Far Tortuga Themes & Social Concerns

This Study Guide consists of approximately 7 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Far Tortuga.
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Far Tortuga Themes & Social Concerns

This Study Guide consists of approximately 7 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Far Tortuga.
This section contains 384 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Far Tortuga Short Guide

Far Tortuga Summary & Study Guide Description

Far Tortuga Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Related Titles on Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen.

Preview of Far Tortuga Summary:

In Far Tortuga, Matthiessen continues in many ways the explorations begun in At Play in the Fields of the Lord. But the configurations of the later novel allow a more perfectly executed rendering, not only in that here the setting of a voyage isolates the characters more completely in a microcosm of the world, but that the land world of these men, the Cayman Islands, is itself unreal, exotic. The richness of entry, for the reader, into this novel, the haunting sense of "being there" created by the stark description and dialogue, may obscure the apprehension of Matthiessen's commentary. Yet it is present nonetheless, in the lyrics of a Hank Williams song from the mouth of the feral, sociopathic engineer, in the easy juxtaposition of diesel engines and obeah.

Far Tortuga offers a sometimes amusing, sometimes painful parody of the quest for glory, the...

This section contains 384 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Far Tortuga Short Guide
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Far Tortuga from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.