Lucy O’Sullivan
In Thank You for Smoking, Christopher Buckley tightrope walks along a fine line of reality and absurdity with just enough dips into the irrational to render the novel a crafty work of satire. Buckley’s characters are absurd illustrations of everyday tropes, and the satire of the book ultimately shines through them rather than the world around them. BR takes the idea of the “corrupt boss” to a whole new level; everyone in the corporate world has believed their boss to be evil at one point, and BR’s character taps directly into that shared experience. Tall, overpowering, self serving, duplicitous - BR is the boss you hope you never have, yet somehow you always end up having. Jeanette also fills the role of the greedy co-worker …show more content…
Like most other people who grew up when I did, from a young age a single message had been driven into me over and over: don’t smoke. Smoking isn’t cool. Parents, teachers, older adults, advertisements; they all said the same thing. Before reading Thank You for Smoking, cigarettes seemed evil, almost devilish to me; I looked down on people who smoked. This book gave me a unique opportunity to rethink a personal ideology that previously had been very unquestionable. Is it acceptable for the government to discourage something that is legal? In trying to formulate opinions on this question, I started researching the history of government anti-smoking campaigns. American anti-smoking culture mainly started gaining traction in the late 60’s, and the government’s involvement in the beginning was mainly trying to limit encouraging smoking rather than outrightly discouraging it (for example, banning tobacco advertisements on air in 1969). The main shift from the government being passive to active in efforts to reduce smoking was a result of the idea of “non-smokers rights.” The 1970’s through 1980’s brought mounting evidence that smoking also negatively affected bystanders; new terminology and data showing the hazardous effects of secondhand smoke and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) started dismantling defenses for smoking based on …show more content…
The obvious answer is yes, of course he did: at the end of the book, he is happily married, discouraging smoking, and repenting for all his previous work with the tobacco industry. But - did Nick Naylor transform? Did his character gain a new perspective on life? Is his personality and outlook fundamentally different? I have to say no, I do not think Nick transformed. Everything Nick does is for self-advancement. In the beginning of the book, recall that Nick already believed that tobacco was a harmful substance, even to the point where one of his proposals was admitting that there was a health problem. On Oprah, Nick admitted to himself that “he felt so badly about cancer” and was being a “shameless liar” on Larry King (48, 76). He was fully aware of what he was doing, yet he did it anyway out of self-improvement. He was on a good path; he loved his job, was fantastic at it, kept getting promotions, lived large - it benefitted him in every way to continue promoting tobacco. I believe that if the FBI’s accusations didn’t destroy his career, he would have continued doing exactly what he was doing. Nick didn’t change his public stance on tobacco because he realized he was morally wrong and hurting people - he already was aware of that. He changed his image because it benefitted him to do so. Nick admits to writing his anti-tobacco book “for money,” again citing expensive private school tuition, and accepting prison time because he didn’t have the
In Thank You for Smoking, Christopher Buckley tightrope walks along a fine line of reality and absurdity with just enough dips into the irrational to render the novel a crafty work of satire. Buckley’s characters are absurd illustrations of everyday tropes, and the satire of the book ultimately shines through them rather than the world around them. BR takes the idea of the “corrupt boss” to a whole new level; everyone in the corporate world has believed their boss to be evil at one point, and BR’s character taps directly into that shared experience. Tall, overpowering, self serving, duplicitous - BR is the boss you hope you never have, yet somehow you always end up having. Jeanette also fills the role of the greedy co-worker …show more content…
Like most other people who grew up when I did, from a young age a single message had been driven into me over and over: don’t smoke. Smoking isn’t cool. Parents, teachers, older adults, advertisements; they all said the same thing. Before reading Thank You for Smoking, cigarettes seemed evil, almost devilish to me; I looked down on people who smoked. This book gave me a unique opportunity to rethink a personal ideology that previously had been very unquestionable. Is it acceptable for the government to discourage something that is legal? In trying to formulate opinions on this question, I started researching the history of government anti-smoking campaigns. American anti-smoking culture mainly started gaining traction in the late 60’s, and the government’s involvement in the beginning was mainly trying to limit encouraging smoking rather than outrightly discouraging it (for example, banning tobacco advertisements on air in 1969). The main shift from the government being passive to active in efforts to reduce smoking was a result of the idea of “non-smokers rights.” The 1970’s through 1980’s brought mounting evidence that smoking also negatively affected bystanders; new terminology and data showing the hazardous effects of secondhand smoke and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) started dismantling defenses for smoking based on …show more content…
The obvious answer is yes, of course he did: at the end of the book, he is happily married, discouraging smoking, and repenting for all his previous work with the tobacco industry. But - did Nick Naylor transform? Did his character gain a new perspective on life? Is his personality and outlook fundamentally different? I have to say no, I do not think Nick transformed. Everything Nick does is for self-advancement. In the beginning of the book, recall that Nick already believed that tobacco was a harmful substance, even to the point where one of his proposals was admitting that there was a health problem. On Oprah, Nick admitted to himself that “he felt so badly about cancer” and was being a “shameless liar” on Larry King (48, 76). He was fully aware of what he was doing, yet he did it anyway out of self-improvement. He was on a good path; he loved his job, was fantastic at it, kept getting promotions, lived large - it benefitted him in every way to continue promoting tobacco. I believe that if the FBI’s accusations didn’t destroy his career, he would have continued doing exactly what he was doing. Nick didn’t change his public stance on tobacco because he realized he was morally wrong and hurting people - he already was aware of that. He changed his image because it benefitted him to do so. Nick admits to writing his anti-tobacco book “for money,” again citing expensive private school tuition, and accepting prison time because he didn’t have the