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A review by readingpanda
Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
3.0
The year is 1931, and the action of the book takes place on or within sight of the Vera, a ship departing from Veracruz, Mexico for Europe, with its ultimate destination being Bremerhaven, Germany. The majority of the upper-deck passengers are German, as is the crew, and we follow along with quite a number of the people aboard. Among the Germans, we have an alcoholic professor and his long-suffering wife, a timid woman recently widowed (she is returning to Germany with her husband's body, in fact), a hunchback, a Jew, and an old dying man who is being angrily cared for by his nephew. Of other nationalities, there are Cuban students, a Spanish company of dancers, a disgraced Spanish Contessa who is being transported as a prisoner, an uncouth American man, an 18-year-old Swiss girl made miserable by her parents, and a couple of Americans who have been living together in Mexico and spend most the voyage arguing over where they should go next. At first, the array of characters is a little dizzying, and there is a useful list of everyone at the front of the book, including who they are cabin-mates with. Eventually though, you get to know them and their personalities.
Wikipedia says, "The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction." And indeed, deranged, frivolous and oblivious are apt descriptors for the passengers of the Vera. A passage where a character thinks, "You might learn something about one or two persons, if you took the time and trouble, but there was not time enough and it was not worth the trouble..." clearly extends beyond the confines of the ship to castigate the world at large for its indifference. As humans, we are often careless with each other and too self-involved to see the consequences our actions (or more often inactions) are likely to have, and the undercurrents that shaped World War II are apparent in passengers' attitudes and in events on board. Generalizations and assumptions based on nationality and appearances run rampant; few are challenged or corrected through the course of the book.
I'm not usually a big fan of allegory, as I often find it heavy-handed, and this book is no exception. I was interested in a number of the characters and quite liked the close quarters as a means for forcing confrontation, but I found the overall effect to be ponderous as your choices in reading didactically are between a story that doesn't really go anywhere (even though the ship does) and being preached to.
Recommended for: fans of Orwell's Animal Farm, people who believe Lord of the Flies tells the truth about human nature, non-claustrophobes, anyone who thinks "hell is other people."
Quote: "We will go on for a while, and it will be worse and worse, and we will say and do more and more outrageous things to each other, and one day we will strike the final death-giving blows. There is nowhere to go back and begin again with this...there is no place to go. The past is never where you think you left it: you are not the same person you were yesterday -- oh where did David go, I wonder? The place you are going towards doesn't exist yet, you must build it when you come to the right spot."
Wikipedia says, "The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction." And indeed, deranged, frivolous and oblivious are apt descriptors for the passengers of the Vera. A passage where a character thinks, "You might learn something about one or two persons, if you took the time and trouble, but there was not time enough and it was not worth the trouble..." clearly extends beyond the confines of the ship to castigate the world at large for its indifference. As humans, we are often careless with each other and too self-involved to see the consequences our actions (or more often inactions) are likely to have, and the undercurrents that shaped World War II are apparent in passengers' attitudes and in events on board. Generalizations and assumptions based on nationality and appearances run rampant; few are challenged or corrected through the course of the book.
I'm not usually a big fan of allegory, as I often find it heavy-handed, and this book is no exception. I was interested in a number of the characters and quite liked the close quarters as a means for forcing confrontation, but I found the overall effect to be ponderous as your choices in reading didactically are between a story that doesn't really go anywhere (even though the ship does) and being preached to.
Recommended for: fans of Orwell's Animal Farm, people who believe Lord of the Flies tells the truth about human nature, non-claustrophobes, anyone who thinks "hell is other people."
Quote: "We will go on for a while, and it will be worse and worse, and we will say and do more and more outrageous things to each other, and one day we will strike the final death-giving blows. There is nowhere to go back and begin again with this...there is no place to go. The past is never where you think you left it: you are not the same person you were yesterday -- oh where did David go, I wonder? The place you are going towards doesn't exist yet, you must build it when you come to the right spot."