Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities: Insularity Among and Within Communities Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, written in 1987, depicts New York City in the 1980s as a combination of racism, corrupt politics, warring social classes, and crime. The novel follows the narrative of Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street bond trader with his wife, Judy McCoy, and daughter, Campbell McCoy. Sherman’s life is dramatically altered after he him and his lover, Maria Ruskin, are involved in a hit-and-run case in the South Bronx after getting lost while driving. Many lawyers in the district attorney’s office remain indifferent at first towards the case because of its resemblance to many cases that preceded it. However, the lawyers and the media
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Sherman and Maria demonstrate the insularity of their community through the way they describe the South Bronx upon stumbling into the neighborhood when missing a turn into Manhattan. Sherman, although a native New Yorker who takes a “manly pride in knowing the city” (Wolfe, 79), knows only that “the Bronx had numbered streets, which were a continuation of Manhattan’s” (Wolfe, 79). When witnessing a violent fight between a Latino couple in the Bronx streets, Sherman expresses his disdain at their behavior and disparity in wealth between himself and Maria and the couple: “Two white people, one of them...with...enough matched luggage in the back seat for a trip to China...a $48,000 Mercedes roadster...in the middle of the South Bronx...Miraculous! Nobody pays attention to them” (Wolfe, 81). Sherman further expresses his disgust for the Bronx residents when he describes the Latinos as “sumo wrestlers” (81) and Roland Auburn, the black friend of Henry Lamb, as a “hunter”, “predator” and “brute” (87). …show more content…
The film, Fort Apache, the Bronx, directed by Daniel Petrie, focuses on the challenges faced by police officers in the high-crime region of South Bronx, “Fort Apache,” named after how many officers policing in the district felt as if in an army fort in a foreign country. The officers working in this district are shown to be unwilling to work in this neighborhood of gangs and drug dealers that roam about as well as the high crime rates from murder. Many of the black and Hispanic characters in this movie play the roles of these criminals in the film, which resulted in much backlash from minority groups upon the release of the film. Some critics described the South Bronx of Petrie’s film that they’d seen as an “urban nightmare” (Canby, para. 4) with “drug dealing, prostitution, murder, mugging and discontent on an epic scale” (Canby, para. 5). The film symbolizes the insulation of white communities from poorer, black neighborhoods and highlights the racial stereotypes under which blacks and Hispanics were classified in the
Sherman and Maria demonstrate the insularity of their community through the way they describe the South Bronx upon stumbling into the neighborhood when missing a turn into Manhattan. Sherman, although a native New Yorker who takes a “manly pride in knowing the city” (Wolfe, 79), knows only that “the Bronx had numbered streets, which were a continuation of Manhattan’s” (Wolfe, 79). When witnessing a violent fight between a Latino couple in the Bronx streets, Sherman expresses his disdain at their behavior and disparity in wealth between himself and Maria and the couple: “Two white people, one of them...with...enough matched luggage in the back seat for a trip to China...a $48,000 Mercedes roadster...in the middle of the South Bronx...Miraculous! Nobody pays attention to them” (Wolfe, 81). Sherman further expresses his disgust for the Bronx residents when he describes the Latinos as “sumo wrestlers” (81) and Roland Auburn, the black friend of Henry Lamb, as a “hunter”, “predator” and “brute” (87). …show more content…
The film, Fort Apache, the Bronx, directed by Daniel Petrie, focuses on the challenges faced by police officers in the high-crime region of South Bronx, “Fort Apache,” named after how many officers policing in the district felt as if in an army fort in a foreign country. The officers working in this district are shown to be unwilling to work in this neighborhood of gangs and drug dealers that roam about as well as the high crime rates from murder. Many of the black and Hispanic characters in this movie play the roles of these criminals in the film, which resulted in much backlash from minority groups upon the release of the film. Some critics described the South Bronx of Petrie’s film that they’d seen as an “urban nightmare” (Canby, para. 4) with “drug dealing, prostitution, murder, mugging and discontent on an epic scale” (Canby, para. 5). The film symbolizes the insulation of white communities from poorer, black neighborhoods and highlights the racial stereotypes under which blacks and Hispanics were classified in the