The portrait of mankind in Vanity Fair highlights man’s shortcomings in the same way that a black and white photograph highlights the features of a woman’s face. But just as the woman’s cheeks will not be shown to be rosy red in an old picture, the accomplishments of men are not shown in William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Not even the most endearing of characters are given clemency by Thackeray in his satire. But those compelling characters are rare in this novel. Instead of discouraging readers through the absence of a hero Thackeray keeps the interests of his readers with his antidotes and sermons within each chapter and people's innate fascination with the darker side of life.

Vanity Fair is the story of Rebecca Sharp, a calculating socially ambitious woman without money or family to her name. She arrives in London through her friend Amelia Sedely and immediately fixes on Amelia's older brother, Joseph, as her hope for a wealthy husband. But Amelia's fiance, George Osbourne, does not want his reputation tarnished by being related to a governess and convinces Jos Sedely to forget Becky. Miss Sharp then goes off to her post as a governess at Queen's Crawley to serve Sir Pitt Crawley. She elopes with Rawdon Crawley, the younger son of Sir Pitt Crawley and heir to the spinster Miss Crawley's fortune. Once Miss Crawley learns of her nephew's imprudent marriage, she immediately disinherits him.

Meanwhile Amelia and her mother and father are now living in poverty after Mr. Sedely lost his fortune after being cheated by the older Mr. Osbourne. Amelia remains dedicated to George, even though he ignores her once their engagement is broken off because of her circumstances. His best friend, Captain William Dobbin, however remains loyal to the family out of his secret love and affection for Amelia. Dobbin informs George of the destitute Amelia is living in and that she remains in love with him. George pities Amelia and elopes with her all the while ennobling himself for saving such a wretched girl.

Becky and Amelia are now officer's wives and struggle to maintain a lavish lifestyles each is either accustomed to or wants. Each of them has a son and each is named for his father. Soon afterwards George is killed a Waterloo and Amelia again returns to poverty. Becky vows to make her husband a rich man, but his laziness and her deceitfulness keep them in debt, even though Becky is secretly stashing away money and gifts from wealthy gentlemen. When Rawdon discovers his wife's new fortune he leaves her. He accepts a new commission in the army, but contracts choleric fever and dies. Becky wanders Europe until she runs into Amelia, Dobbin, Jos Sedely, and little George Osbourne. Amelia inherited her living from Mr. Osbourne through Dobbin's intervention and the old man's pity for his grandson. Amelia and Dobbin are now together and Dobbin is acting as a father figure to little George. Becky re-establishes her claim on Jos and frightens him to the point of death. Even though Becky did not marry Jos, she takes on all his fortune. Back in England little Rawdon Crawley has inherited from Queen's Crawley and the elderly Miss Crawley's estate from his Uncle Pitt (Rawdon, Sr.'s older brother) and grew up under the care of his Uncle Pitt and Aunt Jane once he was left fatherless and abandoned by his mother.

Through people’s inclination to recognize and fixate on the flaws in others, Thackeray brings out similar characteristics in his reader. Vanity Fair explores the seven deadly sins and their role in the daily lives of people. Though the novel is set in nineteenth century England, its themes of mankind’s disappointments transcend generations. Thackeray’s personal life was continuously shaped and reshaped due to the shortcomings of men and failed expectations of not only others, but also his personal flaws and failures. Although Thackeray does not make any predictions as to the future of mankind, it can be argued that Thackeray saw more than just the mistakes humans made. Instead Thackeray could be suggesting that humans are unconditionally flawed and the only characteristic that distinguishes individuals from each other is the way in which they are flawed. However, Thackeray does not leave Little Rawdon Crawley desolate and doomed. Instead he gives him another chance to explore a new life through the fortune he deserved. Thus the final theme and lesson in Vanity Fair is redemption. As an avid religious realist Thackeray incorporates redemption from evil in Vanity Fair. The reader has many warnings of the failures of men from Thackeray, but in the end is left in a balanced world. -CMT

animal farm

George Orwell satirizes totalitarian regimes in his novel, Animal Farm. The novel was aimed primarily at the Soviet Union and the oppressive nature of Stalin's regime. It uses animals rather than people to depict uninformed masses blindly following charismatic leaders desperate to keep their power. Orwell warns that world leaders must be held accountable for their actions, and provides a possible scenario in which too much power is in too few hands. He does not, however, offer a solution.
The novel starts out with the animals under the dictatorship of Mr. Jones who owns the farm. Pigs lead the farm animals in a successful revolt against the humans of the farm. Assuming power, the pigs set rules for the animals to follow including, all animals are equal and "four legs good, two legs bad." The animals work extremely hard to ensure that Animal Farm is prosperous, but the pigs rapidly infringe on their rights and freedoms. They lie, manipulate, steal and exploit the loyalty of the animals to keep their precious power. By the end of the novel, the hard working horse, Boxer, is murdered by the pigs, and they are walking on two legs just like the humans.
Because the animals are ignorant, most of them cannot read, and do not question the authority of the pigs they are easily taken advantage of. Orwell uses the depressing fate of the animals as a warning of the dangers of uninformed masses. Leaders must be held accountable for their actions. or the power will make them desperate for more. Freedom and equality are not guarenteed, and Orwell calls for the people to protect them.
The novel's warning is too important to be ignored. The tragic ending, Boxer's death and the animals' realization of their oppression, makes the novel effective because it is an example of what could happen in the real world. After reading Animal Farm, it is clear that there must always be an awareness of inherent human rights to equality, and a fight to protect them from the abundant human versions of George Orwell's swine.
naf

