The Decline Of The West Materialism Analysis

Essay on The Decline of the West

In modern society the art of materialism has become a part of people’s everyday lives. Because of all the material goods your view on the important things in your life can get clouded by the overwhelming feelings created by materialism, for example the feeling of wanting more than you already have. It is a strong and willful force that has the power to corrupt people, young and old, in a negative way, leading them to focusing on the material things in life instead of people. The short story “The Decline of the West” published in 2010 is a clear example of how materialism can corrupt a family and how a father ends up with two spoiled kids named Tom and Billy and a spoiled wife named Imogen who except him to buy and pay anything for them.

The setting of the story is in London at the high tier of the middle/upper class on the

The story is told from by a third person narrator point of view from Mike’s perspective. He is undergoing a development throughout the story. The day he got fired he realized how his family really is. He was used to working all day, leaving the children to the wife. Clarity comes to his mind when he sees the whole situation. He starts to realize that he has to let go of all the luxury to prevent his financial grave from getting deeper. However, he does not man up to tell his family that they have to stop spending so much money.

The title “The Decline of the West” is referring to the financial problems caused by the crisis back in 2008. The crisis made people buy less as consumers and start saving up their money instead of spending them. The story is an example of how the crisis affects families, forcing them to move out of their big houses and cutting their luxurious life forcing them to spend less money and moving in to smaller homes. As shown in the story, this can be hard for a family to accept, leading the parents to being anxious about bringing the