SOURCE: “Decline and Fall,” in The Ironic World of Evelyn Waugh: A Study of Eight Novels, Northern Illinois University Press, 1992, pp. 32–51.

In the following essay, Beaty analyzes the ironic tone of Decline and Fall.

For Decline and Fall, in manuscript subtitled “The Making of an Englishman,” Waugh invents a complex of shocking disparities through which to demonstrate the reeducation of his central character, Paul Pennyfeather, whose initial beliefs about the world are shattered by his experiential discoveries of its actual nature. The series of riotous picaresque adventures that strip away Paul's illusions about honor, love, society, education, the church, the law, the prison system, and even human nature detail his fall from blissful naiveté to a painful awareness of evil. Although exposure to the chaos of modern life forces him to question the behavioral codes of his stable, upper middle-class background—precepts which he confidently assumed to be...