Trust Themes

In Trust, Andrew hires Ida to ghostwrite his autobiography in an attempt to rehabilitate his public image, which was tarnished when he profited from the 1929 Wall Street crash. Andrew conceives of himself as a “Great Man” and only becomes satisfied with Ida’s ghostwriting when she cribs her style from other autobiographies of “Great American Men.” Those men—including Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie—are U.S. politicians or entrepreneurs. Through their autobiographies, each one positions himself…

Andrew Bevel and Harold Vanner both write accounts of Andrew and Mildred’s marriage, and both accounts subjugate the character who represents Mildred in one way or another. In Andrew’s autobiography, he attempts to strip Mildred of any of her striking originality and to obscure the complexity of her character. He replaces her authentic passion for avant-garde composers with a naïve enjoyment of the most well-known classical compositions. He also says she has a childlike…

According to Andrew, his job is about “being right.” If he’s wrong, he says, then he uses all of his “means and resources” to bend reality so that it aligns with those mistakes so that his mistakes are no longer mistakes. In essence, Andrew says that he has the money to bend the world to his will, which means that nothing he does can ever be wrong. Andrew uses his power to cover up…

Andrew Bevel repeatedly argues that self-interest and the common good can go hand-in-hand. He tells Ida that that’s the basis of his business philosophy, and the approach goes back to his great-grandfather, William. In Andrew’s telling, William bought non-perishable goods like cotton from southern farmers during the embargo of 1807, when those goods became more or less unsaleable. As a result, farmers greeted William as a hero who saved them from poverty. William turned…