Human Suffering and Class Divide in Los Angeles Literature

Introduction: Los Angeles as a Site of Suffering

Los Angeles, California is the backdrop for great wealth and great poverty. Much of the literature emerging from this culture and environment focuses on the wealthy among its inhabitants, the stark contrast between the wealthy and the poor, the class divide, or the artificial nature of its buildings and environment. Although the city is alive with a wild diversity of cultures and art forms that many consider "rich," there is one common theme that unites all of them. The wealthy, the poor, the artistic, the simple, the American-born, and the newly arrived are all united by a sense of human suffering.

This suffering may take many forms. For some, it is the suffering of understanding that they will never truly be part of the wealthy world they see around themselves every day. For others, suffering is as simple as the loss of a family member, friend, or lover. For others still, it is the understanding that there will always be a division between the rich, the poor, and the various classes and cultures of the city. This suffering relates to a sense of powerlessness: despite a stinging awareness of the division and a wish to help unite the people of Los Angeles — or at least to help the poor have a better life — the individual simply cannot do anything to alleviate that suffering. This in itself leads to its own type of pain.

Another common theme in the literature discussed here is the artificial nature of the wealth displayed by the upper classes. The houses, cars, art, and Christmas decorations are all artificial presentations so far removed from reality that they do not even pretend to be real. Nevertheless, all the main characters — and some minor characters — in the works examined here take part in a type of suffering that makes them human. This is equally true for the grandmother who starts her life in Los Angeles as an undocumented immigrant washing houses to earn her papers, for the homosexual professor who suffers extreme grief when his lover dies, and for the wealthy mother who pines for a son who never calls. Despite the divisions of class, labor, and wealth, Los Angeles is a community bound together by its humanity and by the suffering that makes all its inhabitants human.

Mildred Pierce and the Suffering of Class Aspiration

In James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce (1941), the following passage captures a central tension of the novel: "And she was afraid of something that seemed always lurking under Veda's bland, phony toniness: a cold, cruel, coarse desire to torture her mother, to humiliate her, above everything else, to hurt her" (86).

This quotation focuses on Mildred, Veda's mother, who has just taken a new position as a waitress. Veda draws attention to the extreme social segregation the novel underlines — between what it means to belong to the upper classes and what it means to be part of the working class. Veda clearly considers herself part of the former. This type of segregation operates even within families: despite sharing the same blood, family members consider themselves different as a result of their position in society. In terms of Los Angeles, this also illuminates the extreme difference between those who present themselves as wealthy and those who are obliged to wait tables to make ends meet. Suffering, however, unites these two groups as human beings — a greater truth than that of wealth.

A second passage reinforces this point: "Because you are a goddam varlet, and you're afraid to have people come there, because you wouldn't know what to do about them — you just haven't got the nerve" (196).

These words make clear that Veda's snobbery is not simply the result of her perceived status or wealth. It is also the result of her own uncertainty and suffering. The passage reveals that Veda never has guests because she is fundamentally insecure. Even while regarding herself as an important, upper-class person, Veda is painfully aware of the roots that set her apart from the class she so desperately wants to join. This desire unites Veda, Monty, and Mildred. Their suffering lies in the fact that, in their deepest hearts, they do not believe they are worthy to belong to the upper classes. They are apparently unaware that suffering joins all human beings, regardless of class. In Cain's Los Angeles, suffering unites the rich and poor as human beings rather than separating them as wealthy and poor.

Tropic of Orange: Artificial Wealth and Hidden Humanity

Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange (1997) opens a window onto the contrast between appearance and reality in Los Angeles. One passage reads: "…copy the pictures other kids painted in tempera, two brown strokes for a trunk and that green amorphous do on top, sometime with red dots they called apples. Never saw one of those in the neighborhood. It was a puzzlement. No trees in this city desert." (p. 32)

Like so many other works set in Los Angeles, this extract focuses on the contrast between the artificial and the real. The art described paints an idealistic but artificial picture of the world as its creator might wish to see it — not as the environment actually is. In the same way, the extreme wealth visible in Los Angeles and among its inhabitants creates a pervasive sense of the artificial. People hide, like recluses, in their homes and cars, emerging only to consume the mass-produced food offered by fast food chains, while true suffering remains unaddressed. Nevertheless, characters like Manzanar offer a reminder that humanity is never far away and can be accessed through loss and suffering.

Both the poor and the rich suffer as a result of their innate humanity, regardless of how strenuously they attempt to deny it. This is the connecting factor between those who live artificially constructed lives and those who suffer more continuously. There is no imitation possible when it comes to suffering.

A second key passage from the novel reads: "In moments such as these, the mechanical and the human elements of Manzanar's orchestra became blurred. The car became a thing with intelligence. He envisioned the person within as the pulpy brain of each vehicle…" (p. 208).

Manzanar represents the stark contrast between the rich and the poor of Los Angeles. As in any Western city, this contrast is stark, yet it seems all but ignored by the rich and powerful — those who actually possess the means to address it. This is a theme that recurs throughout Yamashita's novel. But there is an added dimension particular to Los Angeles. Manzanar not only embodies the contrast between levels of wealth in the city but also the artificial nature of that wealth. He is the connection between the artificial surface and the humanity beneath it. By "conducting" traffic, Manzanar has found a way to communicate with the alien world of the wealthy. He possesses no wealth himself, but uses his position in life to connect with a society that has become as artificial as the cars, homes, and money it possesses. In doing so, he also succeeds in reconnecting that society to the remaining humanity of the city. Underneath all the wealth and artificial glimmer, there is still humanity and suffering — and suffering is what unites all the inhabitants of Los Angeles.

Conclusion: Suffering as the Universal Bond

Certainly, Los Angeles is a city inhabited by a wide array of human beings. Some are rich, others poor; some are gay and others are undocumented immigrants. All the experiences examined in the works above entail some form of suffering. Even those who are fully enmeshed in the artificial world of wealth access, at some point, what it means to be human — and they do so through suffering. The wide diversity of lives and people in this city is what makes this suffering all the more meaningful, because it serves a uniting function. As the literature discussed here demonstrates, suffering does not discriminate by class, race, immigration status, or sexual identity. It is, ultimately, the one experience that all the inhabitants of Los Angeles in fiction — and in life — share equally.