The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

These chapters deepen the novella’s satirical portrayal of luxury and moral distortion by immersing John fully in the Washington’s estate. Where the opening chapters introduced the premise and tone, these chapters complicate the novella’s critique by exposing the mechanisms that allow grotesque wealth to flourish. One of these mechanisms is the anesthetic effect of extreme luxury. The bath scene that opens Chapter 3 exemplifies how comfort erodes agency. John’s movement through the mechanized bathing apparatus—“tilted,” “rolled,” and “projected”—casts him as physically passive, acted upon rather than acting. The narrative uses these passive constructions to suggest that opulence induces a kind of surrender, foreshadowing the moral passivity that will characterize John’s early responses to the Washingtons’ excesses. The bath itself functions as a symbol of luxury disguised as care but oriented toward infantilization. Even John’s instinct to adjust his bath “according to his own meagre standards” is framed as “wicked” (104), illustrating how quickly luxury reshapes moral perception. These details reflect Wealth as a Destructive Force through its capacity to dull autonomy and transform individuals into compliant subjects.

The scene also provides an early glimpse into the estate’s racist labor structure. John’s racist reference to his attendant as a “black Gargantua” reveals a dehumanizing gaze shaped both by his upbringing and culture. The satire targets the elite fantasy of benevolent superiority, a dynamic that quietly anticipates the later revelation that the Washingtons rely on literal enslavement, making the luxurious bath an early instance of the novel’s exploration of The Role of Exploitation in Building and Maintaining Wealth. John’s amused acceptance exemplifies how wealth normalizes injustice by obscuring it behind spectacle.

Throughout these chapters, sensory excess heightens the estate’s surreal atmosphere. The rose-colored water, walrus-headed soap jets, flutes “dripping” music, and pastel foam all contribute to a dreamlike unreality that distances John from rational judgment. The narrative uses this overabundance not merely to exaggerate luxury but to reveal its destabilizing effects, demonstrating how perception itself becomes unreliable when filtered through constant indulgence. John’s gradual drift toward drowsiness in response to this environment parallels the way he becomes morally anesthetized. In this sense, the estate’s pleasures constitute a subtle form of entrapment, a gilded setting in which awareness dissolves into passivity.

Chapter 4 introduces the Washington family’s origin story, which parodies the American myth of self-made success and highlights The Illusion of the American Dream. Fitz-Norman’s discovery of the diamond mountain through a squirrel dropping a gemstone reduces the narrative of wealth accumulation to an absurd accident, demolishing the idea of wealth acquisition as a meritocracy. Instead of industry or ingenuity, the Washington fortune emerges from improbable chance, and the narrative amplifies this critique through irony. Fitz-Norman becomes “the richest man that ever lived” (107), yet the scale of his wealth renders him economically useless, unmarketable, and socially endangered. The American Dream collapses under its contradictions, revealing prosperity as an isolating burden that renders one essentially useless.

Secrecy continues to be revealed as the empire’s sustaining force. Fitz-Norman manipulates surveys, falsifies maps, kidnaps experts, and even kills his own brother to ensure that the mountain remains hidden. These acts expose the narrative’s representation of the central paradox of extreme wealth: that its preservation requires deception and violence. The family treats these transgressions with exaggerated nonchalance—murders are described as unfortunate complications of “progress and expansion” (108)—highlighting how privilege sanitizes wrongdoing. This euphemistic treatment of brutality shows how systems of power are maintained through a combination of coercion, mythmaking, and cultural indifference.

Chapter 5 shifts focus to gender and social conditioning through John’s interactions with Kismine. His objectification of her “perfection” reveals how beauty becomes another commodity within elite culture. Kismine’s own exaggerated claim to innocence—asserting that she “scarcely” dresses at all and reads nothing but poetry—functions as social satire, exposing the distorted self-perception produced by isolation and privilege. Her upbringing within a family that “never” punishes children reflects the Washingtons’ belief in their own untouchability. Even her mother’s discomfort at John’s origins hints at the class barriers that structure the family’s worldview. These chapters reveal how luxury functions as both illusion and entrapment, how wealth depends on invisible systems of exploitation, and how characters shaped by privilege remain oblivious to the harm sustaining their comfort.