Lucky Jim

Characters

There is more than a touch of the picaresque rogue in Jim Dixon. Jim perpetrates a

succession of practical jokes, tricks, and deceptions on other characters in the novel,

especially those who offend his democratic sensibility.

He has a talent for "pulling faces" and projecting voices gestures Amis uses to

enhance Jim's social commentary. He is sometimes aided and abetted in his roguery

by his fellow boarder, the salesman Bill Atkinson.

On campus, in addition to Welch, Johns, and Margaret, Jim is seen interacting with

certain female students to whom he is attracted and with Mr.

Michie, an ardent overachiever who keeps pushing Jim to provide him with the

syllabus for Jim's honors tutorial.

Off campus, Jim meets Christine Callaghan and eventually steals her away from

Bertrand Welch. Through Christine he meets her uncle Julius GoreUrquhart, a wealthy

entrepreneur and critic who hires Jim as his personal secretary.

Themes

As in all good comedy, the theme of this book is the difference between appearance

and truth, between illusion and reality. The theme plays itself out through the

conventional concerns of romantic love. Jim is caught between the falsity of Margaret

Peel and the freshness of Christine Callaghan. He is caught between one job, the

future of which involves kowtowing to Welch until he becomes an historical fossil

like his superior, and another job the prospect of which offers a supportive employer

and interesting work. Amis projects Jim through a series of complications during the

course of which the author critiques the stodginess of England's moribund social

system.