DECLINE AND FALL

Author: Evelyn Waugh

A Review
Novel Contents:
Prelude
Part One
Chapter 1 Vocation
Chapter II Llanabba Castle
Chapter III Captain Grimes
Chapter IV Mr. Prendergast
Chapter V Discipline
Chapter VI Conduct
Chapter VII Philbrick
Chapter VIII The Sports
Chapter IX The Sports continued
Chapter X Post Mortem
Chapter XI Philbrick continued
Chapter XII The Agony of Captain Grimes
Chapter XIII The Passing of a Public School Man
Part Two
Chapter 1 Kings Thursday
Chapter II Interlude in Belgravia
Chapter III Pervigilium Veneris
Chapter IV Resurrection
Chapter V- The Latin-American Entertainment Co., Ltd
Chapter VI A Hitch in the Wedding Preparations
Part Three
Chapter 1 Stone Walls do not a Prison Make
Chapter II The Lucas Dockery Experiments
Chapter III The Death of a Modern Churchman
Chapter IV Nor Iron Bars a Cage
Chapter V- The Passing of a Public School Man
Chapter VI The passing of Paul Pennyfeather
Chapter VII Resurrection
Epilogue

DECLINE AND FALL

A Review:
INTRODUCTION
Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928.
It was Waugh's first published novel. The novel is based in part on Waugh's schooldays at
Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a
teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author's
characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s.
Waugh's satire is unambiguously hostile to much that was in vogue in the late 1920s, and
"themes of cultural confusion, moral disorientation and social bedlam...both drive the novel
forward and fuel its humour." This "undertow of moral seriousness provides a crucial tension
within Waugh's novels, but it does not dominate them." Waugh himself stated boldly in his
'Authors Note' to the first edition: 'Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE
FUNNY.'
PLOT SUMMARY
Explanation of the title.

Decline and Fall' implies that the main character during the

story gets into trouble and ends in the gutter, while Paul Pennyfeather, the main character of this
book, gets indeed in all kinds of trouble, but finally gets back to the right road again. Mrs.
Margot Beste-Chetwynde, is a popular, rich woman from the Upperclass, who enjoys a lot of
respect in society. This changes during the story, her popularity is declining, until she has to fit
in, in the rest of society to save her good name and her place in the Upperclass. The author
describes the whole high society of Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. The
whole story makes the English Upperclass laughable.
Overview. The story starts at Scone College, Oxford, on Bollinger evening. On this
evening the Upperclass members of the so called Bollinger Club have dinner together, drink a lot
and finally behave more and more outrageous. Paul Pennyfeather, a Middleclass student in his
third year Theology becomes a victim of this lot, with his suspension from the school as result. His
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guardian is not willing to help Paul with the trouble he came into completely innocent, and that is
why he needs to go to find himself a job. He goes to a scholastic agent and a mister Levy of this
agent gets him a job at a school in Wales. Although he has no experience whatsoever, Paul is
accepted as the new junior assistant on Llanabba Castle. His colleges captain Grimes and mister
Prendergest make that he feels at home quite soon and so he starts his life as a teacher. One day
the school organizes a sports day. There will be some of the most eminent parents to watch the
students during the games. Margot Beste-Chytwynde, a widow, is one of them. Paul falls in love
with her. When she asks him to join her and her son Peter during the holidays to tutor Peter, Paul
immediately agrees. And so Paul gets to know Margot better and better. He knows she wants to
get married again and one day he has the courage to ask her. She is content and agrees, although
she wants to ask Peter for his opinion. When the boy reacts enthusiastically, she tells Paul she will
make her decision in the morning. Of course she decides to marry him - she liked him from the
start - and so Paul gets engaged with one of the richest women of High Society. Margot leads a
business in South-America. At first it is kind of vague what kind of business it is, but it turns out
that it has to do something with slave trade. Three days for the wedding there are some problems
in Marseilles with a couple of girls Margot send to South-America as entertainment girls. Because
Margot is very busy with the wedding she sends Paul to solve (whatever that is) the problem. All
goes well and on the morning of his wedding Paul returns in London. But when he, his best man
and Peter have a drink just before they go to the church, an inspector of Scotland Yard comes in
and arrests Paul for mingling in Margot's dark business. And so Paul ends up in jail; he is
committed to seven years' penal servitude for traffic in prostitution. In the period he is in jail,
Paul meets Prendergest, Philbrick - the butler of Llanabba Castle - and Grimes again. Prendergest
is murdered after a while by a physically ill prisoner, Grimes escapes from the prison no one ever
escaped. Paul himself is rescued by Maltravers, the man Margot married in the meanwhile.
