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Summary
III. Revolving Doors
Jake Silverman and his mistress Rosie are getting ready to go out and impress a potential investor. Jake wants a man named Nichols to think that he has money. Rosie wants out the business altogether and worries that Nichols will prosecute. She suggests leaving town for a fresh start. Jake says they can’t since they can be extradited for grand larceny.
Masie Merivale is dating Jack Cunningham who is in publicity. James doesn’t like him. James now works at a bank and dresses very carefully. Even he thinks that maybe he dresses in a way that is too old for his age.
Tony Hunter is with Nevada Jones in her apartment. Nevada likes Tony and believes he can change. She’s convinced George to pay for a psychologist who thinks he can make Tony stop being gay through treatment. Nevada shoos Tony out of the room when George and Gus arrive. George is anxious and not eating or drinking. He finally tells Gus that he has decided to run for election on the reform ticket, which makes Gus angry.
Anna Cohen is working in a diner. She gets impulsively fired for looking in her compact mirror, and she doesn’t even care.
Joe O’Keefe tells Gus about the agitation committee he has assembled for the veteran bonuses. Gus tells him that the public is fed up with the war heroes. Joe is torn because he wants veterans treated well, but he does not want to cross Gus. Joe leaves Gus and lies to a fellow union member. He says Gus is behind the veteran bonus.
Dutch is completely broke, and Francie has no money to lend him. He reads about a bank robbery in the newspaper and has an epiphany.
Jimmy goes to an old pool hall in Brooklyn with Congo. Congo is expecting a shipment of alcohol and Jimmy is planning to write a story for the newspaper. Congo ends up having a fight with hijackers out on the dock while Jimmy has to watch the whole thing from inside the building. He tries to piece together the story that he’ll write about the hijacking, but he keeps getting distracted thinking about when he and Ellen were in France. After leaving the pool hall, Jimmy dreads going home. Life with Ellen is not what he thought it would be. He visits his friends, Roy and Alice. Frances and Bob Hildebrand are also there. Jimmy exaggerates the story and gives himself a bigger part in the drama.
The Merivales find out that Maisie's boyfriend Jack is already married. James tries to get a hold of Jack but is told that he’s out of town.
Phineas Blackhead sits with his partner Densch. Densch says he thinks it’s safe to back George in the election. Phineas thinks this is foolish because they owe their loyalty to Gus. Densch announces he’s breaking with Phineas on this point and will support George.
Ellen decides that Jimmy should get his own apartment now that he’s working night hours and she works all day. Jimmy loves Ellen but he sees that their marriage is not working.
Anna is now dating Elmer, who calls her last boyfriend Buoy an enemy of the proletariat because he told Anna to stop paying union dues. Elmer thinks that its Buoy who made Anna a fatalist who doesn’t care about losing her job. Now that she’s dating Elmer, she can get back in good standing.
Gus asks Nellie to talk to George. George wants to keep Gus’s friendship but has found himself pulled into politics on the opposite side of Gus. George leaves his office to go see Nevada. He breaks off his affair with her and tells her he knows about Tony and thinks the psychologist will do nothing to help him. He won’t pay for more treatments but gives Nevada five hundred dollars. Nevada is glad to be free of George, but Tony feels betrayed. He will not get his big chance on Broadway and accuses Nevada of only caring about herself. She vows not to leave Tony, saying she will come up with an act for the two of them.
James runs into Jack Cunningham at the tailor. He doesn’t confront him about his marriage to someone else but makes plans for lunch. He decides he’ll get his answers then.
Ruth and Ellen are having tea. She complains to Ellen that she’s getting older and can’t find good work. Ruth convinces Ellen go to a Sunderland gathering. When they arrive, Cassie takes a swipe at Ellen’s multiple marriages. Jojo is at the party and references Jimmy’s radical ideas, which Ellen rejects and quickly changes the subject. There’s a raid on the party by detectives looking for alcohol. Ellen immediately calls George and soon the district attorney is on the telephone with one of the detectives who hangs up and says there has been a mistake. Ellen leaves and calls George to thank him.
Jimmy has never loved being a reporter, but now he hates the way it makes him feel. He’s always looking in on life, and not living it. Restless, he goes to confront Ellen. She admits she does not love him, and they break up. He’s ashamed because he can’t even help with money for the baby because she makes more than he does.
Anna Cohen has gotten a job in the garment district.
Jake Silverman is arrested, and the police come into his apartment to search it. Before he’s taken away, he scrawls a note to Rosie to hock everything and leave town.
Analysis
Characters are preoccupied with appearances in this section, highlighting the theme of value based on youth and wealth. The city has strict standards when it comes to physical appearance, public sentiment, wealth, and politics. These demands are the crux of all the internal conflicts experienced by the characters. Some of the them struggle with the aging process as time passes. Others try to make people believe they are something that they are not. The way the stories develop in this chapter reinforces the superficiality of the city, since the reason for all of this subterfuge stems from characters’ rampant desire for success, whether professional or personal. They are all familiar with how the city works: if they want to make it, they have to look that part. But the characters who have been repeatedly steamrolled by the city are becoming more desperate in their attempts to live with these demands.
