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Early Greene and Waugh
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are no easy solutions: Pinkie’s death at the end of Brighton Rock does
not bring his evil influence to an end; the Devil is always with us.
Evelyn Waugh’s career as a novelist, like Graham Greene’s, spanned
the central years of the twentieth century – from the Jazz age to the 1960s.
Waugh’s work may be divided into two periods: in the first period he
wrote brilliant satires on the lives of the wealthy upper classes; in the
second period he explores the place of Catholicism in the modern world
with deep seriousness while always retaining a satirical eye for human
absurdity. His best-known earlier novels are Decline and Fall (1928), Vile
Bodies (1930), and A Handful of Dust (1934). Decline and Fall depicts the
innocent adventures of a young man, Paul Pennyfeather, who becomes a
schoolteacher in a seedy school in North Wales. The novel satirises public
school life (Paul’s fellow teachers are either petty criminals or mad) by
showing how the characters of the ruling classes are formed.
‘Silence!’ said Paul again.
The ten boys stopped talking and sat perfectly still staring at
him. He felt himself getting hot and red under their scrutiny.
‘I suppose the first thing I ought to do is to get your names clear.
What is your name?’ he asked, turning to the first boy.
‘Tangent, sir.’
‘And yours?’
‘Tangent, sir,’ said the next boy. Paul’s heart sank.
‘But you can’t both be called Tangent.’
‘No, sir, I’m Tangent. He’s just trying to be funny.’
‘I like that. Me trying to be funny! Please, sir, I’m Tangent, sir;
really I am.’
‘If it comes to that,’ said Clutterbuck from the back of the room,
‘there is only one Tangent here, and that is me. Anyone else can
jolly well go to blazes.’
Paul felt desperate.
‘Well, is there anyone who isn’t Tangent?’
Four or five voices instantly arose.
‘I’m not, sir; I’m not Tangent. I wouldn’t be called Tangent, not
on the end of a barge pole.’
In Vile Bodies the emptiness and lack of values in the lives of the
‘bright young things’ – the younger generation in the inter-war years –