Point of View

Every Man for Himself is told in the first person by a twenty-one-year-old narrator named Morgan. He is perfectly at home in the well-to-do settings of Titanic, but he is troubled by social inequities, a result of contact with socialists he met while working in Ireland. Morgan often reflects on past experiences, and he learns new facts about himself and his parents from older passengers. For the most part, though, he simply relates the events of a routine voyage, concluded by the extraordinary events of the great ship's sinking.

Setting

Every Man for Himself is primarily set in the staterooms and opulent public areas of R.M.S. Titanic during her maiden - and only - voyage, April 8-15, 1912. Through the narrator's memories, readers also glimpse London, Manchester, Dublin, White Springs, Mount Vesuvius, France and Egypt, but only to help clarify the picture of life aboard...