Viola Chasm

How does Waugh exploit different settings to highlight his moral concerns in 'A Handful Of Dust'? Waugh's satirical novel, 'A Handful of Dust', 'depicting an ailing group of society' demonstrates his concerns that inter-war society is reverting to a more primitive and ultimately dangerous type. The novel, despite its comic appeal, serves as a warning to the hedonists of the 1920s and 1930s. Waugh deplores inappropriate hedonism, perhaps heavily influenced by his strong religious beliefs. Many key characters in 'A Handful of Dust' take pleasure seeking to the extreme.

These characters seem contained in a bubble of complete ignorance regarding the outside world and live for themselves. Waugh demonstrates this effectively by simply failing to include significant historical events such as the market crashes of the 1930s and the frightening rise of fascism in Europe. This serves to 'cocoon' the characters and it depriving them of any context with the outside world, highlighting the readers sense of a gulf between the characters. This isolated self-indulgence, in Waugh's view, was leading to the 'decline and fall' of inter-war society.

Waugh uses many rhetorical techniques to highlight this, but most significantly he poignantly utilizes various locations to show his unease about 'civilisation'. Waugh primarily uses London as a setting to demonstrate the superficial lifestyle led by its inhabitants; he invites us to explore the futile round of parties and the inevitable gossip that ensues. Life in London is certainly portrayed as repetitive, Polly Cockpurse's party is said to be an "accurate replica of all the best parties she had been to in the last year. " This could be likened to 'Gatsby's' parties in Fitzgerald's critical novel, 'The Great Gatsby'.

Characters such as Polly are two dimensional and her desire purely to duplicate previous events illustrates how monotonous and superficial her plans are. Polly fails to show any originality and assumes that by conjuring a party by patching together ideas from previous parties that she will be admired. Waugh uses Polly Cockpurse to analyse social activities of this era and we can see the boring and vacuous nature of her 'initiative'. Waugh subtly hints that the adult characters contributing to London's thriving party scene cannot see this, whilst a child's view is far more accurate; John Andrew comically describes Polly as the 'monkey woman'.

Here, Waugh is exploiting a child's natural ability to see people for their true worth, to demonstrate Mrs Cockpurse's true colours. The bestial nature of the observation harks back to Shakespeare's plays when animal imagery was associated with anyone whose morals had slipped below base level. Brenda is also seen to have animal associations being described as feline and 'cat-like'. This seems very appropriate and not accidental as Waugh certainly wishes to highlight Polly's, and others, lack of morality.

One of the socialites we meet at Polly's event is Viola Chasm, again the name 'Chasm' conjures images of emptiness and highlights the hollow existences of some of London's members. 'Chasm' also applies to the idea that there is an abyss between this breed of new-money socialites and the outside world. As with many of Waugh's novels, he uses the timeless comic technique of applying names that bespeak the character's nature. Another Character that we are introduced to with such an assignation is Mrs Beaver (who can be seen to gnaw away at people). Mrs Beaver can be seen as a severe warning as to what is to come.

From the outset of the novel we are given an insight Mrs Beaver's repugnant character. He complete neglect for others and disregard for human worth is effectively shown her comments on the tragedy at an acquaintances flat: "'Was anyone hurt? ' 'No one I am thankful to say,' said Mrs Beaver, 'except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof... '" This response is repugnant and Mrs Beaver goes on to discuss how she could profit from this disaster! Mrs Beaver and her son, John, are parasitic and feed off other people, even after a catastrophe that caused the loss of life:

"I must get on to them this morning before that ghoul Mrs Shutter snaps them up" Mrs Beaver can be seen to be a classic villain, stood with her back to the fire. This choreography conjures images of rogues such as Fagan. Mr Beaver, whose appearance is also deceptive, is a relatively pathetic character when we first meet him, calling his mother 'mumsy'. Despite this feeble entrance, John Beaver goes on to worm his way into Tony and Brenda's life and draining both there financial and moral resources. This sly, certainly cowardly nature of John just demonstrates how the ethics regarding society's actions are rapidly being disregarded.