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Summary
V. The Burthen of Nineveh
Mr. Densch flees the city on the Volendam. He goes to see his upset wife and tries to comfort her.
Baby Martin has been left with his nanny. The adult world is loud and frightening from his point of view.
Ellen is in a cab, running late for something and is very anxious. She arrives to meet George and he’s angry that she’s late, but he gets over it quickly. He admits that he’s disappointed in himself for being so easily manipulated by her. Ellen finally reluctantly agrees to marry him saying. George is thrilled.
Alice goes on a shopping spree in Lord & Taylor and tells herself that Roy will have to find a way to pay for it all. Then she meets an old friend Buck, and they decide to leave town for Calgary. Buck says he can get a job there, but he is only swindling Alice out of money.
Jimmy almost gets hit by a truck as he walks through the city. As he’s recovering from the shock, Congo comes by in a Rolls-Royce and asks him to get in. Congo is married to Nevada Jones and lives in a penthouse. Jimmy tells Congo he received his divorce papers that morning. He has always wanted to leave New York, and now he has no excuse not to. Jimmy shares that his luck ran out and he started going down the social ladder. Ellen has now married George Baldwin who is on his way up.
James Merivale has joined the Metropolitan Club and is professionally very accomplished. He reads about the demise of Blackhead and Densch. He’s not happy to have his brother-in-law Jack Cunningham as a connection. Jack had explained that he was blackmailed by the woman claiming to be his wife. James looks down on the Greenwich Village mindset that Jimmy has and sees his cousin as a failure.
Anna has become a prostitute. She’s still young but has become bitter. She has always done what she thought she was supposed to, but she never caught a break.
Francie and Dutch are convicted. The judge blames journalists for romanticizing and excusing their crimes. He has decided to make an example of them.
Blackhead seems to want to drink himself to death. He blames Densch for losing his life’s work. Blackhead is comforted knowing that his daughter Gladys is taken care of. He dies in his bed in front of his butler, who does not see the need to tell Gladys who is right outside the room. He just pretends that Blackhead is asleep.
Ellen is picking up a dress at Madame Soubrine’s shop. She’s troubled by the fact that she’s aging. This is why she needs to be married to someone powerful. Anna works at this shop. She dreams of opening her own shop someday after all these years of being mistreated by employers. She daydreams of the coming revolution and when Elmer will be mayor. She’s so lost in thought that a fire sneaks up on her. Ellen catches a glimpse of the terrible blaze after smelling smoke. She’s told by Madame Soubrine to tell the other patrons that everything is fine, and she does so. She then leaves the shop and gets in a cab and doesn’t understand why she feels ill at ease. She thinks about the girl in the seamstress shop and how her life could have been different. She gets out of the cab and meets George.
Jimmy leaves a party at Bob Hildebrand’s. He says a final goodbye before he leaves since this is his last night in New York. He has now idea how to picture his future, since he does not have one yet, but his past is gone. He’s feels oddly happy while he rides the ferry, but he doesn’t know why. He looks back at the city briefly but sees only fog. After spending his last quarter on breakfast, he hitchhikes in a furniture truck with no particular destination.
Analysis
At the end of the book, many of the characters are reinventing themselves. All of them have been through some personal trial or other. They all share the collective trauma of living through the first world war, and they also share their daily battle with New York. Whether characters are wealthy or poor, employed or aimless, they are connected by the fact that they live in an unforgiving city that is constantly working against them. Now they all look for a new start and hopefully, a brighter future. Congo is a rare example of someone who started out at the bottom, and even though he held radical views that are unpopular in capitalistic New York, is able to find success. Of course, he did so through illegal means and changed his name, making a clean break with his old identity. Congo’s story emphasizes the idea that a person needs to be prepared to give up everything to make it in New York. Ellen also tried repeatedly to make a break with her old identify. She too gave up everything including her name, career, and spouses. But the nature of Ellen’s choices makes it impossible for her to become someone new. She is too closely entwined with the city. Jimmy, on the other hand has always been an outsider, at odds with the competitive capitalism of New York. He comes to terms with the fact that he can only find contentment if he leaves. His identity is not nearly as closely rooted in the city as Ellen’s, and he’s not willing to be someone he’s not. His only chance at happiness is to change his surroundings. of post-war America.
Densch’s nervousness as he leaves New York reveals his fears of repercussions from his firm’s failure. He is not prominently featured in the book, but his partnership with Blackhead makes it clear that Densch has built his career on dishonesty and corruption. More recently, though, he has shown himself to have principles and respect for order when he supports George’s candidacy on the reform ticket. In the face of professional failure, he retreats to a spa town in the Czech Republic. As he leaves New York, a disgraced and ruined man, he worries that all of his past indiscretions will catch up to him. When he seems buoyed by the idea of sending Blackhead a telegram, it’s hard to tell if Densch has fully embraced a rehabilitated way of life or if he will try to save himself by betraying Blackhead again. The city has a habit of bringing out the worst in people, and Densch has a high tolerance for shady dealings.
