Those Crazy Captains: Introduction

It’s been an age since I’ve done a series of Character Analyses posts, mostly because I have to have read several books containing similar or comparable characters, all within a relatively short space of time so that I can adequately compare them. This doesn’t happen much, since I try to “space out” reading books that are too similar so that I don’t mix them up later.

For some reason, though, this summer I read a lot of books with a nautical theme. I’ve already reviewed the nonfiction The Outlaw Sea and The Pirate Queen, but shortly after a third audiobook I’d had on hold for a long while came in at the library. The Caine Mutiny is a book I’d wanted to read since seeing the Humphrey Bogart adaptation (I tend to read pretty much anything that was adapted into a Humphrey Bogart movie, now that I mention it).  While reading it I couldn’t help but compare it to other seafaring novels I’ve read in the past, such as Typhoon and Lord Jim, the Horatio Hornblower series, The Sea-Wolf, and of course Moby Dick. 

Not only does it feel natural to compare these novels because they have similar characters in obviously similar settings, it also is natural for me to be interested in comparing their themes, morals, and symbolism. I live in a relatively land-locked area, with plenty of streams and rivers and ponds and lakes, but the idea of the large expanse of a sea or ocean is something I pretty much have to rely on my imagination and these books to even begin to grasp. The ocean fascinates me. What would it be like to look out and only see water from one horizon to the next? What would it be like to owe one’s very existence to a floating object, and one’s continued existence to the cooperation and toil of everyone else living there?  Even with engines, a ship is subject to the tides, currents, winds and weather, all of which are fleetingly inconstant and often unpredictable. The concept is as alien as a science fiction story.  

Aside from the instant suspense that an author achieves by simply putting all his characters on a boat, there’s also a symbolism that I’m not alone in finding attractive. After all, isn’t life as malleable and unreliable as the sea?