Lucky Jim (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
By SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
*Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
*A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers
Read more from Spark Notes
King Lear: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Romeo & Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Like It (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bird by Bird (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Much Ado About Nothing (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMacbeth: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Julius Caesar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Measure for Measure (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5100 Years of Solitude (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outsiders (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard III (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Shrugged SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerchant of Venice (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Autobiography of Malcom X (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Henry V (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Gentlemen of Verona (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winter's Tale (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Raisin in the Sun (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTempest: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Comedy of Errors (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Othello Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dune (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet (No Fear Shakespeare Graphic Novels) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Lear (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard II (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5East of Eden (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Lucky Jim (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
Related ebooks
Summary and Analysis of "Lucky Jim" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReady Reference Treatise: Lucky Jim Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharles Dickens: Three Novels (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard Times (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Export Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Expectations - Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Signalman: A Ghost Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Henry James's "Wings of the Dove" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFinding Gessler Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Expectations (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharles Dickens: Four Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Charles Dickens's David Copperfield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Study Guide to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Tale of Two Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Christmas Carol Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Study Guide to Bleak House by Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Graham Swift's "Waterland" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Expectations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's "I Died for Beauty" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharles Dickens, A Very Peculiar History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOliver Twist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Useful Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat-expectations-(illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Book Notes For You
Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Poverty, by America By Matthew Desmond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi: Summary by Fireside Reads Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill: Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Workbook for Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Lucky Jim (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Lucky Jim (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis
© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing
This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC
Spark Publishing
A Division of Barnes & Noble
120 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
www.sparknotes.com /
ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7633-2
Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Context
Plot Overview
Character List
Character Analysis
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapters 6-7
Chapters 8-9
Chapters 10-11
Chapters 12-13
Chapters 14-15
Chapters 16-17
Chapter 18
Chapters 19-20
Chapters 21-22
Chapters 23-25
Important Quotations Explained
Key Facts
Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics
Review & Resources
Context
Lucky Jim remains the primary accomplishment of Kingsley Amis, whose work extended over five decades to include poetry, literary criticism, journalism, television plays, short stories, science fiction, and a James Bond novel. As Amis's first published novel, Lucky Jim set the tone for Amis's lifelong preoccupation with the role of higher learning in Britain. Lucky Jim was also the first in a long line of British campus satires that shifted the object of ridicule from the students to the faculty.
Kingsley Amis was born on April 16, 1922. The Amises lived a lower-middle class existence in Norbury, a suburb just south of London. Kingsley attended the City of London private school on scholarship, and enrolled in the spring of 1941 at St. John's College, Oxford, to study English Literature. At St. John's, Amis met Philip Larkin, who shared Amis's love of jazz and admired Amis's talent for mimicry. Larkin would become a life-long friend, as well as a renowned poet and novelist in his own right. World War II soon interrupted Amis's college career, and he served in the British Army between the years 1942 through 1945.
After the war, Amis resumed his studies at St. John's and took on several literary side projects. He began writing a novel, a critical study of Graham Greene, and his first volume of poetry, Bright November. In 1948, Amis married Hilary Ann Bardwell. Awarded a first-class degree in English Literature, Amis took up a position in 1949 as Lecturer in English at University College of Swansea in Wales. Amis taught at Swansea, then at Cambridge, until 1963, when he retired to write full time.
Amis began work on Lucky Jim in 1951. According to Amis himself, a 1948 visit to Leicester University, where his friend Philip Larkin held a teaching post, inspired the novel. Lucky Jim was published in 1954 to tremendous popularity, although some critics accused Amis of vulgarity because of the coarse language and immature behavior of Jim Dixon. In spite of these negative reviews, Lucky Jim won the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award the following year.
The controversy over the literary merit of Lucky Jim is indicative of the tense climate of post-World War II Britain, when the hierarchies of culture and class were subjected to scrutiny and even some upheaval. The Education Act of 1944 raised the age of minimum schooling for British children and created a system of subsidized secondary education for students of all social backgrounds. Considered a practical success, the Act also created a disoriented subset of students who felt alienated both from their lower-class origins and from academic institutions still run by upper-class Oxford professors. Jim Dixon's resentment of Professor Welch, who holds power over him but also seems incapable of doing his own work, is a good indication of the sentiments of the newly educated post-War generation.
Journalists quickly classified Amis as a member of the Angry Young Men, a label that continues to stick, despite Amis's own protests. The Angry Young Men refers to a group of 1950s British writers, including John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe, and Colin Wilson, whose work concentrated on the oppression of lower-class, male protagonists under the British class system. Amis has also been associated with The Movement, another group of 1950s British writers who shared a common concern with straightforward prose style. The group adopted this form in reaction to the Modernist prose writing of the twenties and Thirties that seemed to them overly romantic and experimental. While Amis renounced association with The Movement as well, this designation still highlights the similarities between Amis's prose style and a tradition of British comedy that predates Modernism. By linking Amis to The Movement, critics also unwittingly placed him in the same pantheon as comic writers such as Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson, and early 20th- century writers such as Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling.
Plot Overview
Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer in history at a provincial English university in the years after World War II, nears the end of his first year at the school. Dixon has not made a good impression upon the faculty and knows that his superior, the absent-minded Professor Welch, could ask him to leave at the end of term next month. Fearful of making further bad impressions or revealing his inner disgust for Welch, Dixon agrees to give the end-of-term lecture on the theme of Merrie England
and to