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Originally Posted by ustou
One of the first things I got from it was the idea of "Crome, the yellowing house", like Huxley was giving us a glimpse into the aging and obsolete world of the English elite, where people get to live their lives without the worries of work and responsibility and can release their entire selves to their passions, whether amorous, artistic or intellectual, and the lurking spirit of capitalism was ready to chomp down on the countryside, as represented by the main character (whose name I have already forgotten despite finishing the novel two weeks ago) abandoning his boyish passions in order to return to city life, disguising this defeat as responsibility.
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Your statement about Dennis's return to city life inspired me to re-read the ending. The book goes full circle with the entrance and exit of Dennis. In the beginning he arrives expectant and you get focused attention on his arrival on the bicycle.
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Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camlet station, he felt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, was good. The far-away blue hills, the harvests whitening on the slopes of the ridge along which his road led him, the treeless sky-lines that changed as he moved–yes, they were all good. He was overcome by the beauty of those deeply embayed combes, scooped in the flanks of the ridge beneath him.
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His exit is pathetic. I had forgotten about the barometer needle shifting to the left indicating a change in weather and the reference to the car taking him back to the train station being his coffin/hearse. He is defeated/deflated throughout his stay. His love interest thinks he's a child; Mr Scogan continuously insults him about his ignorance and makes fun of his writing attempts. He discovers what Jenny wrote about him in her red journal.
His final line is a quote by the poet Landor. Both in his entrance and his exit, he expresses himself using quotes from his schooling rather than his own unique words.
Quote:
Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher (also titled in places as On His Seventy-fifth Birthday)
BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
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