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• 1 2018-05-24T15:49:30+00:00 Gluttony/"Disorder and Early Sorrow" 2 plain 2018-05-24T15:50:26+00:00 In Thomas Mann’s 1925 novella, "Disorder and Early Sorrow," the particulars of food and other bodily indulgence are the measure of a struggling bourgeois household. Characters include an “impassioned cigarette-smoker…who smokes as many as thirty a day” (Bausch et al. 2006, 970). Each character is placed in one of four categories: the “ancient folk,” the “old folk,” the “big folk” and the “little folk” (Bausch et al. 2006, 970) The author focuses on the younger characters, as the “ancient folk” are only mentioned once. Professor Abel Cornelius and his wife have lost their significance in society. Mrs. Cornelius struggles to get by on her husband’s salary, while the Professor loses his identity because of the changing times. His position is superfluous, as societal priorities no longer emphasize higher education or such luxuries.
  
  The story revolves around a party that the Cornelius’ are planning. Even from the opening sentence, “The principal dish at dinner had been croquettes made of turnip greens,” the work observes a near ridiculous relationship between the social currency of bourgeois sophistication and the realities of inflation (Bausch et al. 2006, 969). Hyperinflation dramatically changed German society, which confused older hierarchies. Mann addresses the major cultural and societal influences caused by inflation and exhibits even the middle class struggled to survive in the new economy. Mann highlights the true need for food and merriment in difficult times with a “gastronomical jingle, so suited, in its sparseness, to the times, and yet seemingly with a blitheness of its own: ...Friday we eat what fish we're able, / Saturday we dance round the table. / Sunday brings us pork and greens-- / Here's a feast for kings and queens!” and documents the high prices of groceries as the house prepares to host a party (Bausch et al. 2006, 976). Such evocations of modest means and joy contrast with details of “fat-blooded children” ready to “get a stroke any minute,” friends who treat others to expensive gifts and “champagne suppers,” and, precise to the point of parody, the styles of foods served at the party (Bausch et al. 2006, 976 and 986). As the Cornelius’ struggle to put on a party, a luxury that they cannot afford, they strain to keep up appearances as the world falls apart around them.
  
  Gluttony here serves as a kind of compensation for loss of status, a sign of their desperate attempt to maintain status in a situation of decline.
  
  Bibliography:
  
  Mann, Thomas. “Disorder and Early Sorrow.” Translated by H. T. Lowe Porter. In The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, edited by Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill, 969-991. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006.