Right away, the title of this novel, The Day of the Locust, conjures Biblical imagery. Perhaps this imagery is most effective on someone brought up in a fairly religious environment as I was, but the reference to the plague of locusts that God sires in the Bible immediately made me expect that this book would at least be dark, if not apocalyptic. Sure enough, the horrific violence sometimes visible in Todd Hackett's mind, as well as the gruesome cockfight, reflect a setting for the novel in which morality is questionable at best. This may be a typically teenage thing for me to pick up on as well, but the main character's name, Homer Simpson, kept creating strange connections in my mind, comparing the book's protagonist's occasionally shady judgment with the cartoon character's. Whether this novel was the origin of Homer Simpson's name in the show, I don't know, but nonetheless at times it seems a strangely apt comparison.
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