The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene design and painting.

While he works, he plans an important painting to be called "The Burning of Los Angeles", a portrayal of the chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city.

While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred", and "had come to California to die".

Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premiere erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos.

[4] In the first chapter of the novel, the narrative voice announces: "Yes, despite his appearance, Tod was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes.

A patron jokes that it is "the old teaser routine," when a pornographic film viewing at Mrs. Jenning's parlor ends unexpectedly due to technical difficulties.

The novel's climactic riot ensues and the chaos surrounding the latest Hollywood premiere turns violent outside Mr. Khan's Pleasure Dome.

The novel is filled with images of destruction: Tod Hackett's painting entitled "The Burning of Los Angeles," his violent fantasies about Faye and the bloody result of the cockfight.

[16]The novel opens with protagonist Tod Hackett sketching studio back lot scenes from a major Hollywood production.

In the scene, a short fat man barks orders through a megaphone to actors playing the role of Napoleon's elite cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo.

[17] The artist Tod Hackett's vision of art, a painting titled “The Burning of Los Angeles,” devolves into a nightmare of terror.

In the 1930s, theorists, politicians, and military leaders feared large crowds or mass formations would produce unpredictable and dangerous results.

[18] Novelists of his era praised Nathanael West's writing, but notoriety and critical acclaim for his works lagged behind those for his peers in terms of readers and book sales.

[2] Critics began to situate The Day of the Locust within the literary canon in the 1950s, more than a decade after a fatal car crash claimed the author's life.