Dos Passos is occasionally criticized because his minor characters seem more the embodiments of ideas than fully realized fictional people, and this tendency is arguably more manifest in the District trilogy than in U.S.A. In a limited way, the charge is true of the minor characters in both trilogies. In political fiction, most authors create a wide cast of supporting characters, each of whom is developed briefly. Robert Perm Warren's masterwork All the King's Men (1946; see separate entry), which treats the same historical figure as Number One, uses an identical strategy. These authors follow the literary tradition of Charles Dickens, and Dos Passos often succeeds in the Dickens's manner of creating minor characters who satirically represent one narrow view of reality.

This is especially true of Adventures of a Young Man, where Dos Passos's concentration on chronicling Glenn's disillusionment precludes exhaustive development of the secondary characters...