THE USE OF SATIRE IN DEPICTING SOCIAL ISSUES IN”LUCKY JIM”BY KINGSLEY AMISS
Ключевые слова:
The core of the humour of Lucky Jim centers around Jim Dixon, the main character and his stupid and silly mistakes. Amis makes that factor an essential ingredient of his comedy. This is so especially when Dixon tries to cover them up, but ironically he just makes things worse by such futile attempts.Аннотация
The origin of this novel goes back to 1948 in the common room in Leicester University, where Kingsley Amis visited his best friend Philip Larkin.They had a conversation about the social matters and realized how careless and incompetent teachers were about their job. Amis concludes that they are not capable of teaching . As a result, he began writing his Lucky Jim to portray the poor academic life in the society . Lucky Jimwas not an only book to describe these topics. In fact, during that time a number of works appeared in the same way of Amis’s description for the English social and academic life at that time. As in John Wain’s Hurry on Down (1953), John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956), John Brain’s Room at the Top(1958) and many others, the same situation of the alienated young man is described and analyzed. The same poor situation of social life was widely studied and sharply portrayed in such works. Lucky Jim can be considered as a sharp comic story describing the snobbish academic life. The book is read as one of the funniest novels reflecting the English academic and social life in the twentieth century. There is a dark irony which reflects the real lifestyle of the British community after the World War II. In the article, several important actions and situations are cited in order toshow how Amis expresses the humor and comic sides in Lucky Jim, and the serious consequences of those actions.
Библиографические ссылки
Amis, K. (1954). Lucky Jim. London: Penguin Group
Brown, S. (2008). Is there life outside of (the genre of) the campus novel? The academic struggles to find a place in today’s world. The Journal of Popular Culture, 41, (4), 591-600.
Gardner, P. (1981). Kingsley Amis. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Salwak, D. (1992). Kingsley Amis: A modern novelist. London: Great Britain Barnes & Noble Books