U.S.A. by John Dos Passos

U.S.A. by John Dos Passos

THE BIG MONEY- The Bitter Drink

This chapter of the book is dedicated to a sad story of one man’s life, Veblen. It talks about a hard working family and a son who wanted more than what the family created or wanted in life. A great rebellion, which resulted in an educated man, who was known by many in the educated word. To a farmer he was a son and a lazy one at that. To the women of his time, he was unstoppable and a heartbreaker.

The story is about development and sets out the hard working father and a quick fix son who wanted less effort for maximum result. This is a great example of how one’s life can change due to the choices we make. Veblen was an extravert who wanted new things and to develop minds and machines. Like many great man who devote themselves to their work he had a vision. He died alone and wanted no record of his life due to this vision. For all his great ideas he had a sad life full of disappointments. Conclusively, this chapter is dedicated to people who have a chance to do something different and live a happy life, or, do something one wants and sacrifice everything for it, even happiness.

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead (1949)

“no man takes what’s mine”

It is a story of a complicated preachment on the rights of the individual in society and also upon the privilege of a lady to change her mind.
Starting out to tell the story of an architect (Howard Roark) who insists upon fashioning buildings as he wishes or not at all, the plot very soon involves him with an unusually idealistic girl, a power-mad newspaper publisher, a vicious critic and a weak, exhausted old friend.
It is a tale of an architect who believes in his own idea, principal, design and philosophy, who we may call a stubborn or arrogant.
He is unbelievably patient and tolerant, even his critics called him “an mature arrogant” because he is a type of professional who doesn’t believe in the past and only looks and think forward, also he believes that “a building got its integrity like a man” also “form of the building should follow its functionality”.
Others have rights, including the right to protect themselves against cheats and dishonest people. The man who puts his name to the designs for the building in this picture is a dishonest man. Furthermore our hero, in full awareness, is an accessory to his dishonesty. If all were excused such transgressions, then society would indeed be in danger!

All that Is Solid Melts into Air

All that Is Solid Melts into Air

“the idea of an affinity between the cultural ideal of self-development and the real social movement toward economic development.”
This was the essence of Faust before he died at the age of 83. This huge craving for development as the book explains has been in many forms beginning from being a good character to an evil one. As Marx called “the powers of the underworld”, Faust’s ideas went hand in hand by dangerous roads. I would like to explore this need for evil.
Faust influenced the philosophy behind intellectual, moral, economical and social ideas. Yet these ideas came at a cost, where people did not know the outcome of these developments. Not every person is willing to accept change and will fight till the last breath to defend it. It’s the unknown, the great dark, deep hole where no one can see the light. It’s this unknown that made Faust’s “relationship with the devil”. Faust was a free thinker where he was not afraid to explore the unknown, however, not everyone thinks like this. It’s because of this leap of faith and ambition Faust is known as “The Developer”. Ones who like tradition would call Faust an evil person for thinking out of the box, but, if we did not have people like Faust how will the human race improve and land on the moon?

Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall

“The problem of architecture as I see it is the problem of all art- the elimination of the human elements from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is build to house machines, not men. “
As an architectural student who has worked on endless life projects and designed many structures in education, I find the above quote to be extremely difficult to agree with. The reason for this is that, for a designer to state such a strong thought on the need for design and what it is designed for is extremely suppressing. We as designers, design to accommodate the comfortable limits of space for its occupier; it being humans, “monkey” or machines.
I believe this character in the book is a depressed designer and wants the easy way out. Any designer knows, designing for people are hard and designing a house is the hardest. This is only due to the fact that clients talk back and question ones design where machines do not. It is because of this I do not like this idea of factories being the most beautiful designed structures true. Anyone can design a factory due to its required space for it to be functional. People who are not architects have been designing houses for centuries, how hard can it be to put a roof for machines?

Howl

Howl by Allen Ginsberg

The poem “Howl” is looking at a few different things, such as, Ginsberg’s good old days and psychopathic friends, alcoholics and the rest. Ginsberg also mentions friend from psychiatric hospital whom Ginsberg is trying to illustrate as a victim, or, innocent or what so ever he means by using the world “lamb”.
As I understand Ginsberg is an addict and a left winger who lives in the heart of the capitalist world which makes the life far more difficult for him to live.
Obviously as an addict he should have had lots of terrible trips and hallucinations in which he imaging the facade of a hotel as a beast that eat his friends.
So far I believe none of these are strange or new to the world we live in. We all have memories of the pleasant past, good friends that we have missed and so on. However, the world we live in never been fair or nice to every one of us especially if we have a different point of view on things like the political systems or ideology in which makes the things far difficult to digest.
My final conclusion is that; Ginsberg is talking about the pains of life that people have been experiencing since the beginning of man’s existence in his poems stretching from addictions to betrayals, pain to non satisfying sacrifices. Ultimately, Ginsberg is describing life from his eyes.