Life and the Big Wheel

Wisdom from the not-always-wise Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh was a famous satirist and novelist in the early part of the twentieth century. He wrote a number of scathing and oftentimes very funny novels that served as commentaries on the declining society of WWII England. A professed Christian whose very real flaws oftentimes muddied the waters considerably, Waugh usually found a way to speak in all of his novels about what most important things in life.

In his novel, Decline and Fall, there is a scene in which Otto Silenus tells the hero of the story, Paul, about the meaning of life. His illustration is powerful:

“…Shall I tell you about life?”

“Yes, do,” said Paul politely.

“Well, it’s like the big wheel at Luna Park. Have you seen the big wheel?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all round, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It’s great fun.”

“I don’t think that sounds very much like life,” said Paul rather sadly.

“Oh, but it is, though. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There’s generally some one in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he’s paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he’s allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there’s a point completely at rest, if one could only find it. I’m not sure I am not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others…who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that.”

[Waugh, Evelyn. Decline and Fall (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 1956) 282–83.]

What a fascinating picture of life, and how true! Life, Otto says, is like a great turning wheel. If you sit at the edges, you get thrown off and hurt. At the very least, you get dizzy and disoriented at the edges of life. The closer you move to the center, however, the more stability you have. At the very center, he says, “there’s a point completely at rest, if one could only find it.”

Did you hear what else he said? He said that the people who own the wheel will usually hire somebody who knows how to get to the very center. So they stand in the center and dance. By doing so, they’re providing an example to everybody else in the room. They’re saying, by their dancing, that you can have joy and live at the very center, but not until you get there.

I believe that Waugh’s illustration is a helpful way for us to think of the gospel. Jesus is the one that the Owner sent to stand at the center of life, to show us the point and place of complete peace, to demonstrate where life is to be lived. The further we are from him, the more in danger we are of being hurled from the chaotic edges. The key is to be joined to Christ at the center of life, in the very heart of the will of God. The key is to see the inevitable exhaustion of life attempted at the edges.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)