Topper Summary
Thorne Smith

Everything you need to understand or teach Topper by Thorne Smith.

  • Topper Summary & Study Guide

Topper Summary

The novel Topper satirizes the newly developed upper middle class in American society: its pretension, hypocrisy, conformity, and insistence on conventional moral behavior. Like all of Smith's novels, it also attacks the Volstead act, which left America dry and dependent on homemade or illegally procured alcohol. Its major theme might be termed "immoral" regeneration, as the staid banker Topper is transformed from a conventional lawabiding citizen to a drunken...

(read more from the Short Guide)