Halfway through Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling’s half-pint hero Harvey has “another mystery of the sea to brood upon.” After falling out of an ocean liner Harvey Cheyne is thrown into a foreign environment. Much like Kipling’s Jungle Book, which I have not read and like Kim, which I have read, Captains Courageous poses the reader a difficult question, can a child, essentially, survive in a sometimes hostile, every time completely different, environment? The answer, with the perrenial post-romantics of Kipling involved, is yes. Adversity can be overcome and the little person can be better for it.
What is interesting to note is the oddness of the terrain and persons that Harvey Cheyne is surrounded by. The Pequod, oh I mean the We’re Here, is a gallery of types set against the treacherous sea. The captain Disko Troop, who disbelieves Harvey at first, is a salty man who guides his craft with something akin to a 6th sense. One wonders what happened to the lingo of the novel in real life? Did it just float out with the cultural tide? or do modern sailors have their own jargon? I don’t profess to know. I could go through all the other main characters and the tertiary ones but what fun would that be for someone who hasn’t read the book yet>.
The last thing I would like to get at is the fast pace of the novel. It is certainly an adventure tale set against an exciting backdrop, but what else is it? Well the introduction attempts to claim that the fishing vessel is an allegory for turn of the century America. I, while not begging to differ, would like to say that an adventure story can be written without a whole mess of insight into its’ intentions. Let alone giving it a close reading of post-doctoral proportions. But don’t worry avid reader I will get mines when I go back to Graduate School.
Anyways, give this one a good reading and you will be thoroughly entertained.
