John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra is best in the art and craft of the short story. Possibly because of his newspaper background, he is able to shorten a tale to its fundamentals and produce tightly constructed and powerful short fiction. With his ear for speech and eye for effect, with two or three sentences the author is able to generate a psychoanalytic character from nearly any walk of life.
The protagonist of the novel, Julian English, has social status but abolishes himself by not living up to it. The novel describes how, over the course of three days, Julian English finishes himself with a series of rash acts, ending in suicide. O'Hara never gives any obvious reason or justification for his behavior, which is apparently predetermined by his character. Julian has two problems:…show more content… Julian's grandfather George English had, like himself, gotten into trouble over money, and also like Julian, his grandfather had committed suicide. Bearing that in mind Julian's father, William Dilworth English, amounts to slight more than a miserable if passionate surgeon, it seems clear that all told, a family inability exists among the English’s. The naturalism at work in O'Hara's novel is such that the conditions that Julian's misdirected act sets in motion imitate to the terms of his destiny. Within the reasoning of O'Hara's tale, Julian is predestined to die by his own hand, and as a consequence of his own incompetence. But as an accusation of the American wealthy class, Julian's death does more than just fulfill the expectations of O'Hara's naturalism. Appointment in Samarra portrays post-World War America as a land fated for tragedy, as the novel's despicable display of self-serving socialites and racketeers ensure the creation of more men like Julian