In Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, he shows just how materialistic people truly can be. I have always been struck by how much money the people of Dowagiac spend on material things like phones and clothing, but I did not realize to what extent someone could take this. Nathanael West opened my eyes, though. He showed that even people who scoff at their object-orientated peers can themselves become materialistic, sometimes to the point of not knowing the difference between themselves and the objects around them.
I was struck by this right at the end of the book as Tod sits in the police car, not knowing whether he is making the siren noise or if it is the actual police car. When he does figure out the noise is not coming from his own mouth, though, he simply joins in and makes himself into a siren. Tod was so disgusted by the materialistic people that surrounded him in Hollywood. He claimed he would never be that way. However, he became too influenced by the people he was constantly surrounded by; Tod was swept up in the wave of Hollywood and all of its object-orientated inhabitants and became just like them, turning into nothing more than an object himself. This just proves that if one surrounds oneself, even subconsiously, with people that act a certain way, eventually, one will fall to their habits.
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