James Baquet

    If I were on a quiz show and asked to name the century in which Samuel Butler (1835-1902) lived, I’d miss it by a mile. Perhaps it’s because I often associate his “Erewhon” with Thomas More’s “Utopia,” which was published in 1516. After all, both are about seemingly perfect societies (at least at first), and both have titles that mean--ironically--”No place.” To add to the confusion, another Samuel Butler--a poet--lived from 1613 to 1680.

    But our Samuel Butler was firmly planted in the 19th century, making the appearance of his “The Way of All Flesh” on a list of “The 100 Greatest Books of the 20th Century” something of a surprise. However, he had stipulated that the book not be published until after his death, so it came out in 1903.

    The book portrays five generations of the Pontifex family, from “Old” John, born in August of 1727, to Georgie, born late in 1861. The family is loosely based on Butler’s own, and is used to criticize society in the Victorian era.

    The title is a play on words. It can mean “the common situation of humanity,” which Butler sought to portray through the Pontifex family; but “to go the way of all flesh” is a euphemism meaning to die (mortals, by definition, die, without exception). And so one can expect a pessimistic novel, one which shows the faults rather than the successes in the family’s history. In fact, both members of the fifth generation were born illegitimately, and the family’s legacy passes through them.

    The linchpin of the story is Ernest, in the penultimate generation, and the legal (though probably not biological) father of the two members of the fifth. A failed clergyman, he commits sexual assault on a woman and ends up in prison. Like England after Darwin, he finds himself losing his religious faith. He also loses his savings and his health, and he is disowned by his parents (his father is also a minister). The novel ends on a note of hope as he inherits a small bequest from an aunt, and becomes a writer.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. set a condition

    2. something put in a nicer way

    3. refused to accept as one’s own

    4. outside of marriage

    5. money left by someone who dies

    6. muscle and fat, used here to mean “living things”

    7. thing that holds something together

    8. be extremely wrong about something

    9. following something to a certain extent, but changing the details

    10. next to last