Because he would save her reputation and it would give Paul a change to get out of prison; he is
the Home Secretary and can get things like that done. They fake a needed removal of Paul's
appendix, so Paul can die (only on paper, of course) during the operation. After that he spends a
while at the villa of Margot at Corfu and when some time has passed he gets back to Oxford,
where he starts with the theology study again. So at the end, things turned out quite all right for
Paul Pennyfeather.

Characters. The main character of this novel is Paul Pennyfeather, a young man
somewhere in his twenties who at first seems to have a talent for bad fortune. He is a quiet, kind
man, who wants to act the right way and always thinks twice before acting. He is honest and
intelligent. An example of his good character is his dilemma about answering the question about
his leaving university: 'I understand, too, that you left your University rather suddenly. Now why was that?' This was the question that Paul had been dreading, and, true to his training, he
resolved upon honesty. `I was send down, sir, for indecent behaviour'. Another example is his
doubt after the guy who is responsible for Paul's suspension, offers him money for sort of
damages: `If I Take that money', he said to himself, `I shall never know whether I have acted
rightly or not. It would always be on my mind. If I refuse, I shall be sure of having done right. I
shall look upon my self-denial with exquisite self-approval. By refusing I can convince myself that,
in spite of the unbelievable things that have been happening to me during the last ten days, I am
still the same Paul Pennyfeather I have respected so long. It is a test-case of the durability of my
ideals. Other characters who are more or less important to the story are Doctor Fagin, Captain
Grimes, Mister Prendergest, Mister Philbrick and Margot Beste-Chytwynde. There are more
characters, but I don't find them important enough to the main theme of the story to explicate here.
Doctor Fagin is the principal of Llanabba Castle and a little bit weird. There is not really much to
tell about him. He is very Upperclass-minded and for this reason he dislikes Captain Grimes in a
way and he loves the boys who come from the `better families'. Still, he seems to me a friendly
man, who, like Paul, wants to do the right thing. He doesn't care about diploma's et cetera, he just
want the teachers in his school to have `vision': `I understand you have no previous experience?'
`No, sir, I am afraid not.' `Well, of course, that is in many ways an advantage. One too easily
acquires the professional tone and loses vision. But of course we must be practical. I am offering a
salary of one hundred and twenty pounds, but only to a man with experience. I have a letter here
from a young man who holds a diploma in forestry. He want an extra ten pounds a year on the
strength of it, but it is vision I need, mister Pennyfeather, not diplomas.' Captain Grimes is also a
weird kind of man. He always `gets in the soup', but always he finds a way or a helping hand to
get out of it again. He can be quite cynical, but is always in for a laugh and a drink with his
friends. He and Paul become soon after Paul's arrival good friends. Grimes is engaged with one of
the two daughters of Doctor Fagin and after his marriage he becomes depressive by the way Fagin
is treating him [Note the fact that Fagin prefers the Upperclass, of which Grimes is no part]. He
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simulates a suicides, but some weeks later he turns out to be still alive, asking Margot for a job in
South-America. He ends up in jail a while later, but finds a way to escape. After that he
disappears. Mister Prendergest is clergyman who got doubts and is really depressed about that.
He left the church and now teaches at Llanabba Castle, but isn't able to handle the boys. They
make fun of him because of his wig and his way of acting. Not long after Paul left with Margot he
finds out that there exists something called `the modern churchman', this offers him the change to
work for the church without feeling guilty about his former doubts. That is how he became
chaplain in the same prison Paul was locked up after his trial. But as a chaplain he neither can
manage, he seems quite unhappy to me. Then one day he is murdered by one of the prisoners.
