Resumo de Decline And Fall

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When Waugh wrote his first novel,Decline and Fall,in 1928
one of the twentieth centurie's great character writers was
unleashed on the world. Unleashed is a particularly apt
term, smacking as it does of rabid dogs: Waugh is a writer
you will either love or loathe. Those with a dark sense of
humour will be drawn to the absurdities Waugh exposes both
in Decline and Fall and in his subsequent works, whilst
those to whom political correctness is hallowed will find
themselves horrified at some of his more boisterous
excesses.

Decline and Fall opens in a fictional Oxford college in the
1920's and folows the fortunes of ingenou Paul
Pennyfeather. A mild mannered student of theology,
pennyfeather is innocently imbroiled in a drunken rampage
by a gang of sons of the rich and great. Thus expelled for
indecent behaviour, his only option is to become a teacher
and he finds himself at Llanabba school for boys, a
fictional representation of some of England's murkier, and
less praiseworthy public schools. Interaction with the
offspring of England's elite and with his similarly fallen
fellow teachers moulds Pennyfeahter anew and he leaves the
school engaged to one of society's most elligible and
attractive women, Margot Metroland. Never one for a happy
ending, Waugh reveals Margot to be a madame, a Mrs Big of
the white slave trade. Ever the gentleman, or ever the
ingenou depending on your point of view, Pennyfeather takes
the rap for Margot and finishes the book in prison, where
he is able to resume his theological studies in
surroundings not dissimilar to those of the Oxford college
in which the book opened.

Waugh's hillarious set-pieces and superb characterisation
make this a tremendously lively read. Ever pugnacious,
Waugh lampoons character types and institutions
mercilessly, although the his love for his years at oxford
shine through despite the comparison to the prison of the
closing chapter.

Decline and Fall is the best introduction to Waugh's
novels, bringing together his often vicious humour, his
talented use on unattributed dialogue for comic affect and,
despite his assertion that characters are mere tools for
the writer, some of the great characters of literature.
Subsequent novels dealt with deeper, often deeply
emotional, issues but all were built on the raw material of
this, his first novel.

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