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

V. In conclusion, it should be noted that the most conspicuous technological image shared in these and a number of other novels from the period is undoubtedly the automobile, replacing such technological icons of previous periods as the steam engine, the railroad, or Henry Adams's dynamo. While the three novelists discussed above do not offer a unified technological vision, the examination of the image of the automobile does offer a sense of continuity, or development, from Lewis's Babbitt

, through Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer, to Fitzgerald's Gatsby. On the one hand, the image of the automobile evolves from an innocent piece of hardware, into an alienating and potentially dangerous technology, and finally into an actual killing machine. On the other hand, association with the finest technology

—as exemplified by the superb pieces of automobiles owned by Congo Jake and Jay Gatsby

—seems to be tied to instances of individual corruption. Both of these tendencies seem to reinforce the negative aspects of the artists' judgments on technology's role in society. As evidenced by the three novels discussed above, technology has become an inescapable part of modern life, one that the writers of the 1920s could hardly ignore. In his analysis of American writing in the postwar decade, Frederick J. Hoffman puts forward what he sees as the three typical responses of 1920s poetry to the machine: In some cases the poet looked at the machine in an attitude of respectful incomprehension, trying to find in it a kind of emotionless Utopia of the spirit, but endowing it nevertheless with the language of emotion. In other cases the machine was personified

—or at least some of its functions were translated into an analogy with human nature. In still other poems the machine became a symbol, as it was for a time for Henry Adams, of the metaphysical force or forces whose energies it presumably channeled and controlled. (293-94) The novelists' response in the 1920s does not easily fit into any of these categories. The typical attitude toward the gradual assimilation of technology into mainstream culturc might best be described as a mixture of fascination and condemnation, but reactions really showed a bell curve pattern: fewer novelists seemed to unambiguously reject 59