Mister Philbrick is the butler of Llanabba Castle and it is quite difficult to tell the right story about
this man, because he tells everybody an other story about his live. He is not very trustworthy. Still
though, I find him kind of sympathetic. He, too, ends up in jail where he gets himself the best job
there is, reception cleaner, and he manages quite well. Morgot Beste-Chytwynde is at first the
most distinguished woman of Upperclass England. She is very modern in her ideas and she is a
well seen woman in High Society. And she acts like it, rules are not made for her, she lives
conform her own ways. But after Paul is imprisoned and she turns out to be a slave trader, her
good name is in danger and she has to choose a saver road by marrying Maltravers, the Home
Secretary. She really loved Paul, though and after her marriage she uses it to help Paul out of
prison, this, to me, shows her affection to the younger man she should have married when things
had turned out like they had to.
Time. The story plays in the twenties of the 20th century. Between Paul's suspension and
his return to Scone College about a year passes.
Structure. The story is told chronological. There is a great continuity, without flashbacks
or great gaps in the time passing. The end is closed, of course there is a lot that still can be told,
like what happened to Captain Grimes, but the story of Paul Pennyfeather has an obvious end in
his return to Scone College.
Location/Situation. The first part of the story is situated in a Upperclass-minded
environment (Llanabba Castle), where the difference between the social classes in the English
society becomes clear. After Paul's departure to Margot's manor it is chiefly the High Society that
is in sight, after Paul's imprisonment we get to see life in prison. Geographically the story is
situated partly in Wales and partly in and around London.
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Theme. The social classes is a main theme in this book. The ephemerality of the
Upperclass, even a woman like Margot isn't able to preserve her good reputation. With this novel
Waugh gives a comical account of an innocent plunged into the sham, brittle world of high society.
It has no deeper message although the author maybe likes to point out the laughable character of a
class society.
The intention of the writer. This novel has no deeper message, although the author likes
to point out the laughable character of a class society. It is written to amuse the public and to
provoke the patrons of social classes, and especially the Upperclass.
Part One. Paul Pennyfeather gets de-bagged by the toffs in his Oxford college and is sent
down so far down, that he ends up in a two-bit school in the middle of nowhere teaching stuff he
knows nothing about. The school, somewhere near Llandudno, Welsh, is a waste of space. It
employs plenty of teachers including a) Grimes, lurching from job to job as he constantly gets
himself in the soup, only saved by a kind of idiot optimism and his old Harrovian status; and b)
Prendergast, former vicar rendered useless by Doubts. Theyre both comic turns Grimes with his
juvenile determination to have a good time, Prendergast with his wig and the impression he gives
that he really was born yesterday. Theres the head, only keeping the place going because his
daughters are a lot more competent than he is, and the butler, another comic turn. The education
line of the school suggests that after one lesson one gets bored with that and focuses on the
ridiculous stuff. Theres the boys routine over-familiarity with all the staff. Theres the heads
gloom, occasionally enlivened by a crackpot idea for raising the schools profile. And theres
Philbrick, the butler with a past which he describes to Paul in all its Dickensian splendour. Hes
my favourite, bold and in your face enough to make anybody believe anything. It turns out hes
told completely different stories to the others and when the police do eventually track him down
its to arrest him for doing what weve seen: pretending hes someone he isnt and living off it.
And when the cops arrive hes already left. The biggest set piece is the sports day. Its a farce, but
lady Circumference the appalling snob and Margot Beste-Chetwynde the society fashion-plate
dont notice. Prendergast gets drunk at the mere whiff of alcohol at the local and shoots Lady
Circs son in the foot with the starting-pistol. And Mrs B-Cs escort is a Black American who gives
Waugh all the opportunities he needs to send up Black Americans. How we laughed. Anyway,
Paul is making his way and actually seems to be gaining something from the experience which is
a lot more entertaining than his thin existence at Oxford. This isnt the sort of novel to have the
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young, inexperienced teacher tortured by the boys: he, and they, come up with a satisfactory
modus vivendi almost from the start. He even seems to have discovered lurve although he
doesnt recognise it even when he trips over it: Grimes has to spell it out for him in an absurd
Q&A session. But Grimes doesnt do so well and, to extricate himself from the soup again, he
marries one of the heads daughters. Disaster. The last trace we see of him is a pile of clothes on
the beach and an apparent suicide note in which he seems to accept that retribution has finally
caught up with him.
