2.THE+MOSQUITO+COAST



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__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 1**__

It is important to remember when this book was written: 1982. This was before Reagan's "Morning again in America" and many Americans were seriously questioning the future of the country. In many ways, the issues of that period of time are the topics in public discourse today. China has replaced Japan, but the image of America in decay from violence, to rapacious economic and political elites, destruction of the environment, obesity, illegal immigration, and outsourcing are all the same. He concludes his indictment with a declaration One thing in particular is important, given later developments in this book and other books we will read later in the course, is the commercialization and commodification of water. We learn a little more about Allie Fox, who is a jack-of-all-trades handyman and inventor. There is also an interesting extended metaphor about wildnerness as "empty" and "unexplored" spaces. Much like the Roman historian Tacitus, who praised the "natural" Germans to critique decadent Roman society, Allie Fox uses the Central American immigrants to illustrate his critique with America. Allie Fox's praise of the wilderness is paired and contrasted with his paternalistic and patronizing view of the people who live there, the "savages."
 * **pg. 3-5. "Father talking the whole way about savages and the awfulness of America -- how it got turned into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger zone of rabid scavengers and criminal millionaires and moral sneaks. And look at the schools. And look at the politicians. And there wasn't a Harvard graduate who could change a flat tire or do ten pushups. And there were people in New York City who lived on pet food, who would kill you for loose change. Was that normal? If not, why did anyone put up with it? . . . 'Here come the savages . . . Why do they bother to come here?,' he said. 'Money? But how could it be money? . . . it sure as heck isn't money. These days a dollar's only worth twenty cents . . . This place is a toilet . . . Look at Tugboat Annie over there, the size of her. She's so big it would take only eleven of her kind to make a dozen. But that's fat -- that's not health. That's cheeseburgers . . . explain why two-thirds of government-inspected meat has substantial amounts of cancer-inducing nitrates in it, and junk food -- that is a proven fact -- has no nutritional value whatsoever -- . . . It's made in Japan. I don't want my hard-earned bucks turned into foreign exchange for the sons of Nippon. I don't want to bankrooll another generation of kamikazes. I want an american length of rubber seal, with foam."**
 * **pg. 6. "'But what kind of a country is it that turns shoppers into traitors and honest men into liars? No one ever thinks of leaving this country. Charlie, I think of it every day!'"**
 * **pg. 4-5. "'They sell ice -- ten pounds for a half a buck. But water's as free as air. Those dingbats are selling water! Water's the new growth industry. Mineral water, spring water, sparkling water. It's big news -- water's good for you! Low-cal beer -- know what's in it? Know why it keeps you thin? Know why it costs more than the regular? Water!'"**
 * **pg. 7. "Father, an inventor, was a perfect genius with anything mechanical. 'Nine patents,' he liked to say. 'Six pending.' He boasted that he had dropped out of Harvard in order to get a good education. He was prouder of his first job as a janitor than his Harvard scholarship."**
 * **pg. 7. "'He said the Bible was like an owner's guide, a repair manua to an unfinished invention. He also said the Bible was a wildnerness. It was one of Father's theories that there were parts of the Bible that no one had ever read, juas there were parts of the world where no one had ever set foot. 'You think that's bad? It's anything but. It's the empty spaces that will save us. No funny bunnies, no cops, no crooks, no muggers, no glue sniffers, no aerosol bombs. I'm not lost, like them.' He pointed at the savages. 'I know the way out.' . . . he talked about empty spaces and savages. I raised my eyes and saw them. They seemed to be creepign straigth out of the wilderness he had just described . . . 'No TV where they come from. No Nipponese video-crapola. Pass me that oil can. Up here, nature is young. But the ecosystem in the tropics is immensely old and hasn't changed since the world began. Why do they think we have the answers?'"**
 * **pg. 8. "'You can't drink the water where those savages originate. it's got creatures in it. Worms. Weeds. They haven't got the sense to boil it and purify it. never heard of filtration. The germs get into their bodies, and they gurn green, like the water, and die. The rest of them figure it's no good there -- spiders big as puppies, mosquitoes, snakes, floods, swamps, alligators. No idea at all about geothermal energy. Why chage it when you can come here and go to pieces? Give me the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Have a Coke, watch television, go on welfare, get free money. Turn to crime. Crime pays in this country -- muggers become pillars of the ecommunity. They'll all end up mugging and purse snatching.'"**
 * **pg. 9. "'Why don't they know that?' 'No way,' he said. 'That's what makes them savages.' . . . he seemed both fascinated and repelled by them, and he communicated these feelings to me, telling me something interesting and then warning me not to be too interested. I had wondered how he knew these things about the men he called savages. He claimed he knew from experience, from living in wild places, a mong primitive people. He used the word //savages// with affection, as if he liked them a little for it. In his nature was a respect for wildness. He saw it as a personal challenge, something that could be put right with an idea or a machine. He felt he had the answer to most problems, if anyone cared to listen."**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 2**__

While an off-handed observation, I thought his point that Charlie makes is interesting especially in the context as the description of wilderness as "empty." This chapter, at least the part where Charlie believes he is watching his father's lynching, is a dream, but it foreshadows the novel's denouement. However, it also illustrates the seeming paranoid megalomaniac delusions Allie Fox has. In many ways, this is a "Christ Complex" where the subject imagines themself as the great victim/sacrifice by the unknowing mob. Allie Fox sees himself as a prophet, who is part Jeremiah criticizing his homeland to repentance and renewal, and part Paul, who will bring his "gospel" to the Gentiles (savages). Fox seems convinced that the world is going to end, like many survivalists, and he will build a new civilization (Noah) on its ashes. Allie Fox (and his family) was probably a hippie, commune family that had cut many ties to the regular world. Charlie sees the world through the representations of his father. If his narration seems looney, it is a reflection of this kaleidoscopic frame. Charlie depends on his father more than a child his age would. Northhampton, the Massaschusetts setting for the beginning of this novel, has a long history as a magnet for this culture, and, even to this day is basically a liberal New England village.
 * **pg. 11. "The sense of someone missing is stronger than the sense of someone there . . . It was a feeling of lonesome emptiness . . ."**
 * **pg. 15-16. "Father, who believed there was going to be a war in America, had prepared me for his death. All winter, he had been saying, 'It's coming -- something terrible is going to happen here.' He was restless and talkative. He said the signs were everywhere. In the high prices, the bad tempers, the gut worry. In the stupidity and greed of people, and in the hoggish fatness of them. Bloody crimes were being committed in cities, and criminals went unpunished. It was not going to be an ordinary war, he said. but rather a war in which no side was entirely innocent. 'Fat fools will be fighting skinny criminals,' he said. 'You'll hate one and be scared of the other. It'll be national brain damage. Who's left to trust?'"**
 * **pg. 16. "'When it comes, I'll be the first one they kill. They always kill the smart ones first -- the ones they're afraid will outwit them. Then, with no one to stop them, they'll tear each other to pieces. Turn this fine country into a hole.' There was no despair of in his words, only matter-of-factness. The war was a certainty, but he was still hopeful. He said he believed in himself and in us. 'I'll take you away -- we'll pack up and go. And we'll shut the door on all this.' . . . 'They'll get me first.' 'No.' 'They always get the smart ones first.' I could not deny this. He was the smartest man I knew. He had to be the first one to die . . . I could not imagine how anyone would be able to kill him. But that night was enough. I was convinced now, and I was alone. The strongest man I knew had been strung up on two poles and left in a cornfield. It was the end of the world. 'I'm the last man, Charlie!'"**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 3**__ We get a little more of the backstory in this chapter. We get a brief thumbnail of the first self-sufficiency attempt in the woods of main. Allie Fox does not want to be dependent on anyone else. He is his "own" man. The episode through the eyes of Charlie. We also see Allie Fox present his invention, the "worm tub" to Polski. The "worm tub" uses heat to freeze water and create ice. Fox is clearly very taken with himself, Polski less so. While Fox sees the possibility and dismisses the problems (smell, fire hazard, etc.), Polski has a more realistic assessment. Part of the reason for Fox's contempt for American society may be that they do not appreciate his "genius" and he may seek out a more "primitive" society because it will be more appreciative of his "talents." He inverts the value system of American society. If society thinks it is good, Fox thinks it is bad.
 * **pg. 20. "We lived in Maine then, not Dogtown but in the woods. Father was trying a year of self-sufficiency, growing vegetables and building solar panels and keeping us out of school . . . Things had not gone well for us in Maine. Father had refused to spray insecticides on the vegetables -- the worms got them before they could ripen. Rain and storm raised hell with the solar panels. For a while, Father would not eat, and he was taken to the hospital."**
 * **pg. 20 "'[Polski] owns people,' Father said. 'But he doesn't own me.'"**
 * **pg. 25. "'Stick you hand in that locker. Feel how cold she is. It'll take your fingerprints off. You've never seen anything like it.' 'No,' Polski said. 'But I've heard of them. You've invented sumthun that was invented thirty years ago.' Polski started to walk away. 'It's like coming to me with a toaster. 'Look, no wires. And the toast pops up.' Fine, but it's still a toaster. And that's still an icebox. You can't invent an invention.'"**
 * **pg. 27-8. "'You couldn't ask for a better reaction than that.' I said, 'But he didn't like it very much.' 'That's an understatement.' Father laughed, and shivering out each word, he said, 'He positively hated it!' And snorted. 'That's ignorant contempt -- the stupidest kind of reaction. 'It's a big visk.' But I'm grateful for it. That's why I'm here. That's the sort of thing that gets me cooking on the front burners, Charlie. Just think what would have happened if he'd liked it. Yes, I would have been very worried. Ashamed of myself. I'd have gone back to bed.'"**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 4**__

