From: maureenw@sco.COM (Maureen Wilkes)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: MOSQUITO COAST (minor spoilers)
Keywords: n
Date: 18 Aug 92 15:08:52 GMT
Organization: SCO Canada, Inc.

In article <1992Aug14.084727.9895@colorado.edu> paulchem@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Icarus) writes:
>>  You are?  Why so?   I've read it several times, and am not
>>  confident in asserting anything other than that his family is
>>  transplanted to a generic Central American country, which is 
>>  on the Caribbean coast.  I don't believe that Theroux meant it
>>  to be identified as a specific country.
>>
>>  But I could be wrong, of course.  Please share with us the clues
>>  which lead you to this confidence :-)  (I'm not trying to be
>>  obnoxious - maybe I just missed something).
>
>1] The book mentions that the ship that left baltimore was headed
>   to the honduras and further, the fellow passengers manage to get
>   the information out of the father of the family during the voyage.
>   Whether or not the author meant this to be taken literally as the
>   british honduras is another thing, and I think is beside the point.

Charlie has the following exchange with Reverend Spellgood's daughter
on the Unicorn:
  "If you think this is hot wait until you get to La Ceiba," (Emily)
said.
   "Where's that?"
   "Where you're going, silly.  In Honduras."
   It was the second time I had heard that name, and it had the sound of
a dark secret.
   Then a young Spellgood boy joined us.  Emily said, "This kid doesn't even
know where we're going!"  They both laughed at me.
   But it was worth being mocked to find out where Father was taking us.
And now I understood the business with Mr. Semper and the men.  They
were from Honduras.  Father was trading places.  On the map outside the
radio room, Honduras looked like the forehead of land on Father's map, 
but smaller, now like an empty turtle shell, side view, with fingerprints
all over it, and La Ceiba a polka dot on the coast.

Later, in the dining room:
   "Your soup's getting cold,"  the captain said.  "This your first
visit to Honduras?"
   Father spooned soup into his mouth and did not reply.
   Mother said, "It's more than a visit.  We're planning to stay awhile."
   "Ever been there before?"
   Father said, "I met a savage who lived there once.  And I once ate a
banana from Honduras.  That tasted mighty good, so I figured why not
migrate?"

After they arrived in La Ceiba and took a room at the Gardenia, Father
befriended Tosco, the manager:
   Tosco liked Honduras.  It was nice and cheap.  You could do whatever
you wanted here, he said.

There are a few more references to Honduras as Mother takes the children
on a car ride to nowhere (all the roads end at La Ceiba's limits).

And that, my friends, is why I'm quite certain Theroux's adventure
is set in Honduras ;^)  Any more questions?

>
>2] Correct me here if I am wrong but I thought the book was never meant
>   to be a travelogue in any sense. Paul Theroux used the imagery of 
>   the Mesquita Coast to convey the remoteness from civilisation and the
>   extreme nature of the escape that the antagonist was indulging in.

Quite right!  The exact geographical location is much less important
than their descent into hell.

>
>3] What I found to be much more interesting was the careful developement
>   of the character of the antagonist. The author manages to assert through
>   almost three fourths of the book that the eccentric genius always does the
>   right thing. He is shown to be a real hero for the rest of the family.
>   It is only in the last few pages that the extent of his madness is 
>   revealed and the reader is made to feel no regret at his death.

Well now, that isn't how I felt about Father at all.  From the very start
I thought he was a pompous, maniacal, condescending jackass, who 
used his family for experiments and forced them to worship him as a
God by usurping all power from them.  What was so right about denying
the children an education, denying them socialization, denying them the
right to share in deciding their destination, treating them as little 
more than slaves to his every whim?  His behaviour was abominable throughout
the story, it only varied by degrees.  Father was the archetypical 
Western dominator.

In fact, the major irony (IMO) was his condemnation of Polski and capitalist
society (and the conceit of moving to the jungle to escape all that),
when all he did once in Honduras was perpetuate the situation.  In what
way were the members of Jeronimo treated any differently than Polski's
farm hands?  Did Father go to the jungle and live like a native?  No,
he immediately set about reproducing modern amenities.  And, just as
Polski made his hands work for their food through hard labour, even
though he had a crop surplus rotting in storage, Father made the natives
work for the ice even though it was produced in abundance with little
effort.   And, just as Polski felt himself a superior being everytime he
looked at his Honduran workers, so did Father attempt to make himself a
greater being in the eyes of the natives.  Remember, he didn't just settle
Jeronimo -- he bought it, and the inhabitants were his legal subjects.


>   I thought the ending was a bit contrived though.
>   Especially the crawling on all fours with his eyes gone etc.

It was poetic justice.  He had condemned sea birds as scavengers, as the 
lowest form of life, when in fact he and his family lived as scavengers,
raping and, eventually, destroying the land.   
Served him right to die by the subjects of his contempt.