The Loved One : Evelyn Waugh - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... In the novel Waugh is their spokesman and not their attacker per se. In effect, The Loved One is a totally interesting and funny book. And it goes without saying that the book is finny in a current approach. The book is filled with the anticipation of almost two decades of the modern fashion for dark humor. Waugh treats painful subjects, especially death comically. The Loved One is a story about the desecrated child of a sullied land. The lead character Aimee Thanatogenos, whose name is borrowed from the doubtful revivalist of the Twenties Semple McPherson, which means in reality beloved, combines a somehow restricted natural intelligence with a complete lack of education. Her last name ironically means the tribe of death Waugh (12-22). Leafing through the book The Loved One, one discovers that the novel is not specifically observant or informative, because the objects of its irony are so evidently absurd that they require only be explained to satirize themselves. One thing is clear though: that Waugh was not keen on showing the readers the irrationality of things they had preceding taken seriously. The irony is the book is superficial, not penetrating the surface of stupidity to any essential idealistic irrationality. Arguably, Waugh’ irony is not combined by a central theme. Rather, his objects appear to merely loose miscellany of ridiculous traditions he happened to stumbled upon around Los Angeles. The Loved One plot is somehow faulty. The leading character, Dennis Barlow, has been used chiefly as a witness of things to the satirized. There is arguably no essential meaning evolving from his encounters, including his love engagement to Aimee, the mortuary cosmetician. Their affair, not in itself an object of irony, appears a somehow a parenthesis for plot interest to please the famous taste. Entertaining but phony irony and week structure contrive the whole meaning of the novel. However, Waugh’s strongpoint is his perception of the ridiculousness of most of what he mocked; although no one had satirized it so professionally. In The Loved One, Waugh does infiltrate to a crucial philosophical stupidity, which does comprise a theme by which the irony of the novel is combined. In effect, the Dennis Barlow’s profession, specifically, with regard to his relationship with Aimee, does denote a special meaning, maybe the most crucial in the book (Waugh 26-28). Aimee has been to a local University; however at no point in her profession has she learned anything about actual beauty. Ideally, beauty for her is one of the facilitating factors that assist her to find happiness as cosmetician at that meretricious moneymaker of a graveyard, Whispering Glades. Evidently, there is nothing about Aimee that makes sense. She views herself as an atheist because of, not in spite of, her progressive ideologies. She carries herself with an air of virginal pride. Most surprising is that her jarring word for decorous is morality. Aimee’s response to the attraction of a handsome young man remains impartially implicit. It is a drive that she cannot clearly recognize because to do so would be vulgar. Aimee is also capable of mistaking gratefulness for love. In the world that Evelyn Waugh has created, she is remarkably doomed. Two suitors ...Download file to see next pagesRead More