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Summary
III. Dollars
George Baldwin is a young lawyer with no clients until he reads about Gus McNeil’s accident. Gus is still in the hospital, possibly still unconscious, so George decides to go straight to Gus’s apartment and speak to his wife. Nellie McNeil is unhappy with both Gus and their new baby but is willing to work with George. The two are instantly attracted to each other, but George is not deterred from his goal. While he is not completely honest about his lack of experience, George believes he can win this case. He also begins an affair with Nellie, though both of them vow to each other that this is not typical behavior for either of them.
Ellen is a young girl playing in the park with her friend Alice. She tries to coax her friend into walking along a small path, but Alice is frightened of kidnappers. Alice leaves Ellen, now demanding to be called Elaine, and Ellen walks along the path by herself as she imagines she is Elaine of Lammermoor, who is going to be married.
Congo is back from his latest adventure on the high seas and stays with Emile while he is in the city. He relishes telling his friends stories about his time at sea. Emile has formed a habit of visiting a specialty food store where he is friendly with the French widow who owns it. He tells her he is sick of being a waiter and wants more. He encourages Madame Rigaud to play the piano for him and then runs to take care of a customer who enters the shop.
Bud witnesses a suicide when a wealthy man shoots himself in a carriage. His wife planned for the two of them to board a ship bound for Europe that day, and the man would have to leave his mistress. Bud quickly gets away from the scene when the police arrive.
Ellen and Ed sit by the waterfront. They talk about the day when they will be wealthy enough to board a ship and go on vacation. An old man nearby begins telling them about how he worked on an ocean liner all his life. He had to retire because he got too old for the work. He laments giving his whole life to his work only to get tossed aside. He has gotten too old for New York.
Bud agrees to haul coal into a woman’s apartment in return for one dollar. The woman asks why he doesn’t have a steady job and Bud explains that there are no good jobs to be had. She feeds Bud lunch and then cheats him out of the money she promised him, giving him only a quarter.
Jimmy and his mother Lily arrive in New York on the Fourth of July. They are greeted by family when they debark their ship. Jimmy enjoys a day full of ice cream and fireworks. Jimmy asks his mother, whom he calls Muddy, about the mole on her face. She tells him that the mole she has painted on her face is meant to make her prettier.
George has brought Gus and Nellie to his office. Before he arrives, the couple talk about how they will not know how to pay their bills unless they have won a settlement. George enters the office and announces that he has won a twelve-and-half thousand-dollar settlement for them. After Gus leaves, George tells Nellie they must end their affair. Winning the case impresses George’s boss Emery and jump-starts his career. George has lunch with his architect friend Phil Sandbourne. Phil tells George about his boss’s ideas for skyscrapers.
Analysis
In Chapter III, many of the characters pretend to be something that they are not. These farces occur in characters’ professional and personal lives as well as their imaginations, and the pretense always has to do with money. The chapter title “Dollars” serves as an overarching reminder of what is really important in the Dos Passos’s New York City. Many of the characters have wealth at this point in the book, and so they are preoccupied with obtaining it. For the ones who later achieve wealth, money becomes an afterthought. It only occupies the thoughts of the characters who do not have it. While the city places great value on wealth, it is also a big enough place for someone to get lost or reinvent themselves. In both George and young Ellen’s scenes, the city offers a certain degree of forgiveness. Although it is typically inflexible, it is possible for them to create new opportunities if they are unhappy in their current situation. Keeping up the charade is the difficult part.
George Baldwin is living a lie, and he helps to further the theme of self-destruction through bad choices. He has an office on Maiden Lane and “Attorney at Law” on the door to his office, but he has no clients. He gets more than he bargained for when he approaches Gus McNeil’s wife about a lawsuit against the railroad. George and Nellie McNeil are instantly attracted to one another, in the first of a series of poor relationship choices made by George. Not only is Nellie married, but she’s the wife of his first would-be client. The fact that George acts on this attraction and goes ahead with Gus’s case calls his judgement into question. For her part, Nellie is vulnerable to attraction as she is unhappy with the choices she has made. She is bothered by her baby and does not think much of Gus. Not knowing he has no clients, George represents wealth and success for Nellie. Their relationship is proof that neither one of them have much respect for Gus, as they carry on their affair right under his nose.
In a style typical of Manhattan Transfer, a scene that could easily demand dramatic attention is completely glossed over. Susie appears for the last time in Chapter II and dies at some later time. Her death is never directly addressed, but only the effects of the loss. Here, her young daughter Ellen develops an over-active imagination as both a response to her mother’s death and as a defense mechanism. Now asking to be called Elaine, she often disappears into her own world. Ed sometimes shares in this imaginative escape, as they enjoy talking about what they will do when they are wealthy. This is something that Ed knows will never happen for him, but he indulges his daughter. Ed cannot possibly know Ellen’s future, but her need to obtain the wealth that she and Ed daydream about will later cause Ellen to make bad decisions throughout her adulthood. This is arguably the impetus for entering a series of bad relationships to further her career and social standing, leaving her an empty shell. Repelled by old age and unfortunate stories even as a child, Ellen gets scared of the old man that she and Ed meet one day near the waterfront. Her tendency to avoid any serious subject and walk away from uncomfortable situations is a trait in the older Ellen as well. She is never willing to take part in conversations on topics of substance and avoids confrontation.
When the woman on the street offers to give Bud a dollar for bringing coal to his apartment, she comes across as sympathetic towards him, but in reality the woman is the personification of the coldness of the city. Their conversation and her unsolicited offer of food leads to the assumption that she is honest. But instead of having pity on a person in an unfortunate situation, the judgmental woman sees an unemployed man as a target of whom she can take advantage. Aimless and searching for work, Bud spends his time wandering the streets of the city. He may have learned about his surroundings by this time because he is observant, but he is still just a naïve country boy at heart. The episode with the dishonest woman almost causes Bud to become physically ill and lose what little food he has eaten in the past few days. Amidst the city’s cold cruelness, one must wonder how long Bud can last in in this hostile environment.
While other characters can manage to keep their identify fluid when necessary, Jimmy never quite finds an identity of his own. He begins his tortured relationship with New York shortly after he arrives in the city with his mother on the Fourth of July. That day is described in small, vivid snippets from Jimmy’s memory and is possibly the only happy memory Jimmy has of these family members and of New York. After his mother’s death, Jimmy is thrust unwillingly into his aunt and uncle’s home, where everything in his life becomes blemished after his mother’s death. It is as if Jimmy’s emotional development stops when his mother dies, and he is never able to achieve the same kind of reinvention as some other characters., He becomes part of the Lost Generation years before his peers will gain the infamous title after World War I. Jimmy is aimless and without any real passion from his boyhood. Never finding success as a writer further compounds his feelings that he does not belong in a city where money is so highly valued.