Jake Silverman’s quick ride to the top and ultimate demise is another metaphor for so many residents of New York that do not appear in the book. Only appearing in this chapter, Jake has carefully curated a façade so that he can impress a fellow corrupt New Yorker. He does so with the help of his girlfriend Rosie and all of her finest accessories. Even though he does not have money, and he has a potential grand larceny charge hanging over his head, he thinks he can fake his way to success. Jake is confident that if he looks successful for long enough, he can make his way into the upper class, thus achieving legitimacy. Jake has no doubt witnessed a scheme like this work for someone else, but Jake is not so lucky. He is ultimately found out and arrested because of his bad decisions and because his wealth is only a farce.
Tony Hunter is also in the process of creating a façade, one that betrays his own identity. The appearance he is trying to create is one that, while it is self-destructive, he thinks is necessary if he is going to keep his career on track.. Tony knows, as Jojo did, that if his homosexuality is found out, he will no longer be able to work as an actor. In a move typical of her self-involved nature, Nevada wants Tony to become a straight man because she has developed feelings for him. Tony, who has essentially become a kept man, allows himself to be chased out of the room by Nevada when George arrives. Tony later realizes that Nevada never had his best interests at heart when she abandons him for her next opportunity. Meanwhile, Nevada underestimates George’s shrewdness and his understanding of appearances in the city. He is fully aware that Nevada sees other men and that the psychologist will never successfully change him.
George is anxious when he arrives at Nevada’s apartment with Gus because has decided, instead on continuing his self-destructive ways, to stay true to himself and run for office on the reform ticket. Gus is a corrupt man, so he relies heavily on loyalty from people he has helped. Gus considers George’s decision a complete betrayal. Gus has always worked outside the bounds of legality, forcing George to do things he was not comfortable with over the years. Still, Gus knows he helped build George’s career. George’s decision causes trouble for importer/exporter Densch, too. His partner, Phineas Blackhead, himself involved with dirty dealings, is fully aware of the kind of loyalty Gus demands. He is livid when Densch announces he will support George in the election. But Densch, the man who helped convince George to run earlier, has higher ideals and a louder conscience. He believes that George is the better man for the job considering the state of the country and feels he has no choice but to break ranks with his partner.
Anna Cohen is at odds with her place as part of the struggling working class. Mistreated by an employer once again, she is fired for the innocuous action of checking on her appearance in her compact. Anna, already unhappy with who she is and how she looks, is used to mistreatment and allows it in her personal life as well. Her boyfriend Elmer tells her she is not living up to her responsibility as part of the working class. Elmer scolds her for allowing her last boyfriend to threaten her place as a part of the proletariat. He believes that there is value in the struggle of the working man and that one day, the collective will be rewarded for their efforts. Although she does not respect the capitalism of the city, Anna is not convinced she will live to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of labor. Thus, she only feels the fatigue of a hard life in the city and does not share Elmer’s enthusiasm for the cause.
Since his mother died, Jimmy has felt as though he did not belong in New York. Now, he is alienated from the city once again after losing Ellen. Professionally, he’s marginalized because his radical ideas about the war and capitalism keep him from having his work published. Still, as if he is fearful of taking the next step in this life, he makes one more attempt to be a success as a journalist. The attempt backfires as he finds himself separated from the action when a fight breaks out during Congo’s alcohol drop. Once again, he is made to feel like an observer in his own life, cut off from anything meaningful. He’s also distracted by how a young girl in the pool hall looks at him. Her look is painful for Jimmy because it reminds him of how Ellen used to look at him. But his relationship with Ellen has been sullied since they returned to the city. Finally admitting to himself that the city is full of memories and no future, the incident is the impetus Jimmy needs to make a meaningful change.
Ellen has always been a source of envy as well as self-righteousness for her peers because of the identity she has crafted. She has achieved success, although it was only because she knows how to use people. Now, an aging Ruth worries about her future on Broadway and resents Ellen for being able to sidestep this obstacle. But in Cassie’s curt remark about Ellen’s marriages at the party, the feeling of the Sunderland group is exposed. Although she has achieved professional success first as an actress and now an editor, Ellen has failed in her personal life. Ellen smugly claps back when she uses her connections to fix the mess that party-goers find themselves in when detectives arrive looking for contraband alcohol. In calling George, Ellen also opens the door to a relationship with him, which is convenient now that her marriage to Jimmy is over. While Ellen now has the option of remaining single and being independent, she will continue her pattern of using people to improve her status. She will remain a source of envy as it seems as though she has already resigned herself to a reluctant future with George.
