GIULIA PEZZUTTI

THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS PART 2

Georgie-boy
Georgie is often portrayed as the stereotypical spoiled only child of a rich family. He always has to
get his own way and the other family members let him, even to dangerous lengths. The family lets
him have his way when he denies his mother to marry Eugene, something that will bring his mother
pain and will worsen her sickness,leading her to death. It is almost as if the family is scared of him
and doesn't have the courage to tell him he is doing something wrong and to stop him. When his
mother dies he comes to understand he was wrong when he denied her second marriage and he
brought her away with him. Throughout the novel he often has a childish behavior and attitude,
especially when he stomps, pace angrily and repeats Riffraff as in the following scene:
Riffraff! and George began furiously to pace the stone floor. Riffraff! By this
hard terma favourite with him since childhood's scornfoul hour-- he meant to
indicate, not Lucy, but the young gentlemen who, in his vision surrounded her.
Riffraff! he said again, aloud, again:
Riffraff! (Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons. 1918. 116)
The ghost of a father
The father figure is an ambiguous one. Willbur Minafer is always treated like a piece of forniture
and not as an effective member of the family. He's not an Amberson, he's only a Minafer, so his son
Georgie doesn't take him into consideration. Up until his father's death, Georgie hadn't thought of
him as an authoritative person. After his death and when the talks about his mother relationship with
Eugene start, Georgie founds a new respect for his father and wants to do right by him. He wants
his mother and the other members of the family to not forget him.
He went to his desk, and searching the jumbled contents of a drawer, brought forth a
large, unframed photograph of his father, upon which he gazed long and piteously,
till at last hot tears stood in his eyes. It was strange how the inconsequent face of
Wilbur seemed to increase in high significance during this belated interview between
father and son: and how it seemed to take a reproachful nobilityand yet, under the
circumstances, nothing could have been more natural than that George, having paid
but the slightest attention to his father in life, should begin to deify him, now that he
was dead. (Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons. 1918. 142)
The power of electricity
She left the door open, and frequently glanced out into the hall, but gradually became once
more absorbed in the figures which represented her prospective income form her great
plunge in electric lights for automobiles. She did not hear George return to his own room.
(Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons. 1918. 181)
At the beginning of the novel, automobiles were just a mere invention which someone believed in
and someone did not, they were seen as an amusement for the richer families, but they remained
something the Ambersons did not partake. Now Aunt Fanny and George Amberson are involved in
the market of electric lights for automobiles and it seems to have become a sort of obsession for

Fanny. An obsession to be more independent with the little money she still has and to have more.
She spends hours and hours making calculations and thinking how to improve her new business.
Her obsession brings her to mind less about her family. In the previous scene we see Georgie in his
mother room in a state of anguish and grief. At the beginning she's worried about him, but then she
gets lost in the figures and the electricity. I think that, in a way, electricity is changing even the most
powerful element of this family: the fact that the members look out for each other, but with the
advancement of modern times even this is going to change.