Chapter 1: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Chapter 1.

It is very interesting how Lucky Jim begins with an empty college campus (a strategy to reveal that Amis is strictly interested in satirizing the faculty of the university as opposed to the students themselves) because he presents the members of the staff and their actions and practices. He presents Professor Welch as the first character who seems to be representative of the strict and traditional standards of an old English university. This is interesting because, in context, him like many others professors are presented to be teaching new universities different from the traditional old English ones. It seems that the book will be about the humor of the situation of these traditional professors to be teaching students from different economic and social backgrounds. As it is, our narrator (presumably introduced as Jim Dixon) has quite a critical and spectical eye for things which presents the humor of the introduction of the setting. He is very critical of those around him even though he does not act that way but this thoughts reflect his true feelings. He shows the reader that he is not that interested in academic achievement. This is reflected when he asks Welch if his paper is worthy or intellectual enough yet the ironic thing here is that Welch himself does not know and has to ask other administrators (Amis is being witty here because he is mocking Welch in the sense that he is supposed to be highly scholarly yet he can not even comment on Dixon's work without the approval of another). I must say, I love the way Amis presents Dixon's character so far though; his imagination creates humor so far in the novel such as when he imagines Welch stuck in a toilet and how he puts images to express his strong feelings of frustration. He also plays with language by mocking what the characters say and how "proper" they try to act but in reality, it shows how pathetic they are. Welch tries to use so much proper English and says "my word" when he tries to curse which just makes him seem ridiculous. It's so obvious this novel is going to satarize education.