In 1928,
when England was laboring under the delusion it was still a great empire,
Evelyn Waugh published his novel, Decline and Fall. It is a social
satire that employs Waugh's trademark black humor to lampoon various
features of British society in the 1920s. The title alludes to Gibbon's The
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Spengler's The
Decline of the West, which argued that the rise of nations and cultures is
inevitably followed by their eclipse.
In
Waugh’s novel, theology student Paul Pennyfeather falls down the slippery slope
of the drunken antics of his club and is expelled from Oxford for running
through the grounds without his trousers.
Because
of this, he loses his inheritance, takes a job teaching at an obscure public
school, where he becomes engaged to the wealthy mother of one of his pupils.
Pennyfeather is unaware that the source of her income is a number of high-class
brothels in South America. Arrested on the morning of the wedding, after
running a business-related errand for her, he takes the fall to protect his
fiancée's honor and is sentenced to seven years in prison for traffic in
prostitution. She marries another man with ties to the high government who arranges
for Paul to fake his own death and escape from prison. In the end, Pennyfeather
returns to where he started at Oxford. He convinces the college he is the
distant cousin of the Paul Pennyfeather who was sent down previously. The novel
ends as it began, with him sitting in his room listening to the distant shouts
of the same club that proved to be his downfall.
Now,
laboring under the delusion that we are still a great empire, as the images of
our Black Friday debacle and presidential election have shown us running
through the grounds without our trousers, we can only hope that we will not be
expelled from the college of civilized nations, entangle ourselves with a
brothel owner, find ourselves in solitary confinement, and escape, to begin
anew where we began before.
But hope
is not a method, is it?
