Another comment on Thackeray's Vanity Fair

I'm currently reading Vanity Fair, so I will of course make another comment regarding this book and its author, Mr. Thackeray:

One thing Thackeray has is a sharp and on-the-mark read of human nature. He alluded in one part of his novel to a particular character not being 'awake', and he used the term in a Work-like way. But I couldn't use that because the character making the observation meant awake in a worldly sense (which is a definite kind of awakeness, and valuable too); yet it also calls into play being awake to yourself which is why the reference was Work-like.

In another part of the novel he is describing the psychology involved when a person turns on another person who has helped them greatly in life. I can't go into all that, but in one part of the description Thackeray writes:

"One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object..."

This, of course, can be taken as an obvious statement (and even the most asleep types will moralise about how we must 'demonize' those who we must hate, etc., etc.), but it's something you observe when you provoke your limits (doing the Work) that all negative emotion (all negative expressions of emotional energy) get directed one way or another ultimately at human beings; and to justify the indignation and resentment and anger you have to lie about what the 'person' or 'persons' in question have done to you (even if it is just a slight exagerration or a spinning of what really has happened).

Thackeray is a satirist (in the extreme) in this novel, and that makes it all almost cartoonish (intentionally on his part), yet his work is saved by his sharp observation of human nature and the world in general.