The Bonfire of the Vanities

After Fallow publishes his initial stories about Sherman and Maria’s hit-and-run of Henry Lamb, the owner of The City Light, Gerald Steiner, says that Fallow has written a morality play. That morality play, Steiner says, pits the concerns of a disenfranchised Black community against a symbol of power, wealth, and White privilege in Sherman. The novel shows, though, that self-interest, rather than morality, is the principal driver of the central actors…

Several characters in Bonfire of the Vanities understand the world through racist stereotypes. For example, the inciting incident of the novel occurs when Sherman and Maria get lost in the Bronx and their deep-seated racism causes them to assume that Roland and Henry plan to rob them. As a result of that racist response, Sherman and Maria act recklessly and dangerously, which leads Maria to hit Henry with Sherman’s car, ultimately causing Henry to die…

In Bonfire of the Vanities, there are very few relationships that are characterized by genuine care and concern. Instead, people repeatedly use others for their own purposes. For example, Sherman is interested in Maria not because he necessarily cares about her as a person but because he values the sexual gratification she provides for him. Similarly, Judy seems to have married Sherman mostly because of the wealth that Sherman can provide her. At the…

Bonfire of the Vanities presents several accounts of the novel’s inciting incident—the hit and run that ultimately kills Henry Lamb. Each character involved in the event has a different version of the story, and those different narratives show how the biases of various characters impact their interpretations of the truth. For example, Sherman and Maria are both certain that Roland and Henry intend to rob them, even though there’s no concrete evidence to prove…