Part Two. The satirising of the public school system and moves us to Margot BesteChetwyndes stately pile. Except its not a stately pile any more: she had it knocked down and
replaced with a Modernist statement. If anything, Paul is even more of an innocent abroad: Margot
has invited him to be her sons tutor for the Easter holidays, and within about a week shes got him
to propose, and shes had him give a demonstration of his credentials in the bed department.
Everythings fine, since you ask: in this world it seems a woman with nearly two decades of sexual
experience can be satisfied by a cloistered virgin like Paul. Throughout these chapters things
simply happen to Paul all of them at Margots instigation and, Paul, were a bit bemused by the
way stuff happens. Margot feels like demolishing her house, a uniquely untouched Tudor national
treasure. She wants to replace it with a satire on Modernism designed by an autistic egomaniac.
No problem. So when Paul becomes her next fad, now that shes bored with the Black American,
were as happy to accept it as he is. Throughout this section, as things become darker and darker,
the character where resolutely describes in terms that make sense to the innocent Paul. The white
slaves Margot is exporting weve guessed by now, even if Paul hasnt get stuck at Marseilles.
She sends Paul to sort it out with a bit of bribery and corruption and, he was arrested shortly after
his arrival back in England, on the morning before his wedding. He should have been warned by
the way Margots rich-woman vagueness disappears when she interviews the girls for the venues
that make her money in South America. Paul seems to have been born yesterday when it comes to
understanding the ways of the world but unlike Prendy, he never asks himself difficult questions.
He blithely lets it all happen and, just as the wheel is about to give a great lurch downwards, he
drinks to Fortune, a much-maligned lady. Silly boy: he doesnt realise hes in a novel by an
author who only pretends not to care. As for Margot, she planned to have Paul so comprehensively
shafted the lavish wedding preparations are real enough, after all but, well, shes one of the
Fitzgerald rich: she leaves a trail of destruction behind her as she does one thing after another on a
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whim. Suddenly the destruction of the house makes complete sense: thats what the super-rich are
like.
Part Three to the end. Venue: prison cell. As ever, Paul takes it utterly in his stride. He
puts himself through the absurdities of both the strict regime of Standard Regulations as when
hes bopped on the head with his own shoes when saying sorry, because he was speaking out of
turn and of the equal and opposite absurdities of the new governors liberal policies. Paul knows
where he stands against the pointless rigours of bread and water he satirises the new regime
and the governor, with his degree in sociology, from a university in the midlands. Paul is fine
with it. He loves solitary confinement and asks for another four weeks of it after the statutory four
he gets when he arrives. But thats not allowed, and the new gov forces unwanted company on him
culminating with a murderous psychopath. Their forced strolls around the prison yard are pure
absurdist farce, as the guard responds to any silences with barked orders to talk. And so on. The
psychos finest moment comes when the gov allows him carpenters tools to bring out his
creativity: he cuts off the padres head the padre being poor old Prendergast, who has discovered
that atheism is no barrier to a career in the modern church. It seems arbitrary until you remember
that he did shoot a boy in the foot, which over many chapters has gone through the stages of
gangrene, amputation and, eventually, death. So it goes. Paul did not suffer much, he sets up a
typically absurd escape plan. Hes turned up in a thinly-disguised Dartmoor, where Paul gets
moved to, and lets the guards tie themselves in knots in the fog as he leaps on one of their horses.)
Margot hasnt forgotten him, and he soon stops being surprised by arrivals of caviar and high-class
novels. But well, shes been seeing rather a lot of the very toff who de-bagged Paul all those
months before and shes had a proposal from the other idiot who looks set to become the new
Home Secretary. If she marries him hell probably find a way to get Paul out. It all works like
clockwork as Waugh shows how none of the normal rules apply in Toff-land. Lucky old them
and lucky old Paul. The wheel and theres a neat reference to a fairground wheel that sends
everybody spinning off unless theyre canny enough to be at the centre has come full circle.
Paul get back at university, back doing what he wants: despite his apparent lack of any workable
moral code (he wonders about Margots guilt and, well, simply accepts that she couldnt possibly
be sent to jail) hes studying to become a priest. Hes all right but in the last chapter we meet
someone who isnt. I havent mentioned Margots son Peter, the one Paul was pretending to teach.
