Examining the Aristocracy: Individual Sequences and the Key Dramatic Point in 'Brideshead Revisited' Bella Bullen 12th Grade

Brideshead Revisited acts as an ode to the dying English aristocracy which Charles Ryder appears to admire so much. Martin Amis asserts that the novel ‘squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly’, with Ryder informing the reader that Brideshead had ‘the atmosphere of a better age’. Waugh produces this book in in light of, in his opinion, the death of the aristocracy, caused ‘not by socialism, but by the ‘modern’’[1], as represented by Ryder’s fellow soldier, Hooper, who embodies the modern man within the novel. Much of the book is devoted to this appreciation of the aristocracy within England, and the depiction of its fall, as symbolised predominantly by the Flyte family. The title of the first book; ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ (an in arcadia I am), also serves the purpose of appreciation of the upper class, demonstrating how Charles feels his ‘arcadia’ is in Oxford, the place which allows him to amalgamate into the lifestyle of the aristocracy, and particularly of Sebastian Flyte. But, despite this devotion to this dramatic point, it cannot be claimed that ‘each little sequence’ is directed precisely to the dramatic point of said representation of the aristocracy, as many the books also...