Ex-Colored Man Vs Locust

James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Autobiography) and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (Locust) are two fictional novels which portray America’s overwhelming social influence on the individual. Both protagonists, while astutely observing the superficiality of society, unknowingly become a part of the society’s duplicitousness. Just as Tod Hackett in Locust does not see himself as a part of the collective Hollywood-types, the mulatto unnamed narrator in Autobiography does not identify himself in either black or white community. The extent of individuals being unaware of their own participation in the flaws of society they note is highlighted with Tod unwittingly falling into the scripted lifestyle of Hollywood

In Autobiography, the unnamed narrator claims the he is playing a "practical joke on society” by pretending to be white (Johnson 5). Though he feels as if he’s in control, he frequently adopts the gaze of white society. He notes that “every colored man in America who had ever ‘done anything’” were prize-fighters, jockeys and celebrities, and remains ignorant to this revealing the restrictiveness of success being confined to performing for white society (115). The narrator himself falls into the same entrapment and “readily accepted” a job offered by the millionaire and was sure he “could not be the loser by such a contract” (132). His ignorance to the fact that he is being used allows him to unknowingly be subjugated by white culture. His “ambitions to be… a great colored man” manifested in aspirations to portray the “American Negro, in classic musical form” (50, 161). These childhood dreams are only subsequently revived by a white man who “had taken ragtime and made it classic” (155). The irony of his failed attempt to portray black society by succumbing to music forms of white culture is lost on him. Thus, despite his observations on pertinent issues concerning his race, he is oblivious to his bigotry and this subjects him to the ironic gaze of

Johnson was only credited for Autobiography 15 years after it was published anonymously in 1912, and mimics the discourse of white authority by presenting his voice in this novel. The joke of identity also remains by placing the novel in an era where novels were almost exclusively a genre for white writers, thus, adopting the role imposed by the subjugating culture. West’s modernist novel, published in 1939, presents Tod ultimately as an artist predicting the doom of American dreams. Much like his protagonist’s imagined art piece, the novel itself is a piece of high art that criticises popular culture and romanticises the failure to achieve lofty ambitions. Locust as a novel is thus just as exploitative as the Hollywood it mocks and satirises. Both authors, just as their protagonists, cannot break free of these societal norms and eventually take on the aspects of American society they negatively