Greed, Exploitation, and Capitalism Theme Analysis

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “The Phoenix” tells the story of a greedy carnival showman, Mr. Tancred Poldero, who acquires a phoenix. Seeking to maximize his profits from the bird, Poldero attempts to exploit the fact that when a phoenix dies, it bursts into flames and is then reborn in the fire, turning this death and rebirth into a show. To pull it off, Poldero tortures the bird so it will die as soon as possible. This plan works, and when the bird’s death seems imminent, Poldero sells the film rights plus hundreds of tickets. But when the phoenix finally bursts into flames, Mr. Poldero and his audience die in the blaze. The story, then, suggests that greed and exploitation are destructive not merely for those being exploited, but for everyone involved. And the story, which might be described as an anti-capitalist allegory, pushes beyond just that point. It suggests that Poldero’s actions are in fact motivated by the logic of capitalism, implying that capitalism will lead to its own destruction.

The story focuses on economic concerns, making it immediately clear that Poldero buys the phoenix for the sake of profit. This is most obvious in the contrast between Poldero and Lord Strawberry. Lord Strawberry, who first brings the phoenix to England, does not seek to profit from the bird. While the phoenix causes the “greatest stir among ornithologists, journalists, poets, and milliners, and [is] constantly visited,” Lord Strawberry never attempts to profit from the bird’s popularity. He doesn’t even sell its feathers to the interested milliners (hat makers). When Lord Strawberry dies, he dies penniless, largely because of the exorbitant cost of bird feed. By contrast, Poldero buys the bird for his “Poldero’s Wizard Wonderworld” show with the express purpose of monetizing the phoenix’s popularity by charging people to come see it.

When public interest in the phoenix diminishes, the story’s capitalist allegory turns darker. Desperate to turn a profit, Mr. Poldero resorts to violent exploitation: torturing the bird in order to hasten its death, a fiery spectacle to which Poldero knows he can sell tickets. While he slowly tortures the phoenix, Poldero aggressively promotes the event, sells tickets, and even gets a crew to film the burning of the phoenix. It is clear that Poldero sees no value in the bird’s life itself—he sees it as a “resource” to be exploited no matter the cost or violence involved. Meanwhile, his success in selling tickets to the event suggests that other members of a capitalist society also have no qualms about witnessing such exploitation—in fact, they seem to enjoy it. Finally, at one moment, the crew Poldero has hired to film the phoenix’s flames thinks the bird may not erupt, but they decide that even if the bird doesn’t erupt in flames, they’ll be able to sell their footage as educational content. In this way, the story makes it evident that while Poldero may be the most openly vicious capitalist in the story, he is just a part of a larger capitalist system focused above all on making a profit.

Yet when the phoenix does die, the resulting fire also kills both Poldero and his audience, suggesting that capitalism itself is self-destructive. At the simplest level, Poldero’s death can be seen as a kind of poetic justice and a cautionary tale about individual greed: the greedy man created a fire in order to profit from it, and then he died in the flames. But the fact that the fire also kills the entire audience suggests that the moral responsibility for greed and exploitation does not just rest with Poldero; it rests also with the entire audience, the entire society and system that surrounds and motivates Poldero. It is not just greed or exploitation that the story is criticizing, but capitalism itself.

As an allegory about capitalism, “The Phoenix” warns that the exploitation inherent to capitalism will yield disastrous consequences. Just as Poldero cannot control the flames from the phoenix that he himself pushed to erupt, capitalists will not be able to control the catastrophic effects of their greed. Interestingly, however, the phoenix’s blast won’t actually destroy the phoenix itself; the phoenix will be reborn from the fire. This suggests a renewal of some sort. In this way, the story hints that there is a possible future that isn’t dominated by the exploitative capitalist practices evident in Poldero and the audience, though the story doesn’t attempt to depict what such a world would look like.