Hes always been the most grown-up character in the novel, dispensing advice and cocktails
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whenever necessary. But by the time hes old enough to go to Oxford himself hes an alcoholic
wreck, a member of the same mindless set that did all the damage in the first chapter. Another
wheel has come full circle and
ANALYSIS USING CHARACTERIZATION
This is Waugh's first book, and one of his finest. This is an absurd story of a young man,
expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, who obtains a job as a teacher at a less than
salubrious third-rate public school in Wales and is then entrapped in a series of bizarre events
that take him on a rollercoaster ride through upper-class circles. The central character, Paul
Pennyfeather, is a naive soul, full of gusto and enthusiasm, but lacking in common sense. The
use of the term "sent down from Oxford" to describe his "decline" is lightweight in comparison
to his subsequent "fall". The expulsion from Oxford is the true fall in his life.
I was a little disappointed by the latter half of the book, the rollercoaster speeds up, and it
does feel rushed and a little too contrived by the final chapters. But this is Waugh's first novel, so
a minor issue in the overall context of the amusing storylines and entertaining characters. In a
little foreword to this novel the author entreats us to bear in mind throughout that his book is
meant to be funny, and we have, though at times somewhat strenuously, to take him at his word.
The author affects to tell the story of a varsity man who was sent down, but the story is, as it is
intended to be, so very silly that he has had merely to interest himself in its superficial
presentation, and he manages this so extremely well. But anyway "Decline and Fall" is a great
lark; its author has an agreeable sense of comedy and characterisation, and the gift of writing
smart and telling conversation, while his drawings are quite in tune with the spirit of the tale.
The plot is presented with a maximum of economy and a studied will to shock. The hero,
a product of the public-school and academic systems, is an innocent marked as a victim of the
corrupt world into which he is unwillingly thrust. Paul Penny feather lets things happen to him;
he would never have made a hero, the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of
events of which his shadow was witness. Returning from a meeting of the League of
Nations Union, he is debagged by members of the Bollinger Club, who are having their annual
dinner and greatly enjoy being riotous and destructive, and as a consequence he is sent down for
indecent behaviour. He becomes a schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle, where Dr. Fagan, a cynical
9

but not too exacting headmaster, assures him that he has been in the scholastic profession long
enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason which he is anxious
to conceal. Paul falls in love with Margot Best-Chetwynde, the mother of one of his pupils, a
millionairess who runs a chain of brothels euphemistically called The Latin-American
Entertainment Co. Ltd. She introduces him into Mayfair society and involves him in the whiteslave trade without his knowledge. He is arrested on the morning of their marriage and sentenced
to seven years imprisonment. He spends a few months in prison and is rescued by Margot, who
arranges to have him sent to a nursing home headed by Dr. Fagan, M.D. After a mock-operation
he is alleged to be dead and allowed to disappear from the social scene. He returns to Oxford and
resumes his studies in theology.
Pauls incursions into various spheres of English society are so many encounters with the
irresponsibility, amoralism, corruption or sheer madness discernible in many aspects of English
life. Whether at Oxford, in an employment agency in London, in a public school in Wales, in a
country house, a prison, or a nursing home, people act with the same carelessness and
unawareness of the real implications of their actions. Pauls experience with the Bollingers is
only a rehearsal for his experience in the world: he is ill-treated under the eyes of the Junior
Dean, who does not intervene because Paul is not important enough. Actually, the representatives
of authority implicitly encourage the destructiveness of the Bollingers because of the highly
prized port that is only brought up from the cellars when the college fines reach fifty pounds.
Similarly, Paul is unjustly condemned and sent to prison, while Margot Metroland escapes
punishment. Pauls innocence and naivete contrast with, and emphasize, the outrageous
behaviour of the other characters. On the other hand, his passivity and lack of insight into human
character not only reveal the inadequacy of his education but also his incapacity to discriminate
between good and evil. In a way, Waugh is more contemptuous of the people who, like Paul,
stick to the rules without understanding them than of the rogues who deliberately defy society or
disturb its order and get away with it.
