attempts to turn it around for the better. Likewise, Ruth's dreams and Dutch's aspirations are also at odds: Ruth has a waking nightmare in which she is slowly dying of cancer while Dutch promises his girlfriend Francie that he "will find a job this week... we will have a good salary. room and get married and everything." Such juxtaposition between two scenes (their fortunes compared) and within each of these scenes (Dutch's fortunes rising, Ruth's fortunes falling) underlines the novelist's naturalistic portrait of Manhattan: Ruth's external scene world progresses from calm to calamity as do her inner thoughts, while, on the other hand, Dutch's external scene world progresses from calm to calamity as his inner thoughts. do the opposite Dos Passos' objectivity in these scenes suggests that we should take it upon ourselves to compare and contrast them, to find their similarities and differences in order to reveal two completely opposing worldviews on the part of two. people whose initial situations are almost identical, Ruth and Dutch have both been crushed and swallowed up by the great metropolis of Manhattan, but while one slips and collapses almost willingly, the other refuses to give up or die. 'collapse without fighting; Dos Passos therefore illustrates the difference between determination and depression, and how two people in similar financial and social situations can approach their respective futures from a perspective of oppression or opportunity. Most interesting is how they both value the basic necessity of money, but for different reasons: Ruth values ​​it for her health, well-being, and social status, while Dutch values ​​it solely as a a means with which he can eat, dance and take meals. take care of Francie. Furthermore, although Dutch makes a very conscious decision to improve his fortunes, he only does so within the confines of Manhattan; that is, unlike Jimmy Herf at the end of the novel, Dutch makes no effort to transcend the limitations of his environment, but instead chooses to simply stay afloat within them. It is about naturalism, about the “human animal” in its natural environment – ​​imprisoned but aspiring to be free, varied and unpredictable, and both self-destructive and self-preserving in its methods of achieving this freedom. A similar use of juxtaposition is again evident. Inthe third chapter, “Revolving Doors,” when calamity again gives way to calm, but with a different effect, to illustrate a different point. Consider the end of Anna Cohen's scene in the restaurant: "'The stools are all full.' Girls, office workers, gray-faced accountants. ""A chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee. " "A cream cheese and olive sandwich and a glass of buttermilk. " “Chicken broth.” “Chocolate soda ice cream.” People eat hurriedly without looking at each other, their eyes fixed on their plates, in their cups. Behind the people sitting on the stools, those waiting come closer. Some eat standing up . Some eat standing. Some eat standing. Some eat standing. Some eat standing. the jostling crowds entering and exiting the subway through the dull green darkness calm, quiet but important conversation between Gus McNeil and Joey O'Keef about the state of the workers' union. Gus asks Joey to give him the. details, "blowing a great cloud of smoke with his cigar and leaning back in his swivel chair", the cigar and the chair indicating both status, power, success, wealth and respect. Unlike the juxtaposition between Ruth and Dutch, which illustrates two individuals in states of environmental transition, the juxtaposition between Anna and Gus instead illustrates two individuals who find their own personal states changed, but somehow unchanged, while the state of the larger picture remains the same. same: Anna loses her job but is still inundated with customers at the restaurant, and Gus is still involved in workers' union conflicts and discussions even though civic virtue is at an all-time high. Rather than emphasizing the differences between "human animals" like Ruth and Dutch - two people in similar situations who take different approaches to overcoming those situations - the technique of following Anna's scene with Gus's emphasizes the similarities between two people in different situations, in order to illustrate the dominant anonymity of the city, Manhattan. Both characters disappear into their jobs, into the fog of business: Anna is swarmed by customers even after being fired, while Gus remains, through success and failure, enveloped in a haze of cigar smoke, completely wrapped in his belongings. If Ruth and Dutch both fear physical degradation, at least they both retain the dignity that has rotted in Anna, the fading beauty queen who loses her job because she focuses less on work and more on the makeup, and Gus, the myself. - became an entrepreneur who got lost in a difficult situation of negotiations with even more anonymous people who appear before him not as human beings, nor even as “human animals”, but only as dollar signs. These characters exist in a disproportionately capitalist environment that forces them, like the author, to distance themselves from the anonymity of those around them - but, ironically, this same capitalist environment in turn renders them anonymous within its own hierarchy ; they believe they can distinguish themselves by doing a good job, by succeeding, by getting rich, but the vain energy that this requires of them forces them to go in the opposite direction. Dos Passos therefore illustrates here an inversion of priority values: if these characters seek such material success but are ultimately crushed in the process, then they should seek the opposite. THE.