Themes

The Mosquito Coast treats many subjects, but its main themes concern the potential destructiveness of the social rebel and of modern technology. The novel's protagonist Allie Fox rejects the shabby workmanship of America's mass- produced goods, the hedonistic features of its TV-influenced culture, and the self-satisfied pomposity of its religious establishment. Calling America a dead society, he takes his family back to nature, founding a settlement called Jeronimo in the Honduran jungle. Yet he brings with him the engineering know-how to build an ice house for his own pleasure and the benefit of the Mosquito Indians. The ice he produces clearly symbolizes a scientific Eucharist, the means of worshipping the technological god he believes will save them all. When Allie blows up the ice house (called Fat Boy, echoing the name given to America's first atomic bomb), killing three intruders whom he desperately fears, readers realize that this...