The Human Comedy
SynopsisPlot
The place is Ithaca, in California's San Joaquin Valley. The time is World War II. The family is the Macauley's—a mother, sister, and three brothers whose struggles and dreams reflect those of America's second-generation immigrants. . . . In particular, fourteen-year-old Homer, determined to become one of the fastest telegraph messengers in the West, finds himself caught between reality and illusion as delivering his messages of wartime death, love, and money brings him face-to-face with human emotion at its most naked and raw.
Story
About this book
William Saroyan's The Human Comedy is set in Ithaca, a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley, during the Second World War. At its center is the Macauley family: a mother, a sister, and three brothers whose daily lives reflect the experience of second-generation immigrants in the United States. Fourteen-year-old Homer works as a telegraph messenger, delivering messages that carry news of death, love, and money.
Homer's job places him at a strange intersection. He is old enough to grasp what the telegrams mean but still young enough to be shaken by them. He also wants to be among the fastest messengers in the West, an ambition that sits oddly beside the news he hands over. Each delivery brings him close to feelings most adults would rather keep private.
Saroyan was the son of Armenian immigrants who settled in Fresno, in the same valley, and the novel draws openly on his upbringing there. The story stays close to family life: work, school, and the gap between what a boy imagines and what he learns while carrying wartime news through a small town.