This chapter also prefigures later developments. When the Fox family goes to the Mosquito Coast, they will be "strangers in a strange land," but in this chapter the roles are reversed, but Allie Fox enters their home, humble as it is, and barges in to leave his "worm tub" as a present. Just as the Mosquito Coast residents will react, it is not the boon that Fox supposes it to be. We also get Fox's bumper-sticker philosophy: We also get another take on the "savages" that is informing Allie Fox's wordview. The chapter concludes with two observations. The first is the gap between the rich and the poor and the perversity of it. The second observation is Charlie's position between admiration of his father and his shame in front of his childhood peers.
 * **pg. 31. "'Ice is civilization.'"**
 * **pg. 31. "'They welcome visitors, Charlie. It's an old custom of theirs -- from the jungle. Be kind to strangers, they say, because you never know when you might be a stranger yourself -- lost in the jungle, out of water, starving, or dying of bites. That's the law of the jungle -- charity. It's not the cruelty people think it is. There's a lot to admire in these savages. Sure, they welcome visitors.'"**
 * **pg. 32-3. ". . . human beings sleeping on on the floor of a broken-down house, and a ton of asparagus and a mink coat in a tidy air-conditioned room that cost a fortune to cool. It was a horrible joke, he said. The stupidity of people! And if the savages knew how they were being cheated, they would go over and cut Polski's head off and dance away in the fur coat."**
 * **pg. 33. "Hatfield kids. I crouched down. I did not want them to see me here, laboring in my old clothes, and my father bent over like a ditchdigger. I was ashamed of Father, who didn't care what anyone thought. And I envied him for being so free, and hated myself for feeling ashamed."**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 5**__ Allie Fox has the upper hand over Polski due to the bumper harvest and insufficient cold storage to store the asparagus. Polski comes to Fox's house to ask for his assistance, Fox is more interested in being right. Fox presents another reason for not helping Polski based on economic grounds. Namely, Polski wants the cold storage so that he can hold his harvest off the market until the price rises. Fox sees this as an unfair and dishonest. In addition to the "anti-monopoly" and "exploiting the worker" themes in his critique, he also strikes an "anti-consumerist" note. People should only make what they need, no more. They should not charge for profit, i.e., what they don't need. Environmentalists tend to be politically liberal, but their economic philosophy, with its emphasis on scarcity, austerity (autarky), and anti-consumerist/anti-consumption foci are dramatically conservative. This is well illustrated by Fox's view of Polski's behavior as a farmer. There is something wrong with making a profit. In many ways this is the ideology of "takers" and "leavers" laid out in //Ishmael//. Fox is outlining a "leaver" standpoint and casting Polski as a "taker." This view often reinforces the view of environmentalists as tone-deaf elitists who care more about nature, plants, and animals than people.
 * **pg. 36-9. "'I'll sell when the price goes up -- not before. In the meantime, every spear I cut goes into cold storage.' Father said, 'That's the lousiest rottenest thing I've ever heard.' 'It's business' 'Then it's dishonest business. You're creating a shortage of asparagus -- although there is no shortage. So the price will go up -- although the price is pretty fair. Well, it's not as bad as sticking up a bank, but it's bad enough. I'd say it was about on a level with robbing poor boxes . . . and what do you get for it? A few bucks, a new pair of dungarees, a tin wristwatch that lights up in the dark -- maybe a jalopy or two. You think it's worth it?' 'Every farmer worth the name watches the market,' Polski said, hugging his knees together. 'There's watching, and there's tampering,' Father said . . . 'Sell it and clear out room for more. You make up in volume what you lose in price, and you still come out ahead of the game. That's sounder than strangling the market altogether. But no, you're not interested in that, because you're riding high -- using slave labor. Profit? I didn't plumb that chair and make that foot massager so that I could retire on fifty grand a year. I did it because of lumbago and sore feet, and if I'm able to ease someone else's pain, fine. That's the way I'm made. But you want to bluff the market and make a killing. That ain't business -- it's robbery . . . I don't want to do you a favor. You just want this thing to cheat people and put up prices and starve the market.'"**

The second vector of Allie Fox's response is the "sustainable" radical changes advocated by Fox compared to the limited demand of Polski. Fox wants a fully-sustainable, efficient cooling system, Polski just wants to store his asparagus for a few days. There is the clash here between revolutionary and incremental change. When I read parts of this I thought of the Omega Institute in Dutchess County that is an experiment in a zero-impact, fully sustainable settlement. With Allie Fox it is all or nothing. The vision he lays out here is not really about Polski, but about his settlement in the wilderness that he will build, and control, for himself.
 * **pg. 38-9. "'I see a vast cooling plant and cold store. It's on seven or eight levels, the size of two barns and then some, with your catwalks inside and your reflectors and insulation outside. Looks like a cathedral, with a chimney for a steeple. What's that bulge in the ground? That's your power unit, the main hardware, the worm tubs, the tanks of coolant, the heat supply. All your pipes and tanks are underground, sheathed in lead, in case of nuclear war, accidents, and acts of God. Your chimney has baffles and coils to conserve heat and redirect it back to the main supply, the fire itself -- recycling the heat, so to speak. But there's waste heat -- there always is -- and that's why we have ducts built into the chimney. Now this is blown across a grid, and that's where your incubators come in. That's your battery in both senses -- your egg hatchery, your heated runs for young chicks and chickens that are going to supply you with fuel in time to come. Methane gas. Nothing wasted. You've got your refrigeration. You've got your ice. You've got your heat. Sell the eggs you don't need and have the rest for breakfast. Cool down your vegetables. use your chicken shit for methane. It's a perpetual-motion machine. Run a duct to your house and you're air-conditioned -- cool in summer, warm in winter. Cheap, simple to operate, no waste, fool-proof, and profitable.'"**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 6**__

