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Summary: Biting satire of the British class system
Review: _Decline And Fall_ is a biting satire of the British class system. According to "the rules of the game" the British aristocracy not only own all wealth and property, but also have a licence to control and manipulate the lower classes for their own selfish needs. For instance, Margot Beste-Chetwynde, a wealthy and attractive widow deeply involved in the international prostitution trade, manipulates poor Paul Pennyfeather into travelling to Marseilles to assist several of Mrs. B-C's "ladies" detained there. For his part, Paul is arrested and forced to take the rap for Mrs. B-C. Mr. Waugh makes it quite clear that Paul is not the novel's hero. He is too light-weight and inconsequential to assume that role as the name Pennyfeather implies. Paul encounters one mishap after another, including disinheritence by his guardian, having been unjustly blamed for a prank that was played on him at Scone College, where Paul had been enrolled._Decline And Fall_ contains a bevy of colorful and picaresque characters: the shadowy butler, Philbrick, who recounts to anyone who will listen myriad versions of his background, none of them true; the drunken fool of a school-master, Prendergast, who later becomes a chaplain at the jail where Paul becomes incarcerated; the bigamist and very elusive Captain Grimes; and Mr. Sebastien (Chokey) Chotmondley, who is Mrs. B-C's constant companion, a sensitive and erudite black man, who is the subject of gossip of Mrs. B-C's aristocratic friends. Mr. Waugh's novel of class and culture clash is extraordinarily droll and full of dark humor. One character aptly sums up the author's highly cynical and critical philosophy when he puts to Paul Pennyfeather the query if he could ever imagine Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde spending time in prison? Of course not--it is the job of the lower classes to go to prison and to suffer for the pecadillos of the upper classes.
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