Thursday, July 13, 2017

Where is the setting of Captains Courageous?

Rudyard Kipling's novel Captains Courageous (full title, Captains Courageous, A Story of the Grand Banks) begins on an ocean liner in the North Atlantic nearing the Grand Banks, on which ship fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr. is accompanying his mother and his wealthy railroad magnate father on a business trip to London because Harvey Jr. was expelled from school for bribing one of his teachers.
Harvey, Jr. wasn't very popular with some of the other passengers.

"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't wanted here."

Towards the end of chapter 1, Harvey Jr. gets seasick, and not wanting to be embarrassed in front of the other passengers, he goes to the rail in a deserted part of the ship, faints, and falls overboard.
When he opens his eyes, Harvey Jr. finds himself on board a fishing schooner, the We're Here, out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, with Captain Disko Troop and his crew, including Manuel, the Portuguese fisherman who rescued him from the North Atlantic.
The We're Here, fishing in the North Atlantic, is Harvey Jr.'s home for the next several months and the setting of the story for the next seven chapters of the novel.
In chapter 9, the setting changes to San Diego, then to the Cheyne's private train, the "Constance," and several stops along the way from Los Angeles to Boston as Harvey Jr.'s mother and father journeyed there to to be reunited with their son, who they thought was drowned in the North Atlantic.
Chapter 10 is set in Gloucester, where the Cheynes spend some time getting to know that locals and the crew of the We're Here, and the novel finishes a few years later back in California, where Harvey Jr. is going to college at Stanford, studying business so he can take over the family railroad business from his father.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the theme of the chapter Lead?

Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...