Eating People Is Wrong: Analysis of Major Characters
"Eating People Is Wrong" explores the complexities of relationships and individual struggles within an academic setting, focusing on a group of characters who navigate their insecurities and societal expectations. The protagonist, Stuart Treece, is a literature professor in his late thirties who grapples with feelings of inadequacy stemming from his provincial background and the changing moral landscape of contemporary society. His internal conflicts lead to a sense of isolation, as he struggles to connect with his students and proposes to a fellow academic, Emma Fielding, who is equally paralyzed by perfectionism and guilt.
Louis Bates, a young poet, embodies the tension between ambition and societal rejection, ultimately facing despair that drives him to contemplate suicide. Meanwhile, Eborebelosa, an international student, confronts issues of race and identity, feeling alienated in England despite his noble heritage. Other characters, such as the self-serving critic Carey Willoughby and the pragmatic vice-chancellor, illustrate the varied responses to academic life and the search for meaning. The narrative delves into themes of moral responsibility, the search for identity, and the impact of personal failure, reflecting a broader commentary on the human condition in a rapidly evolving world.
Eating People Is Wrong: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Malcolm Bradbury
First published: 1959
Genre: Novel
Locale: A provincial English university
Plot: Wit and humor
Time: An academic year during the 1950's
Stuart Treece, the head of the English department at one of Britain's provincial “redbrick” universities in an “anywhere city.” In his late thirties, he specializes in the literature of the eighteenth century but recently has become interested in Victorian poetry and has published a book on A. E. Housman. Although in many ways suited to provincial life, Treece feels that he may be missing out on something. He is made uneasy by his unprestigious academic appointment, his degree (from London University rather than an Oxbridge school), and his war service (in the London fire brigade). Having spent his “formative years” in the heyday of British socialism, he also is uneasy with his place in a modern world in which his brand of moral scrupulousness is decidedly out of fashion. By limiting his possessions, he hopes to keep his character undefined and free, but the result is not freedom but lack of substance; he becomes “a person without a firm, a solid centre.” Wracked by doubts and later by guilt, he cannot pass a simple road test, communicate with his students effectively, or convince Emma Fielding to accept his proposal of marriage. A representative of debilitated liberal humanism in a posthumanist age, he lacks sufficient will to make the leap from thought to action and ends up curiously alone in a crowded National Health hospital ward, suffering from exhaustion and loss of blood.
Louis Bates, who gives up a teaching position in a girls' school to pursue, at the age of twenty-six, what he assumes is higher education. A member of England's lower middle class, he proves difficult for the establishment, even at this provincial university, to define or accept. Ill mannered but enthusiastic, he is “a curious mixture of the promising and the absurd.” Trying too hard to be accepted, he only makes it more apparent just how self-centered and anomalous he is. Fond of comparing himself to William Shakespeare, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others, the pompous Bates may have genuine literary talent and does manage to have his poetry published. Rejection and self-pity finally drive him to attempt suicide.
Emma Fielding, a twenty-six-year-old postgraduate student who still has not completed her thesis on fish imagery in Shakespeare. Although one of the “upstart middle class,” she sees herself as having no future and is in fact in retreat from the present. As scrupulous as Treece, her perfectionism precludes her actual participation in the world. Looking like a photograph of Virginia Woolf, she finds herself pursued by the very men who would appeal most to a woman with a saint complex wanting nothing more than to minister to the afflicted. By the novel's end, she has only the guilt that she, like Treece, feels for the small parts they have played in Bates's suicide attempt.
Eborebelosa, one of the novel's several foreign students. His education is being financed by a terrorist group. Claiming that he is despised in England because he is black, he spends much of his time locked in closets and toilets until Treece tells him to face his problems and the world more directly and to stop expecting others to treat him in the royal fashion he believes is his due as the son of a West African tribal chief. Eborebelosa courts Emma (according to tribal custom) and is rejected. He is later attacked and beaten by a group of teddy boys.
Carey Willoughby, a critic, poet, and novelist, one of England's Angry Young Men. A contemptuous and utterly self-centered man, he has included an especially unflattering portrait of Treece in one of his novels. Believing what Treece and the others only passively suspect, that Bates does possess talent, Willoughby helps him get his poetry into print.
The Bishops, the elderly and solidly middle-class couple in whose Georgian home Emma rents an apartment. They are among the people Emma “collects” (eats).
The vice-chancellor, an official at Treece's university, trained in business and “full of bonhomie.” He advocates practical education and equates a university with its buildings. Contemporary novels confuse him because they lack the concluding resolution that he requires.
Dr. Viola Masefield, the department's assertive and deter-minedly fashionable lecturer in Elizabethan drama. Her attempt to seduce Treece ends when he hears the room “booming with moral reverberations.”
Jenkins, a sociologist who accepts whatever clothes and ideas are currently in fashion; these ideas include group dynamics and social engineering. Treece does not feel himself to be part of Jenkins' schemes and overall patterns, but he does listen as Jenkins explains just how inconsequential academics such as themselves have become.