Here we have the ambivalence of Charlie toward his father's grandiose plans to go off the grid. Yes, it is nice to be principled, but we all have are secret betrayals and guilty pleasures. It is one thing when we are making these principles and agreements with ourselves. It is another when those decisions are made for us, such as with the children of the Fox family. I think that Charlie makes an interesting point here. The reason that Allie is angry with him is not because of a betrayal of principles, but a personal betrayal. Much of what is going on in this chapter is a repeat with the first chapter, where Allie fox dresses down salespersons because they are selling products that are low-quality, defective, over-priced, or made by his bugaboos: foreign labor. The purchases are geared toward their exodus to the Mosquito Coast, which is the plot purpose of this chapter, but it is covering old ground. Once again, many of the same complaints can be found in contemporary public discourse. It should be noted that Allie Fox is not really expressing a xenophobic sentiment in his criticism of Asian products and workers. He sees them as unfortunate and exploited by a common system. It is American consumerism that makes the exploitation of workers and cheap products necessary. His criticism of foreigners, whether they are Asian "coolies" or the Latin American "savages," is really part of his critique of American civilization. It is interesting to remember the situation of the Fox children and compare it with the concern Allie Fox has for the exploitation of Asian children. One other point is how the family is embarrassed by how their father dresses down salespersons and haggles. In America, haggling is considered bad etiquette, but in many cultures, the norm of the bazaar makes haggling a welcome and expected part of purchases. Allie Fox's obsession with prices may seem strange, but it should be remembered that this book is written at the end of the 1970s, where ten years of inflation for most consumer items and staples rose dramatically. People of Allie Fox's age could probably remember 40 cent/gallon gasoline (I'm old enough to remember gasoline costing less than a dollar), 35 cent cans of soda, etc. Those lower prices are the "norm" and the higher prices seem like exploitation. Economically speaking, the situation is more complex, but the view from the "man on the street" can be that this is an unfair and exploitative system. In addition, in the past (100 years ago) when most Americans were self-sufficient farmers, they always had the option to exit from market transactions for basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. Today, we are much more dependent on impersonal markets for necessities. For someone who prides themselves on autonomy and independence, this seems like an insult. This cryptic reference is to his plan to relocate his family to the Mosquito Coast off Honduras. However, most of the family is in the dark about his plans. There is no family meeting or consultation or consideration of their feelings. Even Mother seems to be resigned to chaining her and their fate to Allie Fox's ambitions. This is a mix of emotions that Charlie expresses eloquently. Allie sends Charlie to deliver the letter to Polski, which somewhat shows what a coward he is. He, no doubt, delights in getting Polski's goose, but doesn't have the courage to do the deed himself. Polski sits Charlie down and tells him the story of Spider Mooney, with the implication that he was a product of his father's treatment, drawing a potential parallel between Allie and Charlie. Polski concludes noting.
 * **pg. 41. "Secretly, I wanted to go to school. I felt like an old man or a freak when I saw other children. And secretly, I preferred factory-made cakes, like Devil Dogs and Twinkies, to Mother's banana bread. Father said store-bought cakes were junk and poison, but I guessed that his real objection was that the few times he caught me sneak-eating, I had to tell him that I paid for the food with money that Polski had given me for doing odd jobs."**
 * **pg. 44. "'. . . Where's this turkey from? Korea! See, that's it -- they've got sweatshops and slave labor in Korea and Taiwan. Little coolies make these. Up at dawn, work all day, never get any fresh air. Children make these things. They're chained to the machines -- feet hardly reach the pedals . . . They're so undernourished they can hardly see straight. Trachoma, rickets. They don't know what they're making. Might as well be bath mats. That's why we went to war in South Korea, to fight for labor-intensive industries, which means skinny kids punching out water bags and making tin cups for us. Don't get heartbroken. That's progress. That's the point of Orientals. Everybody's got to have coolies . . . I don't like the idea of us forcing skinny Oriental kids to make junk for us.'"**
 * **pg. 48. "'A buck ten a gallon,' Father was saying to the bewildered man at the pump. The man had a wet wasp pin each nostril, and a tag on his shirt said //Fred//. 'It's doubled in price in a year. So that's two-twenty next year and probably five the year after that -- if we're lucky. That's beautiful. Know what a barrel of crude oil costs to produce? Fifteen dollars -- that's all. How many gallons to the barrel? Thirty-five? Forty? You figure it out. Oh, I forgot, you just work here.' 'Don't blame me -- blame the president,' the man said, and went on jerking gas into our gas tank. Father said, 'Fred, I don't blame the president. He's doing the best he can. I blame the oil companies, the car industry, big business. Israelis. Palestinians -- know what they really are? Philistines. Same word, look it up. And Fred, I blame myself for not devising a cheaper method of extracting oil from shale. We've got trillions of tons of shale deposits in this county.' 'No choice,' said Fred, and snorted the wasps into his nose. 'We'll just have to go on paying.' 'I've got a choice in the matter,' Father said. 'I'm not going to pay anymore.'**
 * **pg. 52. "'Poor Charlie. When you've got something on your mind, you look like a little old man. Don't worry, everything's going to be all right.' 'Where?' I asked again. 'Dad will tell us, when he's ready,' she said. She had no idea! She knew as little as we did. I felt very close to her at the moment, and there was a solution of love and sadness in my blood. but here was more, because she was perfectly calm. Her loyalty to Father gave me strength. Though it did not take away any of my sadness, her belief made me believe and helped me share her patience. And yet I pitied her, because I pitied myself for not knowing more than I did.'"**
 * **pg. 55. "'Your father's the most obnoxious man I've ever met,' Polski said. 'He is the worst kind of pain in the neck -- a know-it-all who's sometimes vight.' Then, with all the sawdust in him stirring, he added, 'I've come to see he's dangerous. You tell him that, Charlie. Tell him he's a dangerous man, and one of thee days he's going to get you all killed. Tell him I said so.'"**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 7**__

The first half of the chapter details the migrant workers, described in a fearsome way in Chapter 2, coming to the Fox's house. What had seemed so threatening now appears innocuous as Charlie describes The Janus-faced nature of these men is a metaphor for many things in this novel. Things are not always what they seem and the ambivalence of Charlie is a central theme and the narrator's point of view. Another interesting nugget here is Allie Fox's description of a map. The image of "empty spaces on a map" is an interesting view of wilderness that will come up in a later novella we will read: Joseph Conrad's //Heart of Darkness//. There is also a parallel here to the metaphor between a book (The Bible) and wilderness now extended here to a visual form, a map. The manner of how the Foxs pull up stakes to go the Mosquito Coast is telling. They are taking necessities, but leaving much behind. Charlie makes the connection to refugees which underscores the notion that Allie Fox is running //away// and not running //to// some paradise. I note the following mostly because I have made the same remark about pollution and beautiful sunsets and can never forget the righteous rebuke I received. The challenge of hanging on to the rock during the tide is curious and provides another window into the father-son relationship between Allie and Charlie. It is also a metaphor for the book as a whole. A paean to stubbornness. Allie Fox clearly has a love-hate relationship with his country. He justifies his exodus as loving his country so much that he does not want to see it destroyed and makes the parallel to not watching his mother die. Allie Fox takes a perverse pride in giving his possessions away as some type of benevolent charity, but at the end of the chapter, his wife, typically quiet and passive, rebukes him.
 * **pg. 59. "I was sure these were the men I had seen that night carrying torches in that scarecrow ceremony. The men had seemed savage, their house had frightened me with its stink, their faces had seemed swollen and cruel. But here they were, fifteen of the queerest men I had ever laid eyes on. Yet they did not look savage up close. They looked poor and obedient. The patches on their shirts matches the bruises on their faces, their hands were cracked from work, there was dust in their hair. Their big broken shoes made their shoulders slanty, and their ragged pants made them seem -- no dangerous, as I had expected, but weak."**
 * **pg. 59. "'A map is as good as a book -- better, really. I've been reading this one for months. I know everything I have to know. Look how the middle of it is blank -- no roads, no towns, no names. America looked like that once!' . . . The map showed a forehead of territory, a bulge of coastline with an empty interior. The blue veins of rivers, lowland green and mountain orange -- no names, only bright colors. Father's finger was well suited for pointing at this map as he said 'This is where we're headed,' for the blunt blown-off finger was pointing at nothing but an outline of emptiness."**
 * **pg. 61. "Only later it occurred to me that this was what real refugees did. They finished breakfast and fled, leaving the dishes in the sink and the front door half-open. there was more drama in that than if we had carefully wrapped all our belongings and emptied the house."**
 * **pg. 62. "One part of the sky was darkening gray, the other dazzling red, a heap of claw-shaped clouds the color of boiled lobster shells, cracked and broken in just the same way. This brilliant crimson sky was to me. I called to Father to look at it. 'Pollution!' he cried. 'It's refraction from gas fumes!'"**
 * **pg. 65-6. "'No one loves this country more than I do,' Father said. 'And that's why I'm going. Because I can't bear to watch.' he strolled along and put his arm around the man, Sidney Torch. 'It's like when my mother died. I couldn't watch. She'd been as strong as an ox, but she broke her hip and after a spell in the hospital, she caught double pneumonia. And there she was, lying in bed, dying. I went over to her and held her hand. Do you know what she said to me? She said, 'Why don't they give me rat poison?' I didn't want to watch, I couldn't listen. So I went away. They say it was an awful struggle -- touch and go -- but she was doomed. After she died, I went back home. Some people might say that's the height of callousness. But I've never regretted it. I loved her too much to watcher her die.' . . . I had never heard Father's story, but it was characteristic of him to tell personal details of his life to a perfect stranger. Maybe it was his way of avoiding betrayal, divulging his secrets to people he met by chance and would never see again. 'That's a real sad story,' Mr. Torch said. 'Then you missed the point,' Father said."**
 * **pg. 66-7. "Mother said, 'if the police stop him, they'll think he stole it. He'll get pinched.' 'I don't care!' Father said. He was pleased with himself. 'I just gave it away. 'Take it!' I said. 'I've got no use for it!' Did you see the expression on his face? A free pickup truck with a new transmission! Like the Worm Tub. I just gave it away! Like Polski and the job. Clear the decks!' But Mother said sharply, 'What have you given away? A beat-up truck that was too much trouble to dump. A homemade icebox that stank to heaven. A job that wasn't worth having in the first place.' 'That's what I mean.' 'Don't pretend to be better than you are.'"**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 8**__

The beginning of the chapter is picture of one-upmanship between Allie Fox and everyone else. He wants to shows that he knows the Bible better than Reverend Spellgood, more about sailing than Captain Smalls, etc. The contrast of Spellgood and Fox is particularly interesting if you see both of them as religious figures, just preaching a different gospel. There is much in Fox's worldview that is straight out of a fire and brimstone preacher. The other historical dimension of Spellgood's character is the numerous evangelists who targeted Latin America in the late 1970s and 1980s. Some went with pure altruistic motives; some ended (badly) like Jonestown who were drawn by the relative isolation of certain areas to practice their faith. However, they are similar to both Fox and Spellgood is that they see the locals as benighted and backward populations in need of their "enlightenment." Note: It is OK to fish (and presumably kill the fish), but if your hook catches a seagull unintentionally you are a murderer?