The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury derives its greatness from many sources. Providing readers with a compelling plot, portraying tragically realistic characters, and utilizing a structure that, though somewhat influenced by the work of James Joyce, achieves a unique and thought provoking effect all its own, William Faulkner’s work comes together as a truly fantastic piece of literature that has survived throughout the generations. Spanning about thirty years, The Sound and the Fury focuses on the Compson family, and is told (in stream of consciousness form) through the eyes of Benjy, a severely retarded thirty three year old man, Quentin, a neurotic college student on the verge of suicide, and the sadistic, frustrated Jason (all of whom are brothers). The final section is told in third person form, and focuses mostly on Dilsey, the Compson family’s servant. The story details the tragic and demoralizing effects of the Compson family’s decline, calling upon notions of lost Southern glory and the disappearance of Southern values such as honor, purity, and morality. At the heart of this novel is Caddy, the Compson brothers' captivating sister, whose actions (she gets pregnant out of wedlock, and is later left by her husband when he discovers that Caddy’s child isn’t his) have dramatic and terrible effects on her brothers and the rest of her family.
One of the most interesting aspects of this work is the way it depicts time; told out of chronological order, any real sense of cohesive time (especially Benjy’s) becomes lost in most of the narrations amongst numerous flashbacks and memories that are extremely confusing at first, but ultimately help to advance the overall meaning and impact of the work. Focusing on themes such as birth, death, love, honor, family, obsession, corruption, and hope, the messages of The Sound and the Fury transcend the context of the Compson family microcosm. Through placing symbolic, archetypal significance on his central characters, Faulkner enables his work’s subject matter to apply to the greater human experience, each part of it relating to humanity as a whole in some way, and thus each individual reader. While this novel is complex, challenging, emotionally riveting, and very well executed, its true significance comes from the fact that it not only encompasses all the necessary requirements of “good writing,” but also achieves a universal effect that explores the emotions, motivations, and psychological experience of the human race as a whole.
-GM

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a capturing novel about the life of Billy Pilgrim. Billy, like Kurt Vonnegut, was a prisoner in World War II and survives the largest massacre in European history: the bombing of Dresden. Some of Vonnegut’s story is fictional but the majority is based on real events and real people. World War II was an incredibly violent war and Vonnegut does an amazing job capturing some of the truths of this war and exposing them to the world. The Tralfamadorians, especially, enforce the brutality of the Dresden bombing and World War II. The Tralfamadorians are aliens who allegedly abduct Billy and make him see life differently. These aliens can see in the fourth dimension which allows them to see all moments in one’s life at the same time, making death much less important. This is a way for the reader and the soldiers to escape from brutal reality. Slaughterhouse-Five is considered by many to be Kurt Vonnegut’s best pieces and it is easy to see why. The novel captures the reader with its unique structure, honesty, and nonchalant violence. The bombing of Dresden was a horrible event considered to be worse even than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Vonnegut is able to convey this violence in an excellent, educational way.

The Catcher in the Rye

Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in 1951, a time of post war transformations of attitudes. Due to the dissension of the country caused by World War II and the Great Depression, society was in a state of tradionalism and conformism. Salinger accuses this society of being in a state of "blissful denial" as a coping mechanism for avoiding the problems that faced the generation in the wake of such a difficult time. As a response to these attitudes, Salinger created his unique and dynamic protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Holden Caulfield is a one of a kind character with a revolutionary representation. He shocked his decade with his blunt, to the point, commentary on his environment. He expresses interesting insight on all of the people around him that set the tone for his rebellion against the attutudes of his time. Holden has a significant hatred for the "phoniness" of the adultworld as they fail to reject the reality of the times. The concept of the catcher in the rye involves Holden's desire to save all children from growing to adulthood. He describes to his younger sister, Phoebe, with whom he maintains a close relationship with, that he wishes he could stand in a rye field and catch the children as they fall of the "cliff" of childhood. This novel started a revolution as it started a generation of thinking concerning attitudes of realistic individualism that was identifiable, especially with youth. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel as Holden is a refreshing character with new and interesting insights into the obvious hipocracy that the adult world suffers from throughout history.
-gff