Código fuente para la simulación en Matlab

In Hermann Hesse's 1 927 novel Steppenwolf, placards call for the blood of 'perfumed plutocrats' and for the destruction of those symbols of their social hegemony, especially 'huge and fiendishly purring automobiles.' (2 1 0) In the ' Great Automobile Hunt' that follows, it is clear that the rich have used their machines as shields against the poor just as Collector Turton's machine protects the Europeans from a crowd of angry Indians on the way to Aziz' s trial in Forster' s Passage. This sentiment that the rich cocoon themselves in their automobiles also finds expression in Scott Fitzgerald's fiction. In

The Beautiful and Damned, Anthony and Gloria's car takes the couple

'through the chaotic unintelligible Bronx, then over a wide murky district...with suburbs of tremendous and sordid activity' . Later, Gloria complains that the settlements they pass on their way out of New York 'aren't towns ... just city blocks plumped down coldly into waste acres' whilst in Gatsby the hero's magnificent car speeds past nineteenth century slums on the outskirts of New York.30 ( 1 58) It is as if by

merely accelerating these occupants are able to erase the fact of poverty or to at least make something ugly seem less applicable to them.

American writer P. J. O 'Rourke gives satiric expression to this

notion in Republican Party Reptile where he advises Republicans to

purchase large cars since ' ... when something bad happens in a really big car .. .it happens very far away - way out at the end of your fenders [where] it doesn't really concern you too much. ' (O'Rourke: 1 3 1 ) So it doesn't really concern Gatsby too much when he learns that a member of the working classes has been 'ripped open' by his machine. All he can manage is the limp plea 'Don't tell me, old sport' before dismissing

the incident to talk of Daisy's wellbeing. (Fitzgerald: GG: 1 37) This

extraordinary sense of alienation from one' s fellow man is also

foregrounded in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love where Gerald Crich

employs the motor-car as a device to cut through the common crowd of shoppers in Beldover. Moreover, at the mines themselves, his car physically cuts him off from those subordinate to him; that is from those he objectifies as part of the production process over which he presides.3 1

Provoking the poor

Motor-cars then did cause serious class tensions, especially in the country and in villages where automobilists were regarded as presumptuous trouble-makers. Some of the problems encountered by those used to a quieter life have already been adumbrated, particularly the issue of bolting horses and upturned carts, but it was the perceived arrogance of the motorists that rankled most. Sachs cites a 1 906 journal entry by Rudolf Diesel who records his delight at having roared through a settlement in Piave Valley, smothering its residents in layers of limestone dust as he went.32 But there were cads outside the Continent too. George Bernard Shaw was one of them.

In the summer of 1 908, having completed too short a programme of lessons with the Royal Automobile Club, Shaw took possession of a 30hp Lorraine-Dietrich which he proceeded to drive at a furious pace. By his own admission he was a bad and inconsiderate driver;

' extraordinarily reckless - though always chivalrous to the inj ured and the alarmed, especially when the fault was theirs.' (Holroyd: 206) The dramatist confessed to The Motor that the authorities ought to have revoked his licence and one Mrs Reeves, a neighbour of Shaw's,

thought him ' ... a rum one - a very rum one' since he made no apologies

for careering through the village at over twenty miles an hour. (Reeves in Holroyd: 2 1 0)

Of course, one would expect arrogant behaviour such as Diesel's and Shaw's to fmd representations in the fiction of the era, and so it does - particularly in Forster's narratives. In Howards End for instance, on his way from the train station to his family's country estate (with a terrified Juley Munt on board as his passenger), Charles Wilcox drives his motor-car 'as quickly as he dare[ s]' through a local village before looking back with pride 'at the cloud of dust that they had raised in their passage ... ' . (32) Much of this dust, the narrator informs us, settles on gardens but a proportion 'enter[ s] the lungs of the villagers. ' (33) It i s scarcely surprising then that Margaret later comes to see the Wilcox family as 'conquering hero[s] ' who leave in their wake ' a little dust and a little money ... ' . (246) The same sentiment is expressed years later by Zelda Fitzgerald who wrote of the motor-car as 'the first prize, puffing the power of money out on the summer air. ... ' (Z. Fitzgerald:

CW: 1 73) Whilst the impact of the machine in the garden will be

explored in a later chapter, both F. Scott Fitzgerald and E. M. Forster then foreground the motor-car as a sign of cultural excess.