The captain pours some cold water on Allie Fox's "Mosquito Coast = Paradise" vision. Fox's response is a page out of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's quip that "Hell is other People" and he gives a flippant answer about why he is moving his family to Mosquitia. Fox then returns to his broader critique of American society. This anti-consumerist sentiment could be found in the opening chapter of Thoreau's //Walden// where he counsels people to avoid all occupations that require a change of clothing and urges his reader to live deliberately or a "leavers" critique of the "takers" in Daniel Quinn's //Ishmael//. Another interesting sentiment is the contrast of viewing "all places are the same" and "every place is different" and we should consider this idea with respect to nature. Is nature basically the same, whether it is a jungle or an arctic tundra, or is every ecosystem fundamentally different? This sentiment is expressed early in Joseph Conrad's //Heart of Darkness// when the narrator makes the observation that to sailors the sea is all the same, the view from the ship never changes in contrast to the protagonist Marlow. Part of the attraction of nature to some is its constancy. It is peaceful and tranquil. To others, the attraction of nature is its capricious and unpredictable essence. The feminizing of nature ("mother nature") is common imagery, mostly because women are stereotypically thought to embody the personality often attributed to nature. There is a little conflict between notions of American patriotism between the captain and Fox, especially when Fox tries to compare his vision with the captain's mastery of his ship. Allie Fox makes an interesting point of how education contributes to environmental problems, what do you think? Is this accurate?
 * **pg. 74. "'In many ways, Honduras is about fifty years behind the times. La Ceiba's a hick town.' 'That suits me,' Father said. 'I'm a hayseed from way back. But we're going to Mosquitia.' Mother stared at him. It was news to her. 'That's the Stone Age,' the captain said. 'Like America before the pilgrims landed. Just Indians and woods. There's no roads. It's all virgin jungle.' 'America's verging on jungle, too.' Father said, and frowned again. 'And swamps,' the captain said. 'They're so bad, once you get in, you never get out.' 'It sounds perfect,' Father said. He seemed genuinely pleased. 'You know it like the back of your hand, do you?' 'Only the coast, but that is bad enough. You wouldn't catch me inland.'"**
 * **pg. 75. "'And what will you be doing in Mosquitia with this fine family?' A direct question. But Father faced him. 'Growing my hair,' Father said. 'You might have noticed I have long hair? There's a reason for it. I've don a lot of traveling, but I like to keep to myself. It's hard in America -- all those personal questions. I can't stand answering them. What does this have to do with hair? I'll tell you. It was the barbers who always asked them the most. They used to give me interviews. But after I stopped getting haircuts, the questions stopped. So I guess I'll just go on growing it for my peace of mind.'**
 * **pg. 75. "'I don't feel we're going to ruins so much as we're leaving them,' Father said. '. . . We were buying shoes, and when I paid the bill I looked through the stockroom door where there was a bulletin board for employees. A slogan's written on it in big letters. It says, 'If you have sold a customer exactly what he wanted, you haven't sold him anything.' A shoe shop. It made me want to go away in my old shoes.' 'That's business,' the captain said. 'That's ruins,' Father said. 'We eat when we're not hungry, drink when we're not thirsty, buy what we don't need, and throw away everything that's useful. Don't sell a man what he wants -- sell him what he doesn't want. Pretend he's got eight feet and two stomachs and money to burn. That's not illogical -- it's evil.'"**
 * **pg. 76. "'. . . this ship is my home. But I've put into a fair number of ports -- the East Coast, Mexico, Central America, through the Canal and up the other side, and I'll tell you, give or take a few palm trees, they're all the same.' 'that's a kind of fear,' Father said. 'When a man says women are all the same, it proves he's afraid of them. I've been around the world. I've been to places where it doesn't rain and places where it doesn't stop. I wouldn't say those countries are all the same, and the people are as different as dogs. I wouldn't go if I thought they were all the same. And if I was a ship captain I'd stay in my bunk. I expect places to be different. If Honduras isn't, we'll go home.'"**
 * **pg. 77. "'The captain's in charge here. The ship is his country. He can do as he pleases. He makes the rules . . .' 'I fly the Stars and Stripes, Mr. Fox,' the captain said. 'I don't run my country down.' 'Nor do I,' Father said. The captain drank air slowly, then said, 'I heard you doing it.' 'I don't have a country,' Father said. And someday soon, neither will you, friend.'"**
 * **pg. 78. "'Take this energy crisis,' Father said. 'It's the fault of the schools. Wind power, wave power, solar power, gasohol -- it's just a sideshow. They have fun talking about it, but everyone drives to school on Arab gas and Eskimo oil, while they jabber about windmills. Anyway, what's new about windmills? Dutch people have been using them for years. The schools go on teaching worn-out lessons and limping after the latest fashions. No wonder kids sniff glue and take drugs! I don't blame them.'"**

