Genre
semi-autobiographical novel
Setting and Context
19th century England
Narrator and Point of View
Narrator: George Ponderevo;
Point of view: first person
Tone and Mood
Contemplative, criticizing
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: Edward Ponderevo, George Ponderevo; Antagonist: death, decay, the passage of time
Major Conflict
George Ponderevo, the narrator of the novel, describes his life and how he got involved in a very successful business of selling a youth and strength elixir called Tono-Bungay, with his uncle, Edward Ponderevo.
Climax
Helping his uncle escape England in one of his aerial inventions, after the collapse of his empire, the narrator realizes the ridiculousness and fragility of life and material things after watching his uncle die from pneumonia.
Foreshadowing
"I'm sure," he said, as one who decides, "I'm very glad to see you."
-uncle Edward foreshadowing of the successful business that he will start with his nephew, the narrator.
Understatement
"He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be silent, in a vast implacable condemnation."
-the narrator describing his uncle Edward, understating his capabilities that will show in the future.
Allusions
"I had begun with a glider that I imagined was on the lines of the Wright brothers' aeroplane, but I could not be sure."
Imagery
The imagery of Bladesover House and its surroundings, a microcosm in itself:
"Now the unavoidable suggestion of that wide park and that fair large house, dominating church, village and the country side, was that they represented the thing that mattered supremely in the world, and that all other things had significance only in relation to them."
Paradox
N/A
Parallelism
"I have been a native in many social countries. I have been the unwelcome guest of a working baker, my cousin, who has since died in the Chatham infirmary; I have eaten illegal snacks-the unjustifiable gifts of footmen-in pantries, and been despised for my want of style (and subsequently married and divorced) by the daughter of a gasworks clerk; and-to go to my other extreme-I was once-oh, glittering days!-an item in the house-party of a countess."
Metonymy and Synecdoche
"I was awake longest that night. My cousins slept, the sleep of faith on either side of me."
-the narrators religious cousins representing the entire faith in contrast to the narrator's voiced doubts about it.
Personification
"The hand of change rests on it all, unfelt, unseen; resting for awhile, as it were half reluctantly, before it grips and ends the thing forever."
