The Mosquito Coast
The Mosquito Coast depicts the story of an unstable, antisocial individual whose unsubstantiable paranoia causes him to dramatically alter the courses of his and other peoples lives. The mans continual fear of a nuclear invasion by an irate, immoral country eventually this man to move himself and his family to a remote jungle area of Honduras where he planned to establish a utopian society of his own design. Some themes that are conveyed through this story are the ability of split-second decisions to dramatically alter anybody's life, and the inability of certain individuals to be able to mentally handle the stressful life of western civilization.
Allie Foxx highly opposed the style of life which had developed in the
United States. He believed religions to be useless, and our government to be corrupted, continually drawing the unwanted attention of other countries tactile missiles. He saw t.v. and mainstream life as a form of mental poison. He strictly raised his children to incorporate the same mental attitude which he held. He saw himself as the last real man alive. The combination of all these delusions eventually prompted him to relocate himself and his family to a different country altogether, where he whatever lifestyle he so desired.
Charley is the thirteen year old son of Allie. He is naive to the practices of modern society because of his fathers continual ...
What did the man mean when he said, “Heʼd been ready to die and now he wasn’t going to and he had to think about that...This was not hiding in the woods. This was the last thing from that” (McCarthy 144)?
...sees is death around him. He begins to wonder how easy it would be to give up, but he doesn’t.
talk of a man who has the will to live. Up until the last nanoseconds of his execution, he
...ys these lines ""Ah God! / It was true! All the prophecies! - Now, O Light, may I look on you for the last time!" (62). These lines clearly describes that he has finally made his mind of giving up on his eyes because he is unable to bear the truth.
far this time and knew that he had no other choice. Also he did not
the war. Then when he realized that his life was over he wanted to end it but
Honduras lies at what was the southern tip of the Mayan civilization that spread southwards from the Yucatán peninsula through modern Guatemala to the city of Copán, now in north-west Honduras. The Mayan civilization collapsed long before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, who visited Trujillo in north-east Honduras in 1502 on his third voyage to the new world. The country was colonized by Spain after some resistance by the Lenca peoples of the central highlands. Their chief, Lempira, who was murdered by the Spaniards, became a national symbol after independence.
The sanity of his storytelling discontinues when he explained to the readers that he loved the old man, but his mind went against him; deciding to stalk and kill the old man. The description of the narrator’s thoughts the eighth day he stalked the aged man where… “Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has
it related to his own life and the events going on around him at the
...mption. He became a hollow shell of what he used to be, no longer living his life to his true potential.
understanding of love, truth and honesty he reaches sanity and dies in purity of the
himself, and not being the worse for it in spite of his fears—on the contrary, he had
Although these last words seem full of meaning, they can be interpreted as being so vague that they are devoid of any specific rationalization. In spite of this, they have several explanations, mainly relating to his life and the choices he made. As Kurtz succinctly verbalizes the terrible visions “of ruthless power, of craven ter...
gave up his soul while the sky was dark and gloomy, which is oddly suspicious, because most
thoughts, as he questions how much faith he has left, and how he seems to know his time is