"The Camera Eye"
U.S.A. is almost a textbook for teaching how to use imagery. Imagery dominates the non-narrative portions and on almost every past is a master lesson. Those sections falling under the label “The Camera Eye” are intended to replicate the rhythm and loose structural foundation of thought in action. They offer a stream-of-consciousness penetration into one person’s processing of memories making exceptions for the rules of written language. Like a camera, these sections record thought as unedited action:
“it was hot as a bakeoven going through the canal from Delaware City and turtles sunning themselves tumbled off into the thick ocher ripple we made in passing and He was very gay and She was feeling well for once and He made us punch of tea and mint and a little Saint Croix rum but it was hot as the hinges of Delaware”
“The Body of an American”
One of the most passionate subjects against which the novel rails is hypocritical patriotism. Politicians use it for the purposes of stirring votes, business tycoons use it as a marketing gimmick and millions of common people subscribe to it as a means of justifying war. The ultimate expression of loathing and disgust toward this exploitation of the dead is manifested as imagery indicting the entire government who praise the collective in hypocritical ignorance of the individual:
"Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates byaconcurrentresolutionadoptedon the4thdayofmarch last-authorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be brought to theunitedstatesthe body of an American whowasamemberoftheAmericanexpeditionaryforceineuropewholosthis lifeduringtheworldwarandwhoseidentityhasnot beenestablished for burial inthememorialamphitheatreofthe nationalcemeteryatarlingtonvirginia"
Opportunity
“Opportunity” is a word that recurs with great frequency in the book. The final success of the owner-based capitalist economy with the victory in World War I allowed the captains of industry to push their version of an economic system as the only one capable of providing endless and endlessly growing opportunities to become part of the consumer class In one of the “Newsreel” sections, the author distills imagery down its most essential source to reveal the opportunities being made available at the time
“in bank that chooses its officers from the ranks, for wideawake ambitious bookkeeper . . . architectural draftsman with experience on factory and industrial buildings in brick, timber, and reinforced concrete . . . bronze fitter . . . letterer , . . patternmaker . . . carriage painter…shipping clerk . . . shoe salesman . . , signwriter . . . solicitor for retail fishmarket…civil engineer . . . machinery and die appraiser . . . building estimator . . . electrical and power plant engineer”
The Ford Massacre
Historical events taken out of dusty and forgotten textbooks and brought vividly to life as imagery in prose constructed as if it were verse in many of the biographical sketches. One of the most impressive examples is the author’s re-creation of an actual even in American history so horrific as to make one question how—and perhaps even if—it could ever have occurred. The event came to be known as the 1932 Ford Massacre when hungry striking workers marched on Henry Ford’s Michigan plants:
“But when the country on cracked shoes, in frayed trousers, belts tightened over hollow bellies,
idle hands cracked and chapped with the cold of that coldest March day of 1932,
started marching from Detroit to Dearborn, asking for work and the American Plan, all they could think of at Ford's was machineguns.
The country was sound, but they mowed the
marchers down.
They shot four of them dead.”