Though none of Waughs early characters is capable of a responsible, mature, or simply
humane, attitude, some appear to have in his eyes a kind of saving grace which is not unrelated
to the superb aplomb with which they take their pleasure in complete defiance of all moral
judgment. Margot Metroland belongs to this category: beautiful, attractive, and rich, she makes
the most of what life has to offer without troubling in the least about right or wrong. Very
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skillfully, Waugh provokes at once indignation and tolerance for the people of her kind. Yet she

is an impostor like Grimes, Philbrick and Dr. Fagan. These characters success in life is
proportionate to their impudence; no representative of traditional institutions, whether in justice,
education, or religion, performs his task with integrity and a sense of responsibility. Grimes, an
unscrupulous rogue, is always in the soup; yet he is never let down because he is an expublic-school man. Philbrick is a swindler and a criminal who ends up as opulent as he has
always pretended to be. Fagan, a cynical impostor on a grand scale, will do anything provided it
is remunerative. He is twice an agent in Pauls change of personality, once when Paul becomes a
schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle and a second time when he presides over Pauls mock-death.
For both he and Paul this event is the beginning of a new phase in life, i.e., of another round of
swindling for the one, of another period of dull and unrealistic initiation into life for the other.
After his departure from Oxford Paul meets the same characters playing the same parts in
different spheres of society: Llanabba Castle, Mayfair, Egdon Prison. Wherever he goes,
inefficiency, madness and dishonesty prevail. Prendergast, the unhappy and unauthoritative
schoolmaster, who left the Church because he had doubts, is seen at Egdon as the prison
chaplain. His doubts are a source of disorder even in prison, where his incapacity to impose
discipline lands him into trouble with prisoners as it did with pupils. By a cruel irony, his head is
sawn off by a visionary maniac, a man who has appointed himself the sword of Israel: the lion
of the Lords Elect. Philbrick imparts the news to Paul in chapel:
O God, our help in ages past, sang Paul.
Wheres Prendergast to-day?
What, aint you eard? es been done in.
And our eternal home.
Damned lucky it was Prendergast,
Might ave been you or me!
The warder says and I agree
It serves the Governor right.
Amen
The gruesome humour of the song leaves no doubt as to the way in which this piece of
savagery should be interpreted. Prendergasts weakness marks him as a victim. He had left the
Church then gone back to it after discovering that there is a species of person called Modern
Churchman who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to
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any religious belief. Sir Lucas-Dockery, the governor of the prison, is a caricature of the modern
reformist who applies literally and without understanding them the new methods of psychoanalysis. He is more concerned with the success of his method than with the welfare of the
prisoners under his care and will blindly go to any length to prove his optimistic conviction that
almost any crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression. (p. 177) He gives
carpenter tools to the mystic criminal who kills Prendergast. The episode is turned into an
inhuman farce which derides the lunacy, not of the inmates, but of those who are chosen to
ensure the working of institutions. Clearly, it is a mad world which trusts a Fagan to educate its
children, a Lucas-Dockery to see to it that criminals are fit to return to society, and a Prendergast
to officiate as a representative of the Church. Yet each episode is treated with apparent levity and
a non-committal fake-seriousness which demystify society as well as the people who take
themselves seriously or distort the ideals they pretend to be serving. Society is a sham, which
Waugh exposes with insolent gusto, bringing to light the disorder created by well-meaning
incompetent fools. Scoundrels are not more harmful because they at least know what they are up
to.
The heartless and barbarous world of Decline and Fall is pictured with a disconcerting
but calculated detachment which makes it all the more shocking. The Junior Dean who
witnesses Pauls debagging does not protest when he is sent down. Neither Margot nor Peter
can be bothered about Pauls unjust condemnation. Potts, Pauls best friend, is the main witness
for the prosecution at his trial and is even commended by the court for his unshakeable attitude.
