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Sandra Weathers 17 April 2000 The comments about Monet’s painting,
Impression: Sunrise, gives an insight to the artistic vision in Waugh’s Vile
Bodies and Greene’s Brighton Rock. Monet’s Impression: Sunrise is a famous and
prime example of Impressionism. The impressionist style of painting is
characterized by “concentration on the general impression produced by a scene as
an object and the use of unmixed primary colors and small strokes to simulate
actual reflected light.” (WebMuseum) Impressionist paintings use light and color
to imitate a certain setting or reality. In both novels, Vile Bodies and
Brighton Rock, there is an impressionistic feel to them. There is a sense of
darkness and unclearness as one reads along, but have an element of ‘light’ that
is present throughout. The ‘light’ in these novels are represented through
characters. In Vile Bodies, the story is one of nothingness, meaninglessness.
None of the characters have an objective reality, it’s all subjective. The
reality is different to each character. There are concessions to nothing outside
the self. Their lives are portrayed as wasted, as if there is no other purpose
to them than to be part of a society that emphasizes the importance of money and
social gatherings, in other words, a social satire. One source of light in this
novel is Mrs. Ape and her angels. They serve as a religious element in a world
that is existentialism at its’ best.
Brighton Rock is a detective story, a ‘who
done it’. Naturally, being that it is a detective story, there is a dark quality
to it. Detective films fall into the film noire genre, because of the dark
element. Rose is the ‘light’, it is present with her. Throughout the novel,
along with the murders and crime solving, Rose is the balance, the light. Her
good balances with her husband’s , Pinkie’s, evil. Pinkie seems to be incomplete
without Rose. Monet’s painting seems to be incomplete, or unfinished. And like
the painting, Rose is the stroke of color, that reflects light in the novel.
Being that they are married, which is a holy institution, makes her different
from the unmarried characters, i.e. Ida, Charles, etc. Rose is the bonding
element in her marriage to Pinkie. The comment made by Castagnary, in the test
booklet, “They are impressionists in that they do not render a landscape, but
the sensation produced by the landscape…There they take leave of reality and
enter the realms of idealism”, has a connection to the life portrayed in Vile
Bodies. The landscape sensation, which is the world and lives of the characters,
is produced by the meaningless conversation, relationships, and subjective
mentality of the characters.
In the essay by Paul Tillich, “The Meaning of
Meaninglessness”, it states that, “He(man) has sacrificed himself to his own
productions… He who is in the grip of doubt and meaninglessness cannot liberate
himself from this grip, but he asks for an answer which is valid and not outside
the situation of his despair.” This is the case for Adam. He is searching for
something that is not outside of the satirical world that he is trapped in,
created by Waugh, constructed as an example of what the world has become or what
the world is soon to become. The author’s, as like Monet and other Impressionist
painters, have an artistic vision that is expressed through strokes and color
and a reality, or lack thereof. In the novels, the strokes are the characters,
and the color is the role that the character plays in the world created by the
author. All the elements come together to form a world, created by the artist,
either with paint or words.
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