In a final act of self-destruction, Ellen takes a step toward marrying George. Her reinvention is not one that makes her happy, but instead makes her feel as if she is drowning. On her way to meet him, Ellen follows her pattern of running late: she arrives late, George is angry, and Ellen acts charming and distracts George from his annoyance. This time, Ellen even acknowledges to herself that George will be there waiting for her. As she counts the blocks that are left until she reaches her destination, she decides that numbers must have been invented to calm people. While ridiculous, this thought calms Ellen and it is this epiphany with which she greets a nervous George who has been waiting for forty-five minutes. Ellen knows that George is likely to propose. Once she has made up her mind that she will marry him, she proceeds to have the same kind of out-of-body experience that she often has when she is with Harry earlier in the book. She’s detached and feels herself hardening in preparation to accept the proposal.
Alice, in her fleeting appearances throughout the book, has come across as a level-headed person. This makes her actions in the last chapter unexpected and illustrates how desperate she is for a drastic change in her life. She resents her husband for his prolonged unemployment and goes on a spiteful shopping spree. Alice feels that she’s entitled to purchasing six pairs of gloves and then seems to almost lose her senses in the dizzying array of clothes and accessories. She has denied herself anything new for so long that once again being a consumer has a powerful effect on her. When presented with the possibility of getting out of a money and status obsessed city with Buck, she jumps on the opportunity. Not only will she not have to deal with the repercussions of her shopping, but she can also leave the city behind. But Alice realizes that she has been blinded by her desperation when she impetuously falls for Buck’s swindle.
One of the few characters to do so, Congo has worked his way up and gotten the better of the city. The only other character with a similar kind of luxurious lifestyle is Phineas Blackhead who also achieved monetary success through shady dealings. While Blackhead loses everything at the end of the novel, Congo, now Armand Duval, is poised to continue enjoying his wealth indefinitely. It’s implied here that an affable and clever Congo will find a new revenue stream even when bootlegging is no longer profitable. Congo is different from Blackhead in that he is always willing to help people, and this is a rare quality in the city. When Congo references their shared past, it becomes apparent that Emile is now Congo’s personal chef. This is ironic, considering that early on Emile was focused on steadily working his way up to financial success and thought Congo was crazy for pursuing adventure on the sea and not putting down roots in the city. Of course, the plan to plod his way up the ranks of an industry was eventually abandoned by Emile in favor of marrying his way to a higher status. Now he’s working for a wealthy Congo, who has never let himself be boxed in by the confines of New York and its social and political norms.
Both Ellen and Anna end the novel on the cusp of becoming financially wealthy at the cost of everything else. Now that Ellen will be married to George, one of her few comforts is that she is again able to spend money on material things. Her reinvention is not one she wants or is happy about, but one that she feels is necessary for a life in New York. While Anna Cohen cannot manage a real change right now, she sits quietly in Madama Soubrine’s shop sewing. She dreams of what’s possible in the working man’s future as a fire envelops her. With this dark turn of events though, it is implied that Anna might actually get the better of the city’s rampant capitalism in the form of a financial settlement. She will have money, but she will be physically disfigured for the rest of her life. Ellen’s glimpse of Anna’s terribly burned head and face haunts her as she rushes across town to meet George. She does not admit it to herself, but the experience in the seamstress shop has made her think of Stan’s last moments. Her nerves jangled, she pulls herself together in the taxicab. Ellen is resentful as she thinks about how George always expects her to look perfect. She is never at ease in her self-made prison, but when she steps out of the cab at the hotel, she looks fresh and beautiful.
In the last scene of the book, Jimmy leaves New York for a new life, but his old life will inevitably travel with him. When Bob Hildebrand tells him an outrageous story of a man killed in Philadelphia for wearing a straw hat too early in the spring, Jimmy can’t help himself but create a headline and lede for a fictional news story. By doing this, he settles into his comfortable position as an observer. Going home so often brings Jimmy sadness, so on his last night in New York, Jimmy does not go home but goes straight to the ferry terminal, where the book began, to start a new life. His thoughts often go back to his story of Saint Aloysius of Philadelphia, his news story of the martyr who died because of his straw hat. Furthermore, The last two scenes of the book underscore the difference between Ellen and Jimmy. Ellen knows what she does not want, but still chooses it. She enters doomed marriages and keeps unsatisfying social connections so that she can maintain a certain status in the city that she loves. In Jimmy’s case, it took a while, but he too finally knows what he does not want. Unlike Ellen, he is not willing to compromise for the rest of his life and leaves the city in the hope of something better.
