A Confederacy of Dunces Themes

A Confederacy of Dunces is determined to be smarter than you. The book has allusions to everything from medieval learning to modern American literature to art films—you can barely turn a page wit...

A Confederacy of Dunces loves bickering. Give the novel two people who despise each other, and throw them in a scene where they are telling each other how despicable they are, and the novel is quit...

A Confederacy of Dunces is a lengthy ode to the difficulty of being lazy. So many people in this novel work so hard to get out of working. Ignatius struggles and flops like a bloated, electrocuted...

Justice in A Confederacy of Dunces is mostly a way to blackmail or rob people. Lana Lee uses the threat of an arrest for vagrancy to force Burma Jones to sweep her floors for next to nothing; Abelm...

Ignatius lies copiously, easily, and continuously. He lies when he threatens everyone with his attorneys. He lies when he tells his mother he's looking for a job when in fact he's going to the movi...

Race relations aren't generally all that funny. Persecution, hatred, injustice, cruelty, systematic oppression—downers all. Or so you'd think. A Confederacy of Dunces is set in the 1960s in the S...

There's hardly any actual sex in A Confederacy of Dunces. There are, however, a lot of jokes about sex, and references to sex of various kinds—from Myrna giving erotic pep talks, to Ignatius hopi...

Wealth. Everyone wants it. We write these very words for wealth, and you… do you not read them in the hope of acing that test and going on to win fame and fortune in the great A Confederacy of Du...