Disappointment Quotes in The Day of the Locust

Tod is obsessed with "the people who come to California to die." Although we don't understand this oft-repeated phrase at first, it quickly becomes clear that these people—whoever they are—are driven by feelings of disappointment. They come to California because there's nothing else for them, and they soon realize that California doesn't have anything for them, either. And that's never a good thing, folks.

This is disappointment of a different sort: emotional disappointment. Homer has a lot of trouble understanding his emotions, which inevitably leads to him bottling them up like soda pop. No matter how hard he shakes that bottle, however, he's unable to release the contents once they're inside.

Sound familiar? This grumpy lizard is just like the main characters of the novel, dedicated to achieving a distant goal and then ticked beyond belief when he utterly fails to reach it. Although Homer tends to laugh at the lizard when it makes a fool of itself like this, he fails to see the obvious parallel to his own life.

Faye manages to shake some of Homer's feelings of disappointment, but that's like fighting a forest fire with a Super Soaker. Interestingly, however, Homer is disappointed by the things he didn't do, which is a slightly different situation from the other main characters'.

Wow—that's a tough pill to swallow. Although Tod does not consider Homer to be "a person who comes to California to die," he seems to fit the bill in more ways than one. He moved out after his retirement. He lives a boring life, even if he doesn't mind it. And, most importantly, he's really, really sad. So where's the distinction?

Huh, you think? Although Tod is adept at looking at other people and identifying their repressed feelings of disappointment, he frequently proves himself incapable of diagnosing the same sickness in himself.

In other words, the fact that people respond positively to this dude's crazy words is more meaningful than the craziness of those words. After all, people wouldn't latch on to such blatant tomfoolery unless they were already hopeless, having endured so many disappointments in their lives that snake-oil salesmen are their only hope.

Finally, during the riot that closes the novel, Tod fully explains his theory on "the people who come to California to die." To our surprise, they're just regular people: working stiffs who slaved away their entire lives for a blissful, preferably tropical retirement. Their only mistake was landing in Los Angeles. Should have kept flying, folks.

After retirement, these people realize they've been sold a bill of goods. Silly rabbit: retirement is for the rich. Additionally, it's important to note that The Day of the Locust was written in the midst of the Great Depression, when the disparity between the haves and have-nots was higher than at any other period in American history.

Here is another cause of the widespread disappointment critiqued by The Day of the Locust. Having been raised in a modern, media-saturated environment, individuals have been conditioned to expect excitement in their lives. But, as we all know (hopefully), life isn't like the movies. It's dull at times. It's painful at others. If you can't admit that to yourself, you're going to have a rough ride.