Sherman Coy's 'The Bonfire Of The Vanities'

Lastly, The Bonfire of the Vanities is a novel that captures both the issues of race and class, demonstrating hopelessness of the problems in New York. The book is about Sherman Coy, a bond salesman on Wall Street, who is “involved in a hit-and-run accident in the South Bronx that leaves a black high school boy, [Lamb], fatally injured” (Lemann 1). Despite leaving the scene of crime, Sherman is found and loses everything that he had as a result (Lemann 1). Wolfe has two main objectives of the novel. The first one is to demonstrate that “it was a city of classes, rigidly stratified and riven with envy and fear” and the other one is that “it was no less deeply divided by ethnicity” (Teachout 1). Sherman represents a high class of white people, while the black boy and his mother are portrayed as “corruptor simply barbarians ready to storm the gates of civilization” (Alter 3). …show more content…
It is evident that the blacks are viewed as “either a mob or exotic urban fauna… [but] never seen as individuals” (Alter 3). The novel is prominent as it shows a “reflection of how white Manhattan view Harlem and the Bronx” (Alter 3). However, Tom Wolfe seems to neglect the African-Americans’ perception of the white since “other than targeting rich whites for money and manipulation - Rev. Bacon’s approach - the black view gets lost,” allowing readers to focus on the development of this idea in the book. (Alter 3). The significance of the novel lies in the way Tom Wolfe shows New