A Handful of Dust

After the death of his son and Brenda’s request for a divorce, Tony finds himself at a loss. He meets Dr. Messinger in his club, and Messinger tells him a story about a lost city in South America. The idea of searching for this lost civilization appeals to Tony. The expedition will provide him, he hopes, with motivation to leave the country and extricate himself from a difficult situation. The city itself is not particularly important to Tony; he has no burning archeological interest in the city nor anthropological interest in the people. The discovery of the city means less to Tony than what the expedition represents to him: an opportunity to escape from the previously mundane world that has suddenly been turned upside down. The expedition to find the city, Tony hopes, will bring back structure and meaning to his now-chaotic life. In keeping with The Social Repression of Grief, Tony simply avoids thinking about his son’s death, Brenda’s affair, or even the running of his house by venturing into the jungle with Messinger to find a lost city. The lost city becomes a symbolic means of rebuilding his life.

The lost city, by its very nature, also represents a fallen civilization. Tony is a proud Englishman who, through sheer fortune, happens to live at (or near) the historical peak of the British Empire. He benefits from the ancestral wealth of the generations who came before him, and he benefits from being a privileged member of the world’s foremost superpower. Tony’s civilization, in contrast to that of the fallen city, is at a very different point in time. The lost city may once have been a wealthy and powerful place, but now it has fallen into ruin and can no longer even be found on a map. The civilization of the lost city has been reduced to myth and legend, in contrast to the global might of the British Empire. In this way, the lost city symbolizes the inevitability of civilizational collapse. Throughout history, empires have risen and fallen in regular patterns. Like Tony’s Britain, the people of the lost city were once significant. British society, riddled with the many faults that the novel has portrayed, from class conflict to the looming prospect of another World War, is in a precarious position, much like Tony. As such, the search for the lost city is a symbolic glimpse for Tony into the future of his own society.

The search for the lost city ends in disaster. Rather than finding the ruins of a lost civilization, Tony and Messinger are abandoned by their local guides. Tony contracts a terrible fever, and Messinger dies while trying to get help. When Tony does venture into the jungle, Mr. Todd finds him. In effect, Todd kidnaps Tony and makes him a prisoner. The search for a lost city, intended to reshape Tony’s life, ends unexpectedly with Tony trapped in the jungle and forgotten, just like the city itself. He is trapped in a small village where his manners, his family history, and his money mean nothing. His past with Brenda is also reduced to hallucinations, in which Brenda utters phrases that she never truly said. The trappings of civilization are ripped away from Tony and he is left with nothing, a true fall from grace. The man who went searching for a city becomes a prisoner in a village, symbolizing Tony’s fall from grace and the ultimate failure of his attempt to rebuild his life, especially as the city itself remains as lost as Tony.