Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)
Studies - Zoltán Simon: The Image of Technology in Selected American Novels of the 1920's
yellowbrick row of stores and the redbrick station" (197; emphasis added). The image of the monotonous (as suggested by the word "endless") lines Of traffic is further impressed upon the reader when it is repeated two pages later: "Thatcher turned his face [...] to look out the window at the two endless bands of automobiles that passed along the road in from of the station" (198-99; emphasis added). Characteristically, most of the individual vehicles depicted in the novel are either taxi cabs, or fire engines, with only three exceptions to this tendency. Early in the text, Dos Passos described one of the "automobile riots" (24-25) that were common on the streets of cities in the early years of the automobiles. Later, we get a detailed description of "Dingo," Stan Emery's loose-mufflered, freshly-painted blue wreck, and his ride on the streets of New York. Finally, late in the novel, we catch a quick glimpse of the Rolls-Royce of the wealthy bootlegger, Congo Jake, alias Armand Duval. Arguably, all three automobiles are presented in negative terms, although in different ways: as potential killing machine, as ugly and noisy environmental hazard, and as status symbol purchased with dirty money, respectively. These three individual cars are counterbalanced by a multitude of unnamed and unidentified vehicles making up the traffic on the streets of New York City. Dos Passos's use of symbols of modernism in Manhattan Transfer —the skyscrapers, taxis, revolving hotel doors, fire engines — all underline his preference for a set of alternative values to the ones of consumerism and technological development. His apocalyptic vision of the city burning from within, as symbolized by the frequent appearance of fire engines, either horse-drawn or later motorized, makes it clear that Dos Passos's ideal was closer to the Jeffersonian model of agrarian America than to Franklinian urbanism. This is accentuated by the final pastoral image of a horsecart (as opposed to a motorized vehicle), "a horse and wagon, [...] a brokendown springwagon loaded with flowers, driven by a little brown man with high cheekbones" (403) coming aboard the ferry, with Jim Herf looking on it while deciding to leave town for good. Thus, the final conclusion of Dos Passos , at least in Manhattan Transfer , seems to be a rejection of the valueless modern urban existence, as presented through his various, technologically conceived, symbols. 55
