"Oh, I know, it's all dead." So says Billy Waldron to Ruth Prynne in chapter two, "Nickelodeon," of the third section of John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer." This statement embodies several techniques that Dos Passos uses in his novel - such as an almost meaningless "throwaway" line of dialogue, a dark commentary, an observation made about people that is representative of the city as a whole, an example of foreshadowing the whose importance comes into play later on techniques that sometimes last only one scene before their reward arrives, while others last over the span of several chapters before we understand their purpose. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original “Oh, I know, it's all dead” essay. Billy utters these words after Ruth tells him that he "has had a terrible run of bad luck." We're sympathetic to Ruth: she has a sore throat, feels "like it's the wrath of God," and then when she runs into her old friend Billy and he tells her he hasn't heard from her in a while, she she knows that he inserted it "as a back issue". She is not in excellent health, feels tired, has been separated from an ex-partner and is going through a difficult period. However, rather than alleviate Ruth's misfortune or ill health, and rather than allow this meeting between Billy and Ruth to delve into sentimental reminiscences of good old times, the author turns the screw further after Ruth confesses to Billy that she had throat cut. x-rayed. “Ruth, I wish you weren't having that X-ray treatment,” Billy tells her. "I have heard that it is very dangerous. Don't be alarmed, my dear... but I have heard of cases of cancer being contracted this way." Ruth dismisses this as "nonsense," but later, "sitting on the uptown express in the subway," her fears play on her. "She looked up and down the car at the faces moving in front of her. Of all those people, one of them must have it. FOUR OUT OF EVERY FIVE COME... She put her hand to her throat. Her throat was terribly swollen. ..Maybe it was worse. It's something alive that grows in the flesh, eats away your life, leaves you horrible, rotten." And with these words we remember those previously spoken by Billy: "Oh, I know everything is dead." Ruth's reunion with Billy and the events surrounding it illustrate the way in which Ruth is slowly, slowly crushed by her society. Dos Passos' naturalist technique describes Ruth as a "human animal." She leaves a doctor's office feeling faint, calls a taxi and realizes she is short of money. The taxi driver has no change. "Okay, keep the change," he says, only to find that it's down to thirty-two cents. He then meets Billy, who is "fatter and whiter than he once was" – and therefore, it is implied, richer – and Billy, in turn, points out to Ruth that she herself seems to "stand out" with her hat elegant. After they part ways, Ruth, made increasingly obsessed and paranoid by Billy's comments about cancer, takes a crowded train home along with "a trainload of shaking corpses." The author's emotional distance from Ruth allows us to scrutinize Ruth's life as if she were an animal in a zoo, and in fact we witness a short vignette representative of Ruth's entire downfall: almost to exemplify how sick and poor she is, a figure from her past re-enters her life, is noticeably wealthy, compliments her on the only symbol of wealth on her person, then tells her that her situation may be worse than she suspected, and finally leaves to do it rotting among the population of living corpses on his way home. Holding belowcontrol the emotional distance from the subject, Dos Passos is able to inflict on Ruth the hard and merciless blows of "real life" which are the typical problems of real people rather than mere characters, so we can therefore better empathize with in a way our than we could have done if the author had passed some type of authorial judgment on her; and Ruth, therefore, becomes one of “us,” as we, as readers, become part of her. Dos Passos further distorts this notion by cutting to—and contrasting Ruth's story with—a scene of rising fortunes for another character. From a crowded, moving train and the confused, disorganized thoughts of a woman who may be dying and whose once good fortunes are progressively worsening, Dos Passos moves in a flash to a relatively more serene environment, a fog covered bench on the Brooklyn Bridge. where Dutch Robertson sits, leafing through a newspaper looking for work and where, with his fortunes already in decline, he attempts to revive them for the better. Likewise, Ruth's dreams and Dutch's aspirations are also polar opposites: Ruth has a waking nightmare in which she slowly dies of cancer while Dutch promises his girlfriend Francie that "he'll get a job this week... room, get married and everything." Such juxtaposition between two scenes (their comparative fortunes) and within each of those scenes (Dutch's fortunes rising, Ruth's fortunes declining) underlines the novelist's naturalistic portrait of Manhattan: the outside world of the scene of Ruth progresses from calm to calamity as her inner thoughts do the same. , while, on the other hand, the external world of Dutch's scene progresses from calm to calamity while his internal thoughts do the opposite. Dos Passos' objectivity in these scenes suggests that we should take it upon ourselves to compare and contrast them, to find their similarities and their differences to reveal two completely opposite worldviews from two people