__**I. THE BANANA BOAT, Chapter 9**__

The chapter opens with a dialogue between Emily Spellgood and Charlie Fox that compares their different experiences growing up and their respective fathers. I think the advantages and disadvantages of the Fox parents' choices is on clear display. There is a lot to be said that conventional schools breed a lot of conformity and bad habits, but those who do not go through the experience, or grew up in alternative lifestyles, often have a sense that they miss something. Captain Smalls issues another warning about the dangers of the Mosquito Coast and invokes an interesting analogy: an inverted zoo, where people are in the cages and the animals are free. Another test of toughness illustrating how Allie and Charlie Fox interact is the challenge to climb the ship's rigging. I think it illustrates how manipulative and controlling Allie Fox is and how it contrasts with his resentment and resistance to outside control over him. The subsequent storm and the friction between Captain Smalls and Allie Fox is similar to the earlier clash of wills between Fox and Polski. There is the taunting and one-upmanship that occurred over the worm-tub; there is the grandiose vision of Fox versus the conventional authority of Smalls and Polski, etc. It also serves the purpose to reassure the reader that Allie Fox is not only compulsive and paranoid, but capable of succeeding in pressure situations. As Polski put it, a dangerous person who is sometimes right. However, Charlie provides another view from the inside. Charlie gets to bask in the aura of his father's success and gets himself a new girlfriend.
 * **pg. 82. "I had no school, no swimming pool, no Miss Barsotti. I looked over the rail, into the green slab of ocean, and thought. If this is the kind of creep who goes to school, Father's right. But she knew things that I did not know, she moved in a bigger and more complicated world, she spoke another language. I could not compete. She demanded to know my favorite movie star and singer, and though I had heard Father dismiss these people as buffoons and clowns, there was no conviction in my voice when I repeated what he said. She wanted to know my favorite breakfast cereal -- hers was Fruit Loops -- and I was too embarrassed to say that Mother made our cereal out of nuts and rolled oats, because it seemed makeshift and ordinary. She said, 'I can do disco dancing,' and I was lost . . . Emily Spellgood was from that other world that Father had forbidden us to enter. And yet it seemed glamorous to me. It was something you could boast about. It made our life seem dull and homemade, like the patches on our clothes. But if I could not have that life, then I was glad we were going far away, where no one would see us."**
 * **pg. 83. "'The Mosquito Jungle,' the captain said. 'Some people there have never seen a white man or know what a wheel is. Ask Reverend Spellgood. If they want to eat, they just climb a tree and grab a coconut. They can live for nothing. Everything they need is right there -- free. Most of them don't wear any clothes. It's a free and easy life . . . but it's no place for you,' the captain said. 'Picture a zoo, except the animals are outside, and the human beings are trapped in cages -- houses and compounds and missions. You look through the fence and you see all the creatures staring in at you. They're free, but you're not. That what it's like.'"**
 * **pg. 95. "I did not doubt that he would succeed. I had never known him to fail. People sometimes misunderstood Father, because he frowned when he joked and he laughed when he was serious. He also gave you information you did not need, like 'These are davits.' But those of us who knew him never doubted him. If there was one thing Father did not know, it was this: he did not need to prove himself to us. At the time, I thought he enjoyed taking risks. Yet what is a strong man's risk? He was fearless, so we were safe . . . I believed in Father. I was not afraid."**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 10**__ This chapter mostly moves the plot along. The Foxs arrive in La Ceiba and it is a "wild west" type of town. Allie Fox buys a town in the interior called Jeronimo. However, the experience of this town gives everyone (except Allie Fox) a pause about the viability of the plan. For Allie Fox it is a paradise and he is quick to make positive comparisons with America; the others are less convinced. Allie is full of nervous energy as he goes around organizing the components of his vision, while the rest of the family explores. Two specific points. The first is the repeat of the "inverted zoo" metaphor as they explore the Mosquito Coast of Honduras. The second is that the Fox family has passed a point of no return. They have cut their ties to America and there is no longer an "uncle" figure like Polski or Smalls to be a check on Allie Fox to keep his paranoid grandiosity from fully realizing itself.
 * **pg. 108. "We drove through the town and at once I could see that it was both richer and poorer than I had guessed. There were chicken huts, like the shacks on the beach, but also large houses and green lawns. The best of them were surrounded by fences. That was the strangest thing to me, because the Connecticut Valley was a land without fences, except for horses and cows. It reminded me of what Captain Smalls had said about Honduras being like a zoo, only the animals were outside and the people inside the cages. But so far, we were outside."**
 * **pg. 114. "Our last link with America was broken with the sailing of the //Unicorn//. Father had been partly right when he accused me of siding with Captain Smalls -- I had felt that old man would take care of us, and I had sometimes felt the same about tiny Polski. But now Father was in sole charge. he had brought us to this distant place and in his magician's way surprised us by buying a town . . . 'These are the raw materials of civilization,' he said. But I did not care about that. I just wanted to be near him. I feared the recklessness of his courage and I remembered what the German and the gun. //If he dies,// I thought, //we are lost . . .// Often, he stooped over and said to me, 'How am I doing?' I said fine. But I did not know what he was doing what he was doing, or why. I only knew that whatever it was, he was doing it among the savages.'"**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 11**__

This chapter mostly reprises earlier themes as the Fox travel on Mr. Haddy's launch along the coast of Honduras to the river mouth leading inland to Jeronimo. Allie Fox wants to be in control and Mr. Haddy pushes back, but unlike Polski and Smalls, he seems less able to resist Allie Fox's demands. Fox's insistence on piloting the launch upstream ends with it running aground. Of course, this does not daunt him in his journey toward Jeronimo.

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 12**__

In this chapter, the family turns an abandoned clearing into a habitat. They meet the locals, including the Maywits, and Allie Fox becomes a charismatic leaders/messiah for the locals through his energy and ingenuity. It is good to benchmark what Jeronimo was when the Foxs arrived, and for that, I turn the mic over to Charlie The native residents, the Zambus, see it a different way. The Foxs meet the Maywits, a local family that had been squatting in Weerwilly's hut at Jeronimo. Allie Fox sees them, in part, as new subjects, since he is the owner of the land. This may seem strange, but it is exactly the logic that European colonizers took when they claimed the land of the "new world." Later Allie Fox strikes a messianic note: I could imagine these lines coming out of C3PO when he is hailed as a god by the Ewoks or envision the first encounters of native Hawaiians with Captain Cook, which hailed him as a god before killing him. The role of prophet and redeemer is a useful analogy to keep in mind as you try to unwrap the tightly wrapped nut that Allie Fox is. Later, his wife chides him, but it is also clear that he is broadening his mission. This superior attitude that "civilized" people show toward "primitive" people is an age-old dichotomy. The late literary scholar Edward Said has termed the complex as "[|Orientalism]" that infantilizes and exoticizes primitive people that seem backward from a Western perspective, justifying their own domination. George Orwell, who was in the Imperial Burmese Constabulary at one point, provides another perspective in his short story [|Shooting an Elephant]. The notion that primitive are "bone-idle" without enlightened and advanced Westerners to drag them into modernity is tied to views of the environment. Environments that are not improved by humans are somehow flawed and imperfect. One could call this the myth of the "noble savage" that has played into narratives that permit environmental exploitation as well. The meme of "idle hands make the devil's work" has shown up repeatedly in the mantras of colonizers. The tension between the perspectives pops up again with Allie Fox's first Jeronimo invention. It may be fruitful to compare this with //Ishmael's// distinction between "takers" and "leavers." The Maywits wonder why anyone would store water in a rainy season, Fox responds that it is for the future. This is basically the change that occurred with the invention of agriculture: the ability to store food for the future.
 * **pg. 130. "Jeronimo reminded me of one time when we were in Massachusetts, and fishing. Father pointed to a small black stump and said, 'That's the state line there.' I looked at this rotten stump -- the state line! Jeronimo was like that. We had to be told what it was. We would not have taken it for a town. It had a huge tree, a trunk-pillar propping up a blimp of leafy branches with tiny jays in it. It was a guanacaste, and under it was a half-acre of shade. The remnants of Weerwilly's shack and his failure were still there, looking sad and accidental. But these leftover ruins only made Jeronimo seem wilder this wet afternoon . . . but even Father's booming voice could not make Jeronimo mean more than sour-smelling bushes in an overgrown clearing."**
 * **pg. 131-2. "The Zambus saw it their own way. there were hills behind it, and a stream running through it. The Zambus called the hills mountains -- the Esperanzas -- and the stream a river -- the Bonito -- and Jeronimo, to their bloodshot eyes, was a farm -- the estancia. These grand names were all wrong and imaginary, but they were like the names of the Zambus themselves . . . They could call it anything they liked, but I knew that Jeronimo was no more than a tin-roofed hut in a bush patch, a field of finger bananas that had collapsed with beards of brown smut disease. Over here a broken rowboat and over there some cut-down tree trunks that no one had bothered to saw into cords. What fenceposts there were had turned into trees again, a row of short saplings that might have been a pigpen, alongside the mud and fever grass and that armchair smoking poison."**
 * **pg. 136-7. "He said he did not believe in accidents. 'I was looking for you,' he said. 'And what were you doing? You were waiting for me! If you hadn't been waiting, you would have been some other place. But you were here when I came. I need you good people, and I've got a feeling that you need me.' . . . 'I was sent here,' Father said. 'I'm not going to tell you who sent me, or why. And I'm not going to tell you who I am or what I aim to do. that's just talk. I'm going to //show//** **you why I'm here. You go ahead and watch. And if you don't like what you see, you can kill me.'. . .'I didn't come here to boss you around. I cam here to work for you. If I'm not working hard enough, you just tell me, and I'll work harder. You come up to me and say, 'Mister, you've got to do a whole lot better than this.' I'm working for you people, and you're going to see things you've never seen before. What do you want me to do first? It's up to you.'. . .'You want some food?' Father said. 'You want a bridge and some beans and a paddle pump and a chicken run?'. . .'I heard you,' Father said. 'I'll obey. And those Indians up in the hills are going to look down here and they're not going to believe their yes. They're going to be absolutely feverish with amazement.'"**
 * **pg. 138. "'Aren't you laying it on a little thick, Allie?' But Father just laughed and said that it had been his intention to get us out of the States and save us. He had not thought that he would be saving other people as well. Yet that was what happened. If we had not come here, these people would have been bone-idle, and the vultures would have made a meal of them. 'I want to give people a chance to sue their know-how,' Father said.**
 * **pg. 139. "The Maywits and the Zambus were greatly impressed by its flapping and splashing, but they said they could not understand why Father had made such a thing in the rainy season, when there was water everywhere. 'We're building for the future, the dry season,' Father said. He said it was the civilized thing to do. 'And know why it's a perfect invention?'. . .'. . .it's perfect because it's self-propelled, uses available energy, and it's nonpolluting. Make one of these up in Massachusetts and they'd have you certified. But they're not interested in perfection.' . . . Each time he made something, Father said, 'This is why I'm here.'"**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 13**__

