Vile Bodies

Adam reflects the experiences of the author, who, while writing Vile Bodies, underwent a series of crises, just like his protagonist does. For Waugh, the “roaring twenties” were a time of liquor-soaked parties and worldwide economic depression that ended with a bitter divorce from his wife of less than a year. By contrast, 1930 was a monumental year for Waugh. Vile Bodies was published that year, a culminating statement on a year of tumultuous excess in the young writer’s life. The novel was his first commercial success. This was also the year in which Waugh converted to Catholicism, leaving behind the failures of his youth and embracing a newfound reverence for tradition and conservatism.

In this sense, Adam Fenwick-Symes represents a mirror image of the author, a projection of what would have become of him (and of the society that fostered him) if he had continued down a more reckless course. Adam is a sponge, completely absorbing the culture surrounding him, rocked by one disaster after another. Unlike Waugh, who put a definite period on his life as a wild partygoer, Adam continues the civilizational party as it waltzes itself into a warzone of hellish landscapes and meaningless mass death, echoing the disastrous World War of the previous decade and