CHANGING PLACES- DAVID LODGE
Zapp's Career: Morris Zapp is a distinguished professor at Euphoria who has already achieved
all that he possibly could have achieved in his professional career. He is self-confident, assured
of his superiority in his field of study, sarcastic, and arrogant. Recently he has been troubled by
a sense of having no end to work for: his reputation cannot be enhanced any further, it can only
be damaged. He plans to write a monumental work comprising absolutely all that can be said
about the subject and so completely exhausting the given field. He has started with the novels of
Jane Austen.
The Fallen Mary: Morris Zapp applies for the exchange despite his life-long scorn of England
and the English. It is the only alternative open to him if he wants to put off divorce. His second
wife Désirée gives him half a year of delay under the condition that he stays out of the house.
He is not fond of his wife but of his twin children Elizabeth and Darcy, whom he would lose on
divorce so as he lost his daughter Melanie from the first marriage. He is sold the plane ticket by
his student for half the price and is shocked to find himself on a plane carrying women for an
abortion trip. He engages in a conversation with his fellow passenger, Mary Makepeace, and is
no less surprised that she is a Catholic College tutor pregnant with a priest.
"2. Settling."
Chapter Structure: The chapter contrasts the differing experiences of the two professors on
their arrival at the hosting universities, their accustoming themselves to the new environment,
and the faux-pas by which they introduce themselves in the respective departments. It follows
their succumbing or resisting to sexual temptation, contrasts their first visits to a strip-tease
show, and finally reunites them with the characters they met previously on their planes.
American System: Philip Swallow finds himself cheap lodgings in the Slide Area, the part of
the city of Plotinus subjected to earthquakes. On his first visit to the university he finds the
building searched for a bomb and learns that this is no rare occurrence in the city. He is
confronted with careful organisation of the department and superficial joviality of the staff. He
finds a student waiting for him who seeks to be enrolled in the course of novel writing that he is
supposed to teach despite his lack of qualification. From the student, Wily Smith, he learns the
meaning of various slogans written on buttons that he already encountered with Charles Boon in
the plane. Smith wears a button reading Keep Kroop, which works as a banner announcing
sympathy to a favourite professor threatened by dismissal for his failure to publish enough.
British System: Morris Zapp finds England as disappointed as he anticipated and he has a hard
struggle with the cold climate. He finds himself lodgings in the house of the poor Irish doctor
Brendan O'Shea. On his first visit to the university, he is surprised by the relaxed approach and
lack of organisation. The secretary wonders at his questions but informs him that it is holiday
and the head of the department went shooting. In his first days, Zapp feels intensely lonely as
the staff pays him no attention. After the return of the department head, professor Gordon
Masters, the members of the staff introduce themselves, but after this they are no more friendly
with him than before. To cope with his loneliness, he resorts to listening to the radio and hires
himself a colour TV.
Mrs Zapp: Philip Swallow is surprised to find that Charles Boon is the university celebrity for
his highly successful radio show. The Charles Boon Show is a non-commercial, independent,
highly radical night show focused on discussion of various controversial topical issues. Swallow
is invited at a cocktail party given by the head of the department, professor Hogan. He is
received with mixed feelings for his curiosity about the case of professor Karl Kroop and for his
having no field of study. He retires to the terrace where he makes acquaintance with Mrs Zapp.
She drinks there and intimates to Swallow how she hates the view, and by extension Euphoria as