This chapter opens with a decidedly negative description of wilderness that is at odds with the Allie Fox viewpoint.. A missionary comes to Jeronimo and is quickly set aside by Allie Fox. Jeronimo has only room for one prophet and vision. Jeronimo seems attractive to Fox because there is no "god" here, only him: full self-reliance.
 * **pg. 144. "It was not an easy life these first few weeks in Jeronimo. It was no coconut kingdom of free food and grass huts and sunny days, under the bam, under the boo. Wilderness was ugly and unusable, and where were the dangerous animals? There was something stubborn and about jungle trees, the way they crowded each other and gave us no shade. I saw cruelty in the hanging vines and selfishness in their root systems. This was work, and more work, and a routine that too up every daylight hour."**
 * **pg. 150. "'The Lord sent me here,' Mr. Struss said. 'Bull,' Father said. 'The Lord hasn't the slightest idea that this place exists. If he had, he would have don something about it a long time ago.'"**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 14**__

This chapter documents the construction of the Ice House -- the Worm Tub on a much grander scale. In many ways, it is the apex epiphany of Allie Fox's vision. He clearly ties it to a theory of progress that parallels the development of human technology, at the same time, there is an embedded critique of progress or at least progress of the 20th century variety. Charlie take on his father is that this is why his father came to the jungle wilderness: to be free of constraint imposed by civilization to make "ice" I think that Allie Fox makes an interesting point that the best inventions are simply mimicking or magnifying nature and that "unnatural" inventions are dangerous ones. In this rant, he also advances an interesting definition of savagery: those people who do not learn from observing nature. Those who worship it are savages, those who learn and emulate it are advanced. Invention, to Allie Fox, is also a criticism of God. If human could make improvements on "God's Work = Nature" then what need of God was there? Climbing through the inside of Fat Boy is just another "test" Allie Fox puts Charlie through. Recall the earlier challenges to stay on the rock against the tide, climbing the //Unicorn's// rigging, etc. You might think that Charlie regrets it, but he seems to embrace his Father's tough love. Allie Fox compares his success with America's decline. He is pure invention while America is diseased with Greed. This, by the way, is similar to a critique of American society made by the famous economist Thorstein Veblen prior to WWI. The problem with America is that leadership had been taken out of the hands of engineers and put in the care of businessmen, you may want to read (at some time) his //[|Theory of the Business Enterprise]// or //[|Engineers and the Price System]//. There is an interesting note here about sustainable agriculture. There is an interesting contrast of Allie Fox and Mother's styles. In the closing of the chapter, the children, led by Charlie, set up their own camp, "The Acre," as a type of protest or free space in contrast to Father's Jeronimo. Charlie compares the two. The discussion between the Maywits and the Fox children at the Acre makes the parallel between religion (magic) and science that has been a running undercurrent in the story. It is interesting to compare the Fox children's faith in their father, ungrounded as some of that faith is, and then criticize others "superstitious" beliefs. Another point is the taking risks for oneself and taking risks for a group of people. This is a point to keep in mind as we compare this story with ones we will be reading later in the course. It strikes me that a lot of environmental disasters begin with conversations like this, particularly ones related to energy use. The chapter closes with the fabrication of ice in the tropics via the Fat Boy.adfasf
 * **pg. 154-5. "'The Iron Age comes to Jeronimo,' Father said. 'A month ago, it was the Stone Age -- digging vegetables with wooden shovels and clobbering rats with flint axes. We're moving right along. It'll be 1832 in a few days! By the way, people, I'm planning to skip the twentieth century altogether.'. . .'One of the sicknesses of the twentieth century?' he said. 'I'll tell you the worst one. People can't stand to be alone. Can't tolerate it! So they go to the movies, get drive-in hamburgers, put their home telephone numbers in the crapsheets and say, 'Please call me up!' It's sick. People hate their own company -- they cry when they see themselves in mirrors. It scares them, the way their faces look, Maybe that's a clue to the whole thing --' . . . 'Why do things get weaker and worse?' came the echoey small mask-voice, as if out of a conch. 'Why don't they get better? Because we accept tha tthey fall apart! But they don't have to -- they could last forever. Why do things get more expensive? Any fool can see that they should get cheaper as technology gets more efficient. It's despair to accept the senility of obsolescence --'"**
 * **pg. 156. ". . . seeing this towering windowless building at the edge of the clearing, I understood why we had come here -- to build Fat Boy, to make ice. This was the distant empty place that Father had always spoken about. Here he could make whatever h e pleased and not have to explain why to anyone. There was no Polski here to say 'Vumble, vumble.' Father said, 'You look at Jeronimo and you can't tell what century it is. This is part of your original planet, with people to match. And you're wondering why I gave that missionary the bum's rush?' Father had found his wilderness."**
 * **pg. 157-8. "'Take the human body,' he said. That contained all the physics and chemistry we needed to know. The best inventions were based on human anatomy . . . there was no better piece of engineering than the ball-and-socket joint in the human hip. Computer technology was just a clumsy way of making a brain, but the central nervous system was a million times more complicated. 'Insulation? Look at fatty tissue!' You had to study natural things. Anyone who took a good look at an alligator or a hicatee could make an armored vehicle. The natural world showed man what was possible. In a world without birds there would be no airplanes. 'Airplanes are just magnified sparrows -- they're crascos with leg room . . . 'I'm not saying all inventions are good. But you notice dangerous inventions are always unnatural inventions. You want an example? I'll give you the best one I know. Cheese spread that you squirt out of an aerosol can onto your sandwich. That's about as low as you can go . . . Like shaving cream' Father said. 'Comes out like Reddi-wip. Disgusting. The ozone layer? It eats it up. And there's four things wrong with it -- the processed cheese itself, the squirt, the can, and the sandwich.'"**
 * **pg. 157. "'What's a savage?' he said. 'It's someone who doesn't bother to look around and see that he can change the world.'. . . Father went on to say that savagery was seeing and not believing you could do it yourself, and that that was a fearful condition. The man who saw a bird and made it into a god, because he could not imagine flying himself, was a savage of the most basic kind."**
 * **pg. 158. "'And why build it? Because it's an imperfect world! And that's why I do what I do. And that's why I don't believe in God -- stop looking up, people! -- because if you can make improvement, that doesn't say much for God, does it?'"**
 * **pg. 160. ". . . I was glad Father had bullied me inside. He was making me a man."**
 * **pg. 161-2. "'Just the way America might have been,' he said. 'But it got rotten and combustible. Greed panicked the worst into doubledipping, and the best fell victim to the system . . . I was the last man left . . . 'We've got to keep our traps shut,' he would say, 'or everyone and his brother will be down here on top of us . . .This would be all parking lots from here to the hills. Facilities! They'd be ramming them down our throats . . . but we don't need electricity or fossil fuels -- this is a superior civilization.'"**
 * **pg. 162. "As soon as the potatoes and yams were harvested he was going to ban the planting of cassava. It was a lazy man's crop, he said. Like bananas. True, there was no weeding to be done, but cassava exhausted the soil and there was no nutrition in it. Growing it would turn us all into funny-bunnies."**
 * **pg. 164-5. "Mother did not take charge. When father was around, we did things his way, he kept us jumping, but Mother had no inventions and never made speeches. When she did talk, it was often a gentle request for someone to show her the local way of doing something . . . they were slow, dirty, traditional methods, but she was in no hurry . . . This was different than Father's way. He was an innovator. He thought nothing of getting a dozen people to peel wood or dig ditches, and he would not tell them why until they had finished . . . He had his own way of doing things, and he liked telling people that their own methods were just waste motion . . .He had never been a good listener. But he knew so much he did not have to listen."**
 * **pg. 168-9. "The Acre helped me understand something of Father's pride in Jeronimo. Until we built our camp, I had not seen why he was so boastful of what he had made in Jeronimo. Father had insisted that we look closely at the garden and the paths and the waterworks. He wanted us to marvel at the way we could be bone-dry in the rain and cool on the hottest day and not be pestered by insects. He was happy, and at the Acre I knew why. I looked around and saw that the pattern of life and the things we had fixed ourselves were all ours. Even the Maywit children were pleased by what we had done. But I felt that ours was a greater achievement than Father's, because we ate the fruit that grew nearby and used anything we found, and adapted ourselves to the jungle. We had not bought a boatload of tools and seeds, and we had not invented anything. We just lived like monkeys."**
 * **pg. 170. "Drainy said, 'You father can do magic.' 'What he does isn't magic -- it's science,' I said. 'Science is worse,' Alice said.**
 * **pg. 171. "If anything had gone wrong, he said, we could have been blown sky-high along with half the valley --probably ended up in Hatfield, in smithereens. 'I have just spent the most dangerous twelve hours of my whole life,' he said. 'Sounds to me as if it was dangerous for us to,' Mother said. Sure, but you weren't aware of the danger, so you could sleep in blissful ignorance. Mother said 'I like that,' and turned her back on him. 'I am the only person here who knows how lethal that stuff is. I took full responsibility. Was I scared? No, ma'am' 'We might have been killed!' 'You wouldn't have know what hit you. I can give you my cast-iron guarantee of that. You'd have been atomized, with a smile on your face.' Mother said, 'Thanks, pal.'**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 15**__ This chapter is primarily Allie Fox's frustrated attempts to bring ice (civilization) to the most primitive peoples he can find. Unfortunately, each seemingly backward settlement he finds is tainted by gum wrappers, batteries, religion, etc. No one is worthy enough to be a beneficiary of Fox's gospel. Charlie gets volunteered to lead the way at one settlement, and Charlie connects it to the tests his father has been administering all along: Another facet to the relationship between Allie Fox and Mother comes out as he admits the failure of his expedition to find Selville. It is a rare show of vulnerability for this self-confident man. On their second trip to Selville, they find the natives have made a replica of the Fat Boy and now treat it as an idol, much to the chagrin and consternation of Allie Fox. Recall his definition of savagery on page 157 above. He echoes a point made in the discussion between the Maywit and Fox children.
 * **pg. 181. ". . . the risks that Father made me take were his way of showing me there were no risks. On the rock in Baltimore, up the kingpost of the //Unicorn//, climbing through Fat Boy -- it had all been a kind of training for times like this. Father wanted me to be strong. He had known all along that he was preparing me for worse, for this tiptoeing through the spinachy swamp on duckboards, and teetering past the scummy pools and the vine tubes."**
 * **pg. 189-90. "I heard Mother consoling Father. At first I thought she was speaking to April or Clover, her voice was so soft. But she was talking about the ice, and the boat, and his hard work. It was all brilliant, she said. She was proud of him, and nothing else mattered. Father did not object. He said, 'It wasn't what I expected. I didn't want that. They prayed at me, Mother.' 'I'd like to go upstream sometime,' Mother said. 'We'll go. It's not what you think. You won't like it. It's bad, but in the most boring way. Oh, I suppose they're all right -- they'll be able to use the ice for something. But what can you do with people who've already been corrupted? It makes me mad."**
 * **pg. 193. "They had made a copy of Fat Boy. But, Father said, what good was it? Of course it didn't work. It was only good for boiling eggs or setting yourself on fire. 'Who gave you this harebrained idea?' They smiled. They treated this box with a kind of reverence and asked Father to lead them in hymns in front of it. This enraged Father. He began to smell of his anger. The Gowdy tried to present Father with the lame puppy, but Father said he had enough sick animals of his own, and sick people too. So we unloaded the ice, and without even unwrapping it we went back to the //Icicle.// he said to Mother, 'I hope you're satisfied.' He also said he would never again go to Selville. 'I didn't come here to give people false idols to worship,' he said. But the idol was there for all to see, made of warped planks and fastened by lianas.'**
 * **pg. 193. "'That's the trouble, really,' Father said. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 16**__

