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Sword of Honour Trilogy Master’S Diploma Thesis Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Petr Řeháček Belief, Society and Change in World War II Britain in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. 2012 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgement I would like to express many thanks to my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. for his valuable advice and kind support. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Evelyn Waugh‟s Life and Work ....................................................................................... 6 1 The „Waste Land‟ Generation ............................................................................... 8 2 The Disillusioned Romantic ............................................................................... 13 3 The End of the Age of Heroes ............................................................................ 23 4 The Age of the Common Man ............................................................................ 32 5 A Single Unselfish Act ....................................................................................... 41 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 49 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 54 List of Abbreviations MA Men at Arms OG Officers and Gentlemen SH Sword of Honour US Unconditional Surrender Introduction The Sword of Honour trilogy, originally published in three separate volumes, Men at Arms (1952). Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961), presents the final, and probably the most mature work by British novelist Evelyn Waugh. Portraying the life of Guy Crouchback, a descendent of an ancient yet dilapidating aristocratic family, during the turbulent period of the Second World War, Waugh voices his implacable attitude towards the „modern age‟ which has irreversibly destroyed the long-established traditional values. Although the trilogy is not directly autobiographical, “its shape is partly determined by . Waugh‟s own life” (Kermode xiv) since many of Guy Crouchback‟s war experiences reflect those of his literary creator. Nevertheless, Waugh‟s aim was much higher than describing the destiny of an individual person. In Christopher Sykes‟ words, “in his work Evelyn attempted to achieve a great ambition: to describe in terms of a fictional experience close to his own the significance to men and women of the ordeal of the crisis of civilization which reached its climax in World War II” (Sykes 415). To understand Waugh‟s view of this crisis, however, it is indispensable to get an insight into his own incompatible personality. Unquestionably, “Evelyn Waugh would present a formidable challenge to any biographer” (Toynton). Noël Annan calls him “the real deviant of my generation” who “deviated from the values we esteemed” (Annan 213). Even his closest friends like Christopher Sykes do not deny his shortcomings; all the more his enemies accuse him of snobbishness, intolerance, bigotry or even fascism. Surprisingly, even Waugh himself admits his peculiarities. In the largely autobiographical novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), the author concisely characterizes the protagonist, a middle-aged writer, as a man whose “strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing, and jazz – everything in 1 fact that had happened in his own lifetime” (14). Not only did Waugh idealize the past, but he also connected this ideal with the concept of the English gentleman exclusively. Significantly, “despite his own middle-class origins, he remained to the end a virulent advocate of the old aristocratic order that everyone else in post-war England was busily trying to dismantle”; and even “increasingly immersed himself in his self-parodying role as 19-th century country squire” (Toynton). Another distinctive feature of this talented British writer is his fervent adherence to the Catholic Church, to which he converted at the age of twenty-seven. There is a lot of speculation about this moment in Waugh‟s life; some biographers and critics stress “his determined attempts to live, despite an inherently dry soul, as a believing Catholic” (Dirda); others emphasize the rational nature of his belief; the only apparent fact is, however, his ardent apology for the Church in which “he found his rock” in consistency with his “extremely conservative political position” (Carens 69). Characteristically, Waugh despised the changes in the Catholic Church, like the replacement of Latin with vernacular languages in the mass celebration, introduced by the Second Vatican Council. In the Preface to the revised version of Sword of Honour, he even calls these changes “a superficial revolution”, realizing that, unintentionally, the trilogy became “an obituary of the Roman Catholic Church in England as it had existed for many centuries”. Therefore, in Waugh‟s opinion, both the aristocracy and the Church as the symbols of civilization are annihilated by the increasingly opportunistic modern society. Against the background of the large conflict of values, Waugh depicts the fate of the individual characters. From Decline and Fall (1928) to Sword of Honour (1965), the main character of Waugh‟s novels is usually a „passive hero‟, a “victim exposed to forces with which he cannot contend” (Sykes 86), and an innocent man to whom unfortunate things merely happen without any possibility of his averting them. 2 However, contrary to Waugh‟s first works in which the world is simply absurd and incomprehensible, Sword of Honour tries to propose at least a vague hope of an individual‟s mission in this senseless world. While Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall undergoes infliction without learning from his mistakes, Guy Crouchback in Sword of Honour corrects his original enthusiasm by replacing “quantitative judgements” with individual charity. Although Waugh maintains his thoroughly pessimistic view of the world, always describing “a lunatic world posing as the reasonable order of things” (Lane), the scathing sarcasm of his early works has been supplemented with a discernible moralizing and apologetic element. Despite his Catholic self-projection, however, Guy Crouchback remains a solitary figure till the end of the novel. This thesis examines the ways in which Waugh depicts the Second World War as a decisive moment of the civilization crisis which resulted in the advent of „the age of the common man‟ as Waugh derisively called the post-war period. In as much as Waugh intended the trilogy to be read as a single work, this thesis primarily focuses on the wording of the revised, eleven-chapter Sword of Honour published in 1965; with consideration of some relevant variations in the original three volumes. Chapter 1 contextualizes Waugh‟s life and work within the larger frame of the generation of authors concerned with the destiny of man in the changing modern society, such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or Graham Greene. Chapter 2, dealing with Men at Arms, focuses on Guy Crouchback‟s idealized view of the coming war as a conflict between the forces of good and evil, his love affair with the army and inescapable disillusion; and compares Guy‟s story with Waugh‟s own military career in the first year of the war. Chapter 3, concerned with Guy‟s further adventures as described in Officers and Gentlemen, investigates how Waugh perceives the Second World War as a turning point at which the old ideal of personal honour was abandoned in favour of the 3 increasingly depersonalized and bureaucratized warfare. The final part of the trilogy, Unconditional Surrender is investigated from two different perspectives. Firstly, chapter 4 shows how Guy‟s repugnance to British co-operation with Stalin and Tito reflects Waugh‟s deep-rooted aversion not only to the East-European totalitarian regimes, but also to the British Welfare State. Finally, Chapter 5 is focused on the evolution of Guy‟s religious opinions from the ambition to rescue the Kingdom to the modest fulfilment of single unselfish tasks, which is particularly interesting with respect to Waugh‟s own problematic character. The chapter is also concerned with Waugh‟s disappointment at the changes in the Catholic Church towards the end of his life when he published the revised Sword of Honour. With respect to Waugh‟s difficult and essentially unhappy personality of which he was never able to get rid as well as the irreconcilable Catholicism of his post-war years, it is interesting to observe how Sword of Honour, his final and most mature work, completed towards the end of his life, organically joins together both sides of Waugh as an author – the satirist and generally subversive early Waugh lacking any sense in the inexplicable modern world, and the zealous Catholic apologist who finds in religion the last refuge from the overall chaos and futility. Although the Catholic accent of the trilogy may seem obscure to the reader and many of the author‟s opinions subjective and indefensible, this thesis demonstrates that Guy Crouchback‟s transformation from a romantic crusader seeking „quantitative‟ solutions to a disillusioned
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