Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire Of The Vanities

Juries have the tough decision on whether a person is guilty or not, and the judge decides their sentence. Sometimes, a person’s guilt is enough to convict them of a crime, but oftentimes, there is more to the story. Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities follows a cast of characters and their rise and fall in New York. The main character, Sherman McCoy, is a very successful bond salesman who lives with his wife and daughter in their lush apartment. Despite having an amazing life with his wife, he craves more, seeking affairs and more wealth. McCoy’s girlfriend is named Maria, and they both end up seriously injuring a young black man, Henry Lamb, in Sherman’s car. A subplot follows Kramer, a prosecutor who works in the inner city. Kramer

The court scenes that Kramer is part of reveal the disgusting habits behind prosecuting minorities and the vulnerable. However, that changes once Sherman McCoy is brought to court. Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities criticizes the way the media, society, and the judicial system treats minorities compared to how they treat those in power using themes of greed and white male vanity.
Sherman McCoy’s actions promote the theme of the negative consequences associated with vanity and egotism. Sherman McCoy continues an affair despite having a loving wife and daughter. Sherman leaves his apartment under the pretense of walking his dog, his true motive is seeing Maria, and he grabs a payphone to call her. Sherman realizes he has called his wife, “The woman said: ‘Sherman? Is that you?’ Christ! It’s Judy! He’s dialed his own apartment! He’s aghast-paralyzed!” (40). Sherman feels no remorse at what he is doing towards his family, and quickly shrugs off the incident saying he will deny the call to his wife. Sherman’s greed has led him to conduct an affair, because he is no longer happy with his wife, just because of her age. While having an affair is bad enough on its own, it is the

As Sherman’s life is turned upside down, he needs to deal with the convictions charged against him. His means he needs to reveal his mistress was driving the car at the time, forcing him in a tough situation. First, he tells Judy, his wife everything that happened that night, revealing his affair. This permanently damages their relationship, and she takes their daughter, Campbell and leaves. He is then forced to wear a wire when he meets with Maria in hopes of recording her admitting to driving the car. She moves to hug him, feeling the wire, and exiles him from her home. “’That’s right, run! Drag your tail between your legs!’ It was true. Hobbling down the stairs with the tape deck dangling ignominiously down his back-side” (1261). Tom Wolfe carefully documents Sherman’s fall, and the sequence of events adds to the theme of the work. Slowly, over time, Sherman has been losing his friends and family, obsessing over work. Material objects are the only things that are important to Sherman, and if he lost his money first, he would realize the value of his family. Instead, he focuses on money, so losing his wife and daughter hurt less. Eventually, he loses his mistress too, leaving him with nobody, and he faces the trial alone and despairing. After the trial, and his revealed innocence, he loses his money as well. Only at that point does he begin to value relationships. “At one