Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
Study Questions
1. Various critics have commented that the opening scene of the novel in Scone College encapsulates the interplay of conflicting forces that results in the chaos of the novel. Do you agree? If so, what are these forces. In what senses can the actions of the first chapter be seen as symbolic of Waugh's concerns in the novel as a whole?
2. Waugh dismisses Paul Pennyfeather as a decent but inconsequential character who is important only because of the events he witnesses. An alternative reading sees Decline and Fall as a novel of development in which the changes in Paul's character and understanding carry the major significance of the novel. What are the arguments for seeing Paul as a faceless witness and for seeing him as a developing hero? Can these approaches be reconciled?3. Grimes, Philbrick, and Prendergast, Paul's fellow employees at Llanabba Castle, keep recurring in the novel in surprising and significant ways. But what does each of them signify? Do they represent large issues, ideas, or even (as Paul says of Grimes) forces, and if so, what? How do their personalities relate to the issues they represent? What do they imply about Waugh's approach to characterization? (They are also relevant to the questions on contrasts and circular structures.)
4. Silenus, the representative of Bauhaus and Le Corbusier (he even looks like Le Corbusier),is clearly the most intelligent person in the novel, but he too is an object of the novel's satire. Is he a successful figure in the world of the novel? Does he articulate the essential problems that the novel addresses, and does he represent an answer to those problems?
5. Margot is attractive, sexy, energetic in her business, and apparently in control of the events of the novel. Is she a heroine or a villain or is she somehow outside of ordinary moral judgment? Why is it important that she is a white slaver? Why does it seem impossible for her to go to prison? Is her marriage to Paul significant or impossible? Does she continue to be successful throughout the novel?
6. Her son Peter Pastmaster seems preternaturally mature in the early stages of the novel, but by the end he seems almost a tragic figure. Do we, as we do for tragic figures, feel pity for him? Has he really replaced Alastair, or is he merely, like Alastair, the host of a wild college party? Since Alastair is the lover of his mother, is there a suggestion of incest about Peter's character? What is the significance of his name?
7. The novel seems to have a tripartite structure that is divided by broad movements between
places-beginning and ending at Scone College but going on to Llanabba Castle, to King's
Thursday, and to prison. What are the broad significances that Waugh attaches to these places,
and what is the significance of the movement from one place to the next?
8. These places are in turn associated with particular architectural features and architectural histories. What values, aesthetic or otherwise, are associated with the architecture of the various buildings? How does architecture and its history characterize the nature of the modern in the novel? Why, aside from the character of Silenus, is architecture an important device in the novel?
9. In an important passage, Silenus describes to Paul the wheel at Luna Park, and he places various characters in relation to that wheel. Other than providing the distinction between participants and observers, what are the metaphorical functions of this wheel image? In what ways does it suggest or elaborate the circular structures of the novel? What is its relation to the wheel of Fortune (repeatedly described as a much-maligned lady)? What is the relation of the circular structures of the novel to the linear movement of time?10. Decline and Fall, like other satires, makes strong use of contrasts, apparent in contrasting characters and contrasting incidents, and reinforced by the novel's circular structures. What is the significance of these major contrasts? Are they solid or unstable (that is, does Waugh propose them only to undercut them)?
11. Does Decline and Fall present a world that is simply out of control, or is their some force, good or evil, that drives the events of the novel? Is Maltravers, for example, the secret lynchpin of the whole machine? Is it important that we know what makes society run as badly as it obviously does?
12. Decline and Fall is an extremely funny novel, but this riotous humor hardly covers its very grim view of the human condition. What is the relation of comedy to despair in the novel, and how is that combination related to satire? Some critics, for example, have argued that the novel is not a satire because its despair allows no useful solution. Others have argued that the lack of a solution within the limits of the novel is precisely what makes it satiric, like other satires in which the proper values are implied by their absence. The issue here is not only how one defines satire but also how one interprets the novel. What do you think?
13. Is the Decline and Fall a religious novel? Shortly after it was published, Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism, and some critics have argued that the novel is filled with religious, specifically Catholic, values. But religious figures, from Prendergast at one extreme, to the convict who kills him at the other, are hardly treated with much sympathy. Prendergast's major doubt (why did God create the world at all?) seems particularly forceful, given the valueless world of the novel. On the other hand the theme of death and resurrection is inescapable in the novel. Is Decline and Fall a religious novel or an anti-religious one (or both)?
14. The style and tone of Decline and Fall are regarded as major accomplishments. What is their function as literary techniques, especially as ways of getting readers to look at characters and themes? Do they function as signifiers as well? If the style and tone were less spare, minimalist, even cold and unsympathetic, would the novel have the same meaning?