George Apley Marquand, John P. Term Paper

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Although he does travel, he is careful to stay at all of the 'right' hotels when he does leave Boston or go abroad, and that means the hotels where all of the other elite families from Boston stay, so he can recreate his social world even when he is not in what to him is the nexus of the universe. The point of travel is not to see other cultures or to learn new things, but to keep things as they are, and one only goes on vacation to see one's friends, and experience a little bit of Boston in Paris, London, or New York City.

As he grows older, Apley does have a sense that his life may not be completely fulfilled, simply living how his ancestors lived. He reads Lady Chatterley's Lover, a banned book by DH Lawrence, and exhibits enough "breadth of vision" to deem it to be a good book (337). However, he only reads it because he heard members of his club call it an indecent book, although he wants to judge it for himself. Finally, Apley financially helps many of his old friends who are destroyed by the Great Crash of 1929, which wins him the respect of the reader.

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Sadly, as Apley is dying, he says to his son in a letter that everything he did in his life "has amounted almost to nothing," and overall in his life he did not have "very good time" because of the tyranny of "tradition," and "the obligation of convention...made by others...designed to promote stability and inheritance" (344-345).

Although this is a moving statement, at times, when reading the book, it is hard not to wonder why the reader should care about a man who was committed not to changing things, but to keeping things the same. Apley says he was a victim of his environment, a victim of the pleasureless, aristocratic atmosphere where he was brought up. This sounds like a self-serving excuse, although it may also be the product of our own era which sees human life as full of possibilities rather than limitations. Still, the story of Apley's life and death is a compelling introduction to the turn of the century America, and its customs and cultural assumptions, regardless of whether the reader agrees with Apley that he had no choice but to obey the customs and conventions of….....

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