Brideshead Revisited Literary Devices

Explanation and Analysis—Conversational Weapons:

Throughout the first half of Part 1, Chapter 3, Charles engages in a metaphorical battle with his father, using conversation and social engagements as weapons. This warlike language permeates Brideshead Revisited, transfiguring normal social encounters into metaphorical representations of wartime action.

The following excerpt from Part 1, Chapter 3 is the first of several military metaphors Charles uses to describe the social power struggle between him and his father:

Next day, by chance, a weapon came to hand. I met an old acquaintance of school-days, a contemporary of mine named Jorkins. I never had much liking for Jorkins.

Charles plans to use an odious acquaintance as a "weapon" against his father, forcing him to interact with an unpleasant person. This is Charles's own way of resisting parental influence: though he is not as openly rebellious as Sebastian, he clearly resents the control his father exerts over his life.

The battle continues, with Mr. Ryder's response:

That evening [my father] wore, like a chivalric badge of battle, a small red rose in his button-hole. Dinner was long and chosen, like the guests, in a spirit of careful mockery.

In response to his son's rebellion, Mr. Ryder invites odious guests of his own—an action intended to put his rebellious son in place. Mr. Ryder ultimately has the advantage of age, resources, and power over his son, as Charles notes in the following paragraph:

Strife was internecine during the next fortnight, but I suffered the more, for my father had greater reserves to draw on and a wider territory for maneuver, while I was pinned to my bridgehead between the uplands and the sea.

While such metaphors elucidate Charles's relationship with his father, they also speak to Charles's state of mind as a narrator. War sits front and center; and the language of war, omnipresent in Brideshead Revisited, in turn reflects the strife and conflict marring the first half of the 20th century in Europe.

Explanation and Analysis—Colonial Background:

Colonial politics remain an afterthought in Waugh’s characters’ lives—a violent but unremarkable tapestry in their narratives, a secondary consideration to interpersonal drama and European wars. This lurking but largely disregarded issue of colonization emerges as a motif in Brideshead Revisited.

Oftentimes, indigenous and colonized people serve as handy metaphorical devices for the novel's characters. Take for example, the following passage from Part 1, Chapter 5:

These men must die to make a world for Hooper; they were the aborigines, vermin by right of law, to be shot off at leisure so that things might be safe for the traveling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat wet hand-shake, his grinning dentures.

Charles does not appear to care much for the aboriginal people of Australia; rather, their destitution and destruction serve as convenient metaphorical tools Charles uses to complain about the dispensable nature of soldiers.

In other instances, colonized people serve as entertainment for the novel's central characters—simple fodder for anecdotes. Note the way Cordelia speaks about people in Africa who have clearly been colonized or at least deeply influenced by European missionaries in Part 1, Chapter 4:

“It’s a new thing a missionary priest started last term. You send five bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you. I’ve got six black Cordelias already. Isn’t it lovely?”

Africans are a simple curiosity for Cordelia and nothing more. She does not truly care for their wellbeing. This callous yet somehow holier-than-thou attitude ultimately emphasizes these characters' lack of concern for the world that exists beyond the confines of their own privileged experience.

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