Preview of The Big Money Summary:

These compromises form a central theme of U.S.A. Whatever their economic goals, the characters sacrifice their creativity, potential, and capacity for love in the pursuit of goals defined as worthwhile by their subculture. In a revealing scene, Morehouse and Savage share the aspirations of their youth.

Now active in the Darwinian world of public relations, in which they exploit language to create desire for questionable products and services, Morehouse recalls his youth, when he wanted to write songs. Savage replies, "Shake hands . . . with the ruins of a minor poet." Both have given up the creative use of verbal skills to achieve success by manipulating the language for commercial purposes.

Not only do the characters give up their creativity to pursue material or ideological goals, they lose the capacity to love or to treat people as human beings. For Dos Passos's characters, people become objects to be...