Main Character and Environment

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Vandover and the Brute is a book written by Frank Norris who was an admirable writer who used his characters in a way to show how they were influenced and affected by outside sources. The novel, which was written between 1894 and 1895, was first published in 1914 and has become an exceptional text in modern literature. The novel is about the main character, Vandover, who slowly leads his life into inevitable destruction. Actually, this book is regarded as a rich and entertaining novel regarding Vandover, an artist who graduates from Harvard University but ends up in poverty because of bad habits and ill-luck. Similar to his main character in McTeague, Norris paints Vandover as a very brutish individual. In the novel, the main character is not only shaped by the environment but also the author. Frank Norris does not seemingly give room for Vandover to progress, which helps in giving the perception or impression that Vandover is being a brute. This in-text analysis focuses on examining whether we are victims of nature or the environment based on the main character of Vandover.

Close Reading/In-text Analysis of the Novel

The main character in this novel, Vandover, was a talented artist who could have become successful in his career from the onset, but decided to go to Harvard as anticipated by his father and colleagues. From the text, Vandover seemingly enjoyed his work as an artist, particularly his ongoing work on a portrait of a wounded soldier fighting his last battle with a lion. Through is work as an artist, Vandover seemingly pursued the uncouth aspect of life with an apparent intellectual curiosity. During his time at Harvard, Vandover hooks up with his two friends from high school, Charlie Geary and Dolly Haight. The brutish nature of Vandover starts to emerge while at Harvard through the emergence of his intrinsic appetites to fulfill bodily pleasures. Vandover starts to overindulge in food and drink, smoking, and playing around with girls, but it was not clear whether he obtained much pleasure from these habits. His life in Harvard is dominated by sustained engagement and indulgence in vulgar passions, which are habits that are partly brought by the influence of his peer group. Additionally, Vandover started to surround himself with expensive items he couldn't afford and tended to demean himself, which eventually affected his academic performance. Vandover developed an appetite for loose girls after graduating from Harvard while his friends went back to San Francisco where they spend the whole day sleeping and carousing the entire night. Despite being engaged to Turner Ravis, Vandover started picking prostitutes from a club named The Imperial (Norris, p.105).

After his graduation from Harvard, he failed to assume responsibility for his life through securing a job as an artisan painter. He was unable to develop an independent foundation for his life because of his sense of entitlement and dependence on his father's support when working on his masterpiece. Vandover's life became worse after one of his prostitutes, Ida Wade, became pregnant and committed suicide after he decided to stop seeing her. While Vandover vowed to change his lifestyle after this incident, the change did not last for a long time, which was an indicator of his inability to tame the brute within him. The suicide of Ida was the commencement of a series of events that characterize Vandover's decline from a respectable individual to a better for the remainder of his life. He later succumbed to a gambling addiction that made him divert his cherished possessions into unprofitable ventures.

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While his friends continue to progress and prosper in their lives, Vandover loses his status in life and the society because of his gambling addiction and the other chain of events. The culmination of Vandover's sad state of affairs is when he loses all his possessions to gambling, loses his job, and becomes penniless and homeless in the final chapters of the novel. Vandover finally loses his life to cheap bodily pleasures, idleness, and waste.

Are we Victims of Our Nature or Our Environment?

One of the emerging themes from the in-text analysis of Vandover and the Brute is the impact of nature or environment in people's lives. Throughout this novel, Frank Norris seemingly explores the themes of habits and addiction in relation to an individual's nature and environment. Norris utilizes a heightened naturalistic style to explore how the brute within and the outside environment contributed to Vandover's decline from a respectable member of the society to a beggar who eventually loses his life to cheap pleasures, idleness, and waste. Based on the text and the writing style employed by the author it is seemingly difficult to blame Vandover for the chain of events that eventually contribute to his decline. Through close reading, it is easy to grow sympathetic of Vandover's character because he was seemingly a product of his environment. The answer to whether the characters are victims of their nature or victims of the circumstances or influences in their environment requires analyzing the role the brute within and the surrounding environment played in Vandover's eventual destruction.

Through an evaluation of the title "Vandover and the Brute", the author already plants the idea and gives us a perception of Vandover's character being a brute. In this case, he does not give room or chance for Vandover to progress, but plants the idea of his pliable nature. Throughout the story, Norris seemingly portrays the idea that Vandover's destructive lifestyle was largely because of the brute within. The author suggests that Vandover's behaviors were brought by his inability to tame the brute within. Vandover and outsiders use the idea of the brute within as the scapegoat for his failure without a critical evaluation of the role the environment played in his inevitable destruction. For instance, when he was reluctant to accept the social causes of his poverty, Vandover examined himself and blamed the beast i.e. the brute within as the reason for his decline. In this case, the author insinuates the idea that Vandover would have been defeated even if he completely conquered and suppressed the brute within (Norris, p.128).

The author carefully paints the notion that Vandover was a victim of the dreadful beast within through attributing his failures to the beast. For example, Norris states Vandover came to a point where he thought he was no longer human because he was continually sinking to some beast (Norris, p.204). Vandover's old enemy i.e. the brute within that generated the stranger sensations for vulgar passions that resulted in his ultimate destruction. Therefore, the author seemingly suggests that people are as susceptible to their nature as Vandover was to the brute within. This essentially means that just like the characters in this novel, people are victims….....

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