whose initial situations are almost identical . Both Ruth and Dutch have been crushed and swallowed up by the great metropolis of Manhattan, but while one slides and goes down almost willingly, the other refuses to give up or go down without a fight; Dos Passos then illustrates the difference between determination and depression, and how two people in similar financial and social situations can approach their respective futures from a perspective of oppression or opportunity. What's most interesting is how they both value the basic need for money, but for different reasons: Ruth values ​​it for purposes of health, well-being, and social status, while Dutch values ​​it only as a means by which he can eat, dance, and get something. care of Francie. Furthermore, although Dutch makes a very conscious decision to improve his fortunes, he only does so within the limits of Manhattan; that is, unlike Jimmy Herf at the end of the novel, Dutch makes no effort to transcend the confines of his environment, but instead simply chooses to stay afloat within it. This is naturalism, the "human animal" in its natural environment - imprisoned but longing to be free, varied and unpredictable, and at the same time self-destructive and self-preserving in its methods of achieving that freedom. A similar use of juxtaposition is once again evident in the third chapter, "Revolving Doors", when calamity once again gives way to calm, but to a different effect, to illustrate a different point. Consider the end of Anna Cohen's scene at the restaurant: ""The stools are all full. Grey-faced girls, clerks, accountants." "Chicken sandwich and a cup of caufee." "Sandwich with cream cheese and olives and a glass of buttermilk." "Cup of buttermilk ice creamchocolate." "Egg sandwich, coffee and donuts." "A cup of broth. ""Chicken broth. they turn their backs on the counter and eat while looking through the glass partition and the words HCNUL ENIL NEERG at the crowds milling in and out of the subway in the dingy green darkness. "The commotion at the human manger immediately transitions into a quiet, pleasant but important conversation between Gus McNeil and Joey O'Keefe about the state of the workers' union. Gus asks Joey to give him the details, "puffing a great cloud of smoke from his cigar and leaning back in the swivel chair,” with both the cigar and the chair indicative of status, power, success, wealth, and respect. In contrast to the juxtaposition between Ruth and Dutch, which illustrates two individuals in states of environmental transition, the juxtaposition between Anna and Gus instead illustrates two individuals who find their personal states changed, but somehow immutable, while the bigger picture state remains the same state: Anna loses her job but is still inundated with customers at the restaurant, and Gus is still involved in worker union disputes and arguments even though civic virtue is at an all-time high Instead of pointing out the differences between “human animals” like Ruth and Dutch – two people in similar situations who take different approaches to overcoming those situations – the technique of making. following Anna's scene to Gus's scene highlights the similarities between two people in different situations, in order to illustrate the overbearing anonymity of the city, Manhattan. Both characters disappear into their work, in a fog of business: Anna is inundated with clients even after being fired, while Gus remains, through success and failure, shrouded in a fog of cigar smoke, completely wrapped up in his business . If Ruth and Dutch both fear physical decay, at least they both retain the dignity that has fallen to pieces in Anna, the declining beauty queen who loses her job because she focuses less on work and more on makeup, and in Gus, the I myself. entrepreneur who has lost himself in a difficult situation of negotiations with even more anonymous people who appear to him not as human beings or even as "human animals", but only as dollar signs. These characters exist in a disproportionately capitalist environment that forces them, like the author, to distance themselves from the anonymity of those around them - but, ironically, that same capitalist environment in turn makes them anonymous within their own hierarchy ; they believe they can distinguish themselves by doing a good job, being successful, becoming richer, but the unnecessary energy this requires of them forces them to go in the opposite direction. Here, then, Dos Passos illustrates a reversal of priority values: if these characters seek material success but are ultimately crushed in the process, then they should seek the opposite. The author's message here ends in the final pages of the novel. ” He sways on his hips as he scolds in an endless, querulous stream of Yiddish Anna sitting sleep-bleary-eyed over a cup of coffee: “If I had been crib-jumped it would have been better if I had been stillborn.” ...Oh, why did I raise four sons so that all of them were not good, troublemakers, prostitutes and bums...? ...May you wither in your chair, picketing textile workers, walking shamelessly down the street with a sign on your back." "So Mrs. Cohen says to daughter Anna in an argument after Anna loses her job, in chapter four of the third section, "Skyscraper". In the next scene, Martin Schiff rhetorically asks Roy "Do you want a job? ... Do you want to sell your soul to the highest bidder?" This comes moments after Jimmy Herf enters the scene, just as Roy does.