Paul takes this general callousness for granted. Apart from his youthful infatuation for Margot,
he himself seems hardly capable of genuine feeling. He is not unattractive as a character because
he is a victim who never retaliates, a convenient scapegoat. The main character is also static in a
different sense, for his experience in the world leaves him almost unchanged. He acquires a sense
of humour, which is perhaps an indication that he understands a little better what goes on around
him, but he behaves much as he did during his first stay at Oxford. He joins again the League of
Nations Union and acquires a new friend called Stubbs, with whom he develops the same kind of
relationship as with Potts. The only lesson Paul has learned as a future clergyman is to avoid
Prendergasts mistake. Order in the Church must be preserved at all costs, which suggests that
social order should also be enforced if necessary. Pauls failure to achieve maturity is typical of

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Waughs pre-war heroes and no doubt implies that maturity and real understanding of traditional
institutions are non-existent in contemporary society. The academic world is not more reliable
than fashionable London. Lady Circumferences moral code is a mere set of conventions and
prejudices: though a representative of the landed aristocracy, she is not more aware of the values
traditionally connected with her class than the newly-made peer Maltravers, who was born in a
slum. Left to themselves the young drift into debauchery. Society is only a gathering of
unattached individuals easily adaptable to any situation because nothing really matters. The
reckless and shameless pursuit of excitement has become the only recognizable law, but it
doesnt lead to happiness; apart from Philbrick and Fagan all the characters are disenchanted,
even Grimes, the life force. Margot regains respectability by marrying Maltravers, and takes
Alastair Trumpington as a lover to shake off the boredom of her new married life. Her son, Peter,
Waughs first Bright Young Thing, is disappointed in Paul and in his mother, who shows him the
way to irresponsibility.
In scene after scene madness, greed, irresponsibility and selfishness are displayed as
normal behaviour in Church, in prison, at school, or among London fashionables. There is no
room for reason or humaneness in this savage world. The opening scene at Scone is fairly typical
of what happens in Waughs novels: the social lite destroy the symbols of culture and
civilization, breaking a grand piano, smashing China, throwing a Matisse in a water-jug or
destroying the manuscript of a poem. The novel ends, as it began, on the evening of the
Bollingers annual dinner; they play their game of destruction with the same gusto as their
predecessors. Yet, obviously, Waugh feels more sympathy for them than for the social outsiders
who occasionally cross their path and whom he slightly despises for their tediousness, their lack
of style and of charm. He combines satire of an unprincipled social lite with a hardly concealed
admiration for them, which adds to the ambiguity created in his early novels by the absence of
implicit standards.

CONCLUSION
Evelyn Waugh's famous first novel lays waste the "heathen idol" of British sportmanship,
the cultured perfection of Oxford and inviolable honor code of English upper classes. The novel
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was so received by the public that it meant Waughs consolidation as writer. Most critics agree
that Decline and Fall is a clever, funny novel in which language is used as a masterly instrument
for criticism.
Paul Pennyfeather, innocent victim of a drunken orgy, is expelled from Oxford College,
which costs him a career in the church. He turns to teaching, frequently the last resort of failures,
and at Llanabba Castle meets a friend, Beste-Chetwynde. But Margot, Beste-Chetwynde's
mother, introduces him to the questionable delights of high society. Suddenly, and improbably,
he is engaged to marry Margot. Just as they are about to say "I do," Scotland Yard arrives and
arrests Peter for his involvement in Margot's white slave-trading ring.
Modest and unassuming theology student Paul Pennyfeather falls victim to the drunken
antics of the Bollinger Club and is subsequently expelled from Oxford for running through the
grounds of Scone College without his trousers. Having thereby defaulted on the conditions of his
inheritance, he is forced to take a job teaching at an obscure public school in Wales called
Llanabba, run by Dr Fagan. Attracted to the wealthy mother of one of his pupils, Pennyfeather
becomes private tutor to her boy, Peter, and then engaged to be married to herthe Honourable
Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde who later becomes "Lady Metroland". Pennyfeather, however, is
unaware that the source of her income is a number of high-class brothels in South America.
Arrested on the morning of the wedding, after running an errand for Margot related to her
business, Pennyfeather takes the fall to protect his fiance's honour and is sentenced to seven
years in prison for traffic in prostitution. Margot marries another man with government ties and
he arranges for Paul to fake his own death and escape. In the end he returns to where he started at
Scone. He studies under his own name, having convinced the college that he is the distant cousin
of the Paul Pennyfeather who was sent down previously. The novel ends as it started, with Paul
sitting in his room listening to the distant shouts of the Bollinger Club.
Works Cited
Bradburry, Malcolm. Evelyn Waugh. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyed, 1964
Davis, Robert Murray. Evelyn Waugh, Writer. Norman: Pilgrim Books, 1981
Heath, Jeffrey. The Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and His Writings. London: Weidenfel
and Nicholson, 1982
Stannard, Martin. Evelyn Waugh: The Critical heritage. London: Rougtedge and keagan Paul,
1984
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Waugh, Evelyn. Decline and Fall 1928. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1937

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