H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e9 6well- rounded character. He is just a kind of blank at the novel’s
centre, as lightweight as the name Pennyfeather would suggest. He
does not seem able to evaluate his own experience at all. In a
superb piece of black comedy, he is sentenced to seven years’ penal
servitude as a scapegoat for someone else’s crimes of prostitution
and white slave traffic. Yet he fails to voice anything remotely
approaching a protest against this grotesque piece of injustice.
Paul’s blankness is one way in which he belongs to the shallow
high society world around him. It thus reflects on that world rather
badly. But it also serves to stop Paul from criticising it. The fact that
its hero is little more than a cipher is part of the rich comedy of the
book, but it also prevents him from questioning the behaviour of
his upper- class cronies. The novel’s attitude to these characters is
scrupulously neutral, and this deadpan treatment adds to its
funniness. It is a kind of literary equivalent of the stiff upper lip,
as the most shocking, surreal occurrences are reported with
off- hand indifference. Yet this neutrality of tone is also highly
convenient for a writer like Waugh, a man with strong upper- class
sympathies.
Waugh’s comedy works partly by emptying people of their inner
lives. Yet it may be his characters do not have much inner life to be
emptied of in the first place. This serves to show up their moral
flimsiness, and thus counts against them. If they are really as vacuous
as they appear, however, it is hard to see how they can be held
responsible for their scandalous behaviour, which counts in their
favour. Paradoxically, what is most to be criticised about these
drones and loungers – that they are mere paper- thin personalities –
is also what makes them most immune to criticism.
There are various ways in which narratives can load the dice in
their own favour. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is about a group of