The Poetic World Of Dos Pasos

John Dos Passos is a maverick genius in 1990 s.He is famous of the new technique, such as ‘camera lens’, ‘newsreel’, and ‘character biographies’. Combined different fate and social history together make his novels unique in the history of America literature. This paper analyzes his representative works "Manhattan transfer station" and “American trilogy”. From the perspective of text, this paper explores Passos’ s theme, artistic expression and whether he pointed out the way of urban people.This paper has been divided into three chapters. The first one discusses three themes of “Manhattan transfer station” and “American trilogy”. It analyzes the novels themes of urban life、desire and death. In this chapter, we find that Passos described a sink world where people lost their minds and people desire dominated their behavior. The second chapter discusses Passos’ s novel artistic expression such as collage skills、sketch skills and symbolism. In this part we can find how hard he tried to record his times, and his novels show us how colorful of the developing cities. We can also find his concern for humanity as an artist in these techniques. In the last chapter, it discusses Passos’ s political standpoint and cultural position to find his writing position. On the other hand the last chapter also discusses the characters and the city’s survival predicament. And in the end, based on the former discuss of the fates of characters in his novels 、the overall style of the novel and Passos’ s writing position, the paper conclude that the author was more and more pessimistic about the future of both revolution and the whole society. Which makes his “American trilogy” shows that the whole western world was defeated.Passos’ s novels have his personal character in narrative skills and symbolic imageries. The political perspective and historical perspective make the works present a panoramic picture feeling. And the symbolic features let us see his anxiety on the situation of the United States at that time. What Passos concerned is not only the fate of people, but also the historical process.