How Does David Lodge Present the Character of Vic Wilcox in the Exposition of Nice Work?

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How does David Lodge present the character of Victor Wilcox in the exposition of his novel Nice Work? In the exposition to his novel Nice Work, David Lodge presents Victor Wilcox to be a mundane yet enigmatic character to which the average reader can relate to and judge from several points of view. This essay shall analyse the techniques used by Lodge to create the character of Victor Wilcox as well as the possible effect on the reader. In the exposition of his novel Nice Work, David Lodge presents Victor Wilcox as being an entirely mundane person through the banal lexis that the author has chosen. The quote "Monday January 13th, 1986" clearly depicts the near methodological frame of Victor's mindset through the use of it's particularly nondescript mention of the date. As Monday is usually a day that most people dread, due to its significance as the end of rest and start of a new week of work, it exhibits a sense of monotony and foreboding. As well as this it gives the reader the sense that Victor's life revolves around Mondays due to it being the first word in the book, reflecting that it is the first thought in his head. Though January is usually a time for resolutions and knew beginnings, the way that Lodge places emphasis in the opening sentence, through the short sentence and heavy punctuation, it is clear that it is also meant to be a time of winding down from the holiday season and wait for spring arrive. As January is a very bleak time of the year it carries heavy connotations of stagnation, lifelessness and desolation which is also reflected in Wilcox's life. Finally the 13th is a historically an unlucky number which exemplifies Vic's feelings about his own life, he believes that nothing is ever his fault that is always down to someone else that things go wrong in his life. The use of this unlucky number and blaming Marjorie for losing the company

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