The 42nd Parallel

The 42nd Parallel forma parte de U.S.A. Trilogy, novelas escritas por John Dos Passos en 1930. La novela cubre el desarrollo histórico de la sociedad norteamericana en las tres primeras décadas del siglo 20.

Más abajo aclaramos que es Industrial Workers of the World y ponemos una foto de un salón fúnebre y una huelga en 1.900.

 

Contexto político

Fue escrita en el período en el que Dos Passos se colocó del lado de la izquierda política. Dos Passos describe las situaciones de todos los días de los personajes antes, durante y después de la Primera Guerra Mundial, con especial atención a las fuerzas sociales y económicas que los dirigen.

Algunos tienen éxito otros son destruidos por el capitalismo. Dos Passos no siempre siente empatía por aquellos que triunfan pero sí por aquellos que resultan víctimas de la sociedad capitalista.

El libro describe con considerable simpatía a los activistas de la Industrial Workers of the World. Tiene más reservas con el partido comunista, que tomó el estrellato después de la Primera Guerra Mundial. También expresa una cierta animosidad hacia el presidente Woodrow Wilson.

Peluqueros en huelga

 

Paragraphs

The strike was not popular on Orchard Street. It meant that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger and bigger boilersful of wash, and that Fainy and his older sister Milly had to help when they came home from school. And then one day Mom got sick and had to go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing, and lay with her round white wrinkled face whiter than the pillow and her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin. The doctor came and the district nurse, and all three rooms of the flat smelt of doctors and nurses and drugs, and the only place Fainy and Milly could find to sit was on the stairs. There they sat and cried quietly together. Then Mom´s face on the pillow shrank into a little uneven white thing like a ragged handkerchief and they said that she was dead and took her away.

The funeral was from the undertaking parlors on Riverside Avenue on the next block. Fainy felt very proud and important because everybody kissed him and patted his head and said he was behaving like a little man. He had a new black suit on, too, like a grownup suit with pockets and everything, except that it had short pants. There were all sorts of peple at the undertaking parlors he had never been close to before, Mr Russel, the butcher and Father O´Donnell and Ucle Tim O´Hara who´d come on from Chicago, and it smelt of whisky and beer like at Finley´s. Uncle Tim was a skinny man with a rounded red face and shadowy blue eyes. He wore a loose black silk tie that worried Fainy, and kept leaning down suddenly, bending from the waist as if he was going to close up like a jack-knife, and whispering in a thick voice in Fainy´s ear.

 

Funeraria en Seattle, Washington, 1900

“Don´t you mind ´em, old sport, they´re a bunch o´ bums and hypocrytes, stewed to the ears most of ´em already. Look at Father O´Donnell the fat swine already figurin´up the burial fees. But don´t you mind ´em, remember you´re an O´Hara on your mother´s side. I don´t mind ´em, old sport, and she was my own sister by birth and blood.”

When they got home he was terribly sleepy and his feet were cold and wet. Nobody paid any attention to him. He sat crying on the edge of the bed in the dark. In the front room there were voices and a sound of knives and forks, but he didn´t dare go in there. He curled up against the wall and went to sleep. Light in his eyes woke him up. Uncle Tim and Pop were standing over him talking loud. They looked funny and didn´t seem to be standing very steady. Uncle Tim held the lamp.

“Well, Fainy, old sport,” said Uncle Tim giving the lamp a perilous wave over Fainy´s head. “Fenian O´Hara McCreary, sit up and take notice and tell us what you think of our proposed removal to the great and growing city of Chicago. Middletown´s a terrible bitch of a dump if you ask me… meaning´ no offense, John… But Chicago… Jesus God, man, when you get there you´ll think you´ve been dead and nailed up in a coffin all these years.”

Fainy was scared. He drew his knees up to his chin and looked tremblingly at the two big swaying figures of men lit by the swaying lamp. He tried to speak but the words dried up in his lips.

“The kid´s asleep, Tim, for all your speechifying´… Take your clothes off, Fainy, and get into bed and get a good night´s sleep. We´re leaving´ in the mornin´.”

And late on a rainy morning, without any breakfast, with a big old swelltop trunk tied up with rope joggling perilously on the roof of the cab that Fainy had been sent to order from Hodgeson´s Livery Stable, they set out. Milly was crying. Pop didn´t say a word but sucked on an unlit pipe. Uncle Tim handled everything, making little jokes all the time that nobody laughed at, pulling a roll of bills out of his pocket at every juncture, or taking great noisy sips out of the flask he had in his pocket. Milly cried and cried. Fainy looked out with big dry eyes at the familiar streets, all suddenly odd and irregular, that rolled past the cab… (Del original U.S.A., The 42nd Parallel, de John Dos Passos, con inglés más fácil)

 

Para saber

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), es un sindicato fundado en Chicago en 1905. Su ideología combina el unionismo (la unión de todos los trabajadores industriales) y tiene lazos con el socialismo y el anarquismo.

 

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