Get The Day of the Locust from Amazon.com

The Day of the Locust Summary
Nathanael West

Everything you need to understand or teach The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West.

The Day of the Locust Summary & Study Guide
1 Student Essay
...and more

30 The Day of the Locust Lessons
20 Activities
180 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Short Essay Questions
20 Essay Questions
Pre-Made Tests and Quizzes
...and more

The Day of the Locust Summary

The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West, is set in 1930s Hollywood and follows the lives of a handful of people peripherally associated with the movie industry. Today, many critics consider it the best novel about Hollywood ever written, but it received little notice from the general public when it was released in 1939. According to Richard B. Gehman in his introduction to the 1976 reprint of the novel, many critics at the time...

(read more from the Study Guide)

Study Pack

The The Day of the Locust Study Pack contains:

The Day of the Locust Study Guide

Free Quiz

Characters

Themes

Style

Criticism

Adaptations

Topics for Further Study

Nathanael West Biographies (5)

Nathanael West

525 words, approx. 2 pages

The work of the American novelist Nathanael West (1903-1940) is strikingly original. It is characterized by its use of mythic themes in contemporary settings, terrifying symbolism, profound pessimism,... Read more

Nathanael West

1,135 words, approx. 4 pages

The writer who was to become known as Nathanael West was born Nathan Weinstein in New York City; he was the first son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His individuality early exhibited itself in his indi... Read more

Nathanael West

6,028 words, approx. 21 pages

Nathanael West wrote four novels, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin (1934), and The Day of the Locust (1939), a play, Goo... Read more

Nathanael West

5,361 words, approx. 18 pages

Early in the twentieth century it was quite common for young Jewish men, especially those whose parents had come from Poland and Russia, to change their names. In an effort to make it easier to succee... Read more

Nathanael West

6,308 words, approx. 22 pages

Biography EssayAll around him he saw hypocrisy, lack of communication, the failure of love to heal. He saw the garish, bizarre, erotic, and grotesque replacing the standard criteria for defining a wor... Read more

Essays & Analysis (1)

"Burning of Los Angeles"

925 words, approx. 4 pages

In the book The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, Tod Hackett is an artist who was scouted to come to Hollywood to learn set and costume designing. After walking around Los Angeles, Tod sees peopl... Read more

Download the Study Pack