Alcoholism Quotes Flashcards
We were all learning, by trial and error, to carry our wine
This shows Sebastian and Charles’ relationship with alcohol before Sebastian’s dipsomania. However, trial and error suggests that the boys are beginning to show hints of alcoholism (as shown by Sebastian being sick into Charles’ room)
“I see it in the way Sebastian drinks. It is not your way”
Cara here acts as the word of wisdom, she sees Sebastian from an outside position and views the difference between how Charles and Sebastian drink.
Marquis’s son unused to wine
This is ironic, something which Cordelia revisits later in the novel to mock Sebastian’s drinking
Sebastian drank to escape
This shows the dangerous decline of Sebastian’s drinking into alcoholism. His life is now no longer a golden age and Sebastian drinks to ignore the antipastoral elements of his life, and the pressures of university, his family and his religion.
Sebastian got very drunk before dinner in his mother’s house, and thus marked the beginning of a new epoch in his melancholy record, another stride in the flight from his family which brought him to ruin.
Charles used the term epoch to signify the beginning of his life with Sebastian, and the start of his Golden Age. By using the term again, Waugh shows Sebastian depart from this golden age. The ‘flight from his family’ is a pun on his family surname and highlights their involvement in his downfall.
Come to apologize to Charles. I was bloody to him and he’s my guest. He’s my guest and my only friend and I was bloody to him
The short and simple sentences show a contrast between the long, lyrical sentences of the first book and the pair’s golden age now Sebastian is an alcoholic. Furthermore, the inverted repetition shows him not thinking straight.
That night Sebastian had his third disaster… wandering round Tom Quad hopelessly drunk.”
This subverts the once pastoral location of Oxford, making it antipastoral. Hopelessly also details the extent of Sebastian’s alcoholism.
like a fire deep in the hold of a ship… black and red in the darkness… in acrid wisps of smoke— I was in a strange world, a dead world to me, in a moon-landscape of barren lava, a high place of toiling lungs.
This presents a hellish image to relate to Sebastian’s alcoholism. This contrasts to the heavenly days at Brideshead in the first book. The landscape detailed is an extremely antipastoral image, and corrupts the Golden Age established by Waugh. Sebastian’s drinking is what ruins this Arcadia.
‘Too bloody drunk,’ said Sebastian nodding heavily.
Again, the short sentences show Sebastian’s drunkenness and the omission of the pronoun emphasises his confusion and the nodding shows his lack of control.
My dear, he’s such a sot.
Sot means habitual drunkard and the use of sibilance acts as a contrast to its use in the first book.
Sip, sip, sip like a dowager all day long. And so sly.
Again, the use of sibilance contrasts to the first book, and the repetition emphasises Sebastian’s drinking. By likening him to a dowager, he implies that Sebastian is mourning the loss of a strong male influence in his life (Charles perhaps) and heightens his depression. Finally, Charles and Anthony are discussing Sebastian even after his departure from England
Old Sebastian’s on a spree again
Sebastian’s drinking will continue in bouts even in years to come.
