 Widmerpool 's chief characteristic in his youth is an exaggerated respect for and deference to authority . This is first indicated by his obsequious response to being hit in the face by a banana , thrown by the school 's cricket captain . It is further shown by his outrage over a prank played by his schoolfellow Charles Stringham on their housemaster , Le Bas . He has a craving for acceptance , even at the price of humiliation , and has a natural talent for aligning himself with the dominant power . Many of Widmerpool 's traits are evident quite early in his career : his pomposity , his aversion to all forms of culture ( " the embodiment of thick @-@ skinned , self @-@ important philistinism " according to one commentator ) , his bureaucratic obsessions and his snobbishness . He is politically naïve and his contribution to the pre @-@ war appeasement of Nazi Germany is to suggest that Hermann Göring be awarded the Order of the Garter and given a tour of Buckingham Palace . Yet , as the novel sequence progresses , Widmerpool emerges as far less of a buffoon and becomes , against all expectations , powerful and power @-@ obsessed . In his analysis of Powell 's fiction , Nicholas Birns identifies an incident in The Acceptance World ( the third volume of the series ) as the point at which the assessment of Widmerpool by his contemporaries begins to change . Widmerpool takes charge of a drunken Stringham after a reunion dinner , guides him home and despite resistance puts him firmly to bed : " Widmerpool , once so derided by all of us , had in some mysterious manner become a person of authority . Now , in a sense , it was he that derided us " . 
