Alienation through Exile: A Critical Introspection into John Dos Passos' Nineteen Nineteen

The concept of alienation and exile involves an examination of that process of destructive forces of an individual’s world that range from forced expulsion from one’s home due to ‘uprootedness’ from one’s society or separation of man from nature and the rest of his community. This state of affairs may result from a devastating upheaval of one destructive weight or another, which puts the individual in a tragic situation which he neither understands nor controls. This leads to a depersonalization that shatters his emotional harmony with himself, his experience and his society. Dos Passos has risen to this subject with fresh reserves of clarity and control. The narrative sections of Nineteen Nineteen concentrate on the impotence and loneliness of the isolated individual under the conditions of total war: most notably in the story of Joe Williams. The study analyses how Joe’s endless shuttling between countries on rotting freighters had become the migration and rootlessness of the Lost Generation and the growing stupor and meaninglessness of their lives. It places the quest for pure motion or movement which was not directed toward any particular end point at the centre. It also investigates how the society that wanted Joe dependent made him that way and then concluded that that was the way he really was. Key Words: alienation, exile, Nineteen Nineteen, Dos Passos