The Bonfire Of The vanities Essay
Tom Wolfe's book, The Bonfire of the Vanities, certainly can be seen as a reflection of the attitudes, concerns and events of the latter part of the twentieth century. Tom Wolfe says himself that his aim for this book was to write a "realistic novel that crammed as much as of New York City between covers as you could." (Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire Of The Vanities (Introduction), 1979.) In doing this Tom Wolfe has created a novel firmly fixed in both a time and a place. This sense of time and place as much as the plot and characters contributes to a novel that deals with many late twentieth century themes. The themes and concerns of the late twentieth century that are looked at in the book include wealth, the gap between rich and poor, the importance of image, presenting well to the world, a preoccupation with sexuality, roles of minority groups, race issues, law and order, the justice system, the role and significance of the media, city living (basically life in New York), and the !corruption of political systems and politicians. The theme of image is a very important idea in society and this is reflected in the book in many ways. The main way is through the image of the characters and, most of all the image of the main character
Wolfe in this book is not only reflecting the problems of the media but also the problems of the entire capitalistic world. Another part of this is the justice system. The justice system is portrayed as being part of the political structure that it quite obviously is, not only in the book, but in the real world also. He portrays the justice system as being controlled by the politicians and for that reason as not always fair. The main way that Wolfe expresses this opinion is though the storyline and the unjust treatment of Sherman. The part of this book that shows this the most is when Sherman is arrested and led through the crowd of protesters and media into the police station. " 'Over hear, Sherman! 'Hey Sherman!' They were all yelling for Sherman." (Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities Pg 503.) " 'Hey Sherman, how you gonna plead?' 'Sherman, who's the brunette?" (Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities Pg 503.) This is the part of the book were Sherman is being harassed by! heir jobs and how much they earn. This is reflective of modern society and how we are greatly concerned with image. It is interesting to note that Wolfe shows us a great contrast of characters in the sense that there is a lot of different types of social standings shown throughout the characters. By doing this he is reflecting a lot of images that are present in our modern society. In the book The Bonfire of the Vanities the author, Tom Wolfe has packed in as much of New York Culture as possible and therefore has written a book that is very reflective of our times. He has reflected the attitudes, concerns and events of the latter part of the twentieth century. And eventually Wolfe tells us; "They closed in for the kill. And then they killed him." (Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, pg 547.) Wolfe clearly shows in this incident the misuse of the power of the press in
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Approximate Word count = 1256
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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