The chapter begins with a paean to ice: This leads into a recapitulation of the accomplishments of Jeronimo An earthquake tremor gets Allie Fox focused on geothermal energy. However, Charlie begins to see his Father's inventions as novelties that keep his attention for a time, not a provision of necessities that his Father does.
 * **pg. 194. "'What's ice good for?' little Leon Maywit had asked. But father did not mind silly questions from small children. He went on, 'Mainly it's a preservative -- it keeps food fresh, so it keeps you from starvation and disease. It kills germs, it suppresses pain, and it brings down swellings. It makes everything it touches taste better without altering it chemically. Makes vegetables crisp and meat last forever. Listen, it's an anesthetic. I could remove your appendix with a jackknife if I had a block of ice to cool your nerves and take your mind off the butchery. It doesn't occur naturally on the Mosquito Coast, so it's the beginning of perfection in an imperfect world. It makes sense of work. It's free. It's even pretty. It's civilization. It sued to be carried from northern latitudes on ships in just the same way they carried gold and spices --'"**
 * **pg. 195. "'Control -- that's the proof of civilization. Anyone can do something once, but repeating it and maintaining it -- that's the true test.' we grew rice, the most difficult of crops. We had superior sewage system and shower apparatus. 'We're clean!' An efficient windmill pump overrode the water wheel on the ice-making days. Most of the inventions had been made from local materials, and three new buildings were faced with Father's bamboo tiles. We had a chicken run and two boats at the landing and the best flush toilets in Honduras. Jeronimo was a masterpiece of order -- 'appropriate technology,' Father called it."**
 * **pg. 200. "'. . . the truth was that ice was not a necessity so far. It was a novelty, like Father's idea of geothermal energy. Why drill five thousand feet down to get at a volcano's bowels? To provide Fat Boy with an endless heat supply. One scheme justified another. We could have done without them, but, as Father said, why live like savages? 'In the end, Robinson Crusoe went back home! But we're staying.'"**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 17**__

This chapter is another expedition to bring ice to the unenlightened. It includes the standard rant about American decline, observations about the savages, but what is different is that those that had followed Allie Fox loyally are starting to doubt his leadership and vision. He is more of a "Napoleon-complex" leader than a visionary. But mostly, he looks vulnerable. He rantings are more ravings in the view of those around them. Perhaps most telling is his refusal to use a local remedy to keep away flies and mosquitoes and shows contempt for their solutions, or any solution that is not his own. As he becomes more frustrated he lashes out and becomes more cruel and insulting to those around him, including his children, chiding and correcting them for their weakness, instead of taking responsibility for their predicament. Charlie makes an interesting point that his father was no good at "temporary" shelters as handy as he was. Allie Fox only has one gear and is unable to adapt to unforeseen challenges, unlike his children.
 * **pg. 210. "'Your hands and necks are filthy. What's the matter with you kids? Can't you keep clean?' We explained that we had rubbed black berry juice on our skin to keep the flies and bees away. It was the trick Alice Maywit had shown us at the Acre. The berry juice was as good as insect repellent. The Zambus had used it too, only it was impossible to see the dark juice on their black skin. Father had been bitten -- his wrists and necks were pebbly from insect bites. I thougth he might thank us for this information. It was natural medication, it worked, and it was free."**
 * **pg. 212. "He was no good at making temporary camps, and he was surprised at how quickly and well Jerry and I put up our lean-to. It did not need to be waterproof -- it was only to protect us form the wind, which was strengthening up here as darkness fell. When Father saw our bed-nest of grass he said, 'You planning to lay an egg?' He cut five saplings, saying, 'I'm going to make a proper shelter!' He started to lash them together, but before his first frame was complete it was pitch dark, which was a shame because his shelter would have been much better than ours if he had finished it. At last, he kicked it apart and said, 'What's the use!'"**

__**II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 18**__

This chapter is the second half of the expedition. They meet what Allie Fox takes to "true" natives/savages. Unfortunately, when he offers them ice, he finds that all the ice has been melted. The natives do not seem to speak any of the pidgin languages -- Spanish, English, French -- spoken on the coast. To their surprise, three whites show up and Allie Fox believes that they have been enslaved by the natives. Subsequent events will prove otherwise. However, this shows the dangers of Allie Fox underestimating others and overestimating his own powers and understanding. This is mostly a "plot" chapter, but Charlie does make one observation about wilderness for us to consider.
 * **pg. 214-5. "Below us -- but it was a plateau, not the deep valley we had expected -- was all of Honduras. Such an empty world. I did not think wilderness could look so sad. This was a different country from the one we knew: limitless jungle, volcanoes, and no ocean. No river that we could see, no water at all. It was a surface of treetops and skimming birds. Its vastness made me feel small and puny. No smoke, no roads, nothing to say that people lived here. It was Olancho, but that was only a name. It was anybody's 'It looks so desolate,' I said.**


 * __II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 19__**

Charlie begins by reflecting on his father's lie about the expedition's success. One of the most demoralizing things is when one's leaders are publicly lying. It makes everything they tell you uncertain and you wonder if they believe their own lies. I feel this way every time someone tells me that the economy is going to get better (and proposes an inadequate policy) or that global warming is not real (it is) or X doesn't cause cancer (how do you know?). I am not advocating cynicism or paranoia here, but the moment we realize those who we have looked up to and idolized are not all that they seem, we face the prospect of responsibility (we have to solve our own problems) and possible calamity. I turn the mic over to Charlie: When they return to Jeronimo, they find that the Maywits have left. The Christian missionary Struss, outraged by the people in Selville praying to the Fat Boy simulacra blamed Fox and came to Jeronimo. Father predicts they will be back. However, there is mention of soldiers. Historical note: On the Honduran-Nicaraguan border at the time, there was an ongoing guerrilla war fought between the [|Contras] (supported by the USA) against the Communist/Socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. While the soldiers are not specifically identified, there is little doubt Theroux had something like this in mind.
 * **pg. 226-7. ". . . I though of Father's lie. I hoped he did not believe it, but how could he be rescued from repeating it . . . Yet he had spoken it confidently and said the expedition was a triumph and he couldn't wait to tell Mother. Again and again I tried to remember ice in Father's hands and amazement on the faces of the Indians. But there was none: no ice, no surprise. it had all been worse and odder than his lie. They had told us to go away . . . His confidence was something I did not want to hear now. I dreaded the thought of Father repeating his story in Jeronimo. And his lie scared me. //Did you see those Indians' faces?// But the Indians' faces were confused, they had monkey wrinkles, and they had tried to frighten us away by showing us the black teeth like their dogs. Once I had believed that Father was so much taller than me that he saw things I missed. I excused adults who disagreed with me, and blamed myself because I was so short. But this was something I could judge. I had seen it. Lies made me uncomfortable, and Father's lie, which was also a blind boast, sickened me and separated me from him . . . I loved this man, and he was calling me a fool and falsifying the only world I knew."**

As the Fox children return to the Acre, Charlie make an interesting point about how inventions separate us from natural rhythms We have restatement of Allie Fox's philosophy of invention as improvements on nature. [|Michael Pollan] would have a field day with this statement. He continues to sentiment, which explains more of his hostility to conventional religion. I would note that this is only one view of God's role in the world, creation, and nature, but the idea that humans improve upon nature is a common one. In Japan, no river runs naturally to the sea because they have seen fit, like Allie Fox, to "straighten it". If you live in a world where tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes are the manifestations of nature, you might think so too. The attribution of boredom as a motivation for God has been made by the existential philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as well as the Thoreau, the transcendentalist. The chapter ends with the three "slaves" they had met in the previous chapter show up in Jeronimo.
 * **pg. 232. "We knew from the Acre that it was the dry season. No one in Jeronimo knew this, or considered it important. The gardens were still growing, but we were in touch with the seasons: we had no inventions. The Acre was primitive, a ragged hollow in the jungle, but the grass was soft, the pool made it pleasant, and we had everything we needed . . . We learned that he fiercest creatures were predictable, and though once it had all looked dangerous here, now it seemed more peaceful than Jeronimo. We came here to escape Jeronimo."**
 * **pg. 233. "Father often talked of things being 'revealed' That was true invention, he said, revealing something's use and magnifying it, discovering its imperfection, improving it, and putting it to work for you. A guava growing wild was to him an imperfection. You had to improve it to make it edible."**
 * **pg. 233. "He said, "It's savage and superstitious to accept the world as it is. Fiddle around and find a use for it!' God had left the world incomplete, he said. It was man's job to understand how it worked to tinker with it and finish it. I think that was why he hated missionaries so much: because they taught people to put up with their earthly burdens. For Father, there were no burdens that couldn't be fitted with a set of wheels, or runners, or a system of pulleys. But instead of improving the world, he said, most people just tried to improve God. 'God -- the deceased God -- was a hasty inventor of the sort you find in any patent office. Yes, He had a great idea in making the world, but He started it and moved on before He got it working properly. God is like the boy who gets his toy top spinning and leaves the room and lets it wobble. How can you worship //that?// God got bored,' Father said. 'I know that kind of boredom, but I fight it.' Father saw the river and said, 'Let's straighten it.'"**


 * __II. THE ICEHOUSE AT JERONIMO, Chapter 20__**

This chapter is about the imploding self-destruction of Jeronimo. First, Fox tries to get the three soldiers to leave by complaining of termites and tears apart the structures of Jeronimo. There is a back and forth of dishonest dialogue where Allie Fox urges them to move on and they insist on staying. Finally, he traps them inside of Fat Boy, hoping to freeze them in their sleep. They wake up, bullets fly, things end badly. BOOM!

__**III. BREWER'S LAGOON, Chapter 21**__

The family escapes to the Acre as they ponder their next move. The key to this chapter for our purposes is the aftermath of an environmental "event" -- the release of toxins into the natural environment. Certainly, Allie Fox is not a great despoiler of the environment, but his actions and risk he took brought on significant damage to the local environment. In addition, the accident does not dissuade him, but convinces him that a "safer" mechanism (physics, not chemistry) is the only adjustment necessary. I find this response akin to the idea of "safer" nuclear reactors in response to a nuclear incident. Dams do significant environmental damage and there is nothing sophisticated or toxic about them. The first point is the recognition of how dependent the family has become upon Father. They are almost paralyzed without him. A similar point could be made about harmful / risky technologies. We might understand the problems, but cannot envision a life without them. Allie Fox's reflections on the causes of the disaster. To me this seems like a non-apology apology. He know he did wrong, but he is still defensive. His explanation that he was too elaborate / ambitious is like asking someone what their faults are and replying, "I'm too humble." Of course, it is not his problem, and he quickly turns the blame outward: people were too envious of his perfection. It's the critic's fault. The aftermath. ..
 * **pg. 259. "His sleep made us helpless. It prevented us from moving. As long as he lay there we could not leave. It was then that we reminded how important he was to us. We had only known him awake. It was frightening to see him so still. If he was dead, we were lost."**
 * **pg. 260-1. "'Everything you made is gone,' she said. 'All the houses, the crops, those wonderful machines. All that work -' 'Traps,' Father said. 'I should never have done it.' 'How ere you to know?' 'I'm the only one who could have known. It wasn't ignorance; it was subtlety. But that's always been my problem. I'm too elaborate, too ambitious. I can't help being an idealist. I was trying to defuse the situation peaceably. It blew up in my face.' 'Allie, why --' 'And I deserved it. Toxic substances -- this is no place for them, I'll never work with poisons again, and no more flammable gas. Keep it simple -- physics, not chemistry. Levers, weights, pulleys, rods. No chemicals except those that occur naturally. Stable elements --'**
 * **pg. 261. "'I thought I was building something,' he said. 'But I was asking for it to be destroyed. That's a consequence of perfection in this world -- the opposing wrath of imperfection. Those scavengers wanted to feed on us! And Fat Boy failed me. Th concept was wrong, and now I know why -- no more poison, Mother.'"**
 * **pg 262-5. "'It's all poisoned,' Father said. 'We had too much with us -- too much junk, too many drums of poison. That was our mistake. do you know what a flood of ammonia can do? There's contamination there, andwhat's not contaminated is burned to a crisp.'. . . Jeronimo looked bombed. It was mostly powder, a pouch of gray ashes, the trees around it burned to spikes. . . But the ashy ruins were nothing compared to the silence. We were accustomed to bird twitters and screeches, to the high ringing notes of the crickyjeen cicadas. There was no sound or movement. All life had been burned out of Jeronimo. What birds we saw were dead, roasted black and midgety, stripped of their feathers, with tiny wings and ridiculous bobble heads. slimy fish floated on the surface of the tank. It all lay dead and silent and stinking in the afternoon sun. some thick hummocks still smoldered . . . 'The river is dead,' Father said. 'It's full of ammonium hydroxide and gasping fish. The air -- smell it? -- it's contaminated. It'll take a year for this place to be detoxified. If we stay here, we'll die.'. . . 'I know what you're thining. All right, I admit it -- I did a terrible thing. I took a flyer. I polluted this whole place. I'm a murderer.' He sobbed again. 'It wasn't me!'"**

__**III. BREWER'S LAGOON, Chapter 22**__

Allie Fox has had his "[|road to Damascus]" moment which has caused him to shun certain activities due to his "Experience." Whether he learned the right lesson or not is still up in the air. Fox takes credit for having "dreamed" what natural and social evolution has already produced: the "pipanto" flat-bottomed boat. Allie Fox continues to feel his is above the native Miskitos and Zambus and refuses to eat "local food" because they deserve "no credit" for it. Charlie concludes that his father has not changed so much after all. More evidence that he has not changed. He invents a new lie (see chapter 19): that the USA has been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, when Mother suggests they return to Massachusetts.
 * **pg. 268-