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Topper Summary & Study Guide Description
Topper Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:
This detailed literature summary also contains Related Titles on Topper by Thorne Smith.
Topper Social Concerns/Themes
Preview of 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 playboy and potential adulterer. But it is purely escapist literature: For all of his mockery of bourgeoisie wealth and ways, Smith's joyful wickedness has meaning only within the confines of that class.
The symbols of success are fast cars, beautiful women, expensive clothing, and dwellings with appropriately exclusive addresses. It is an exclusively white, Anglo-Saxon world, where all Irish are policemen, all blacks are servants, and all Italians sell food. Illicit sex is praised, no amount of drinking is...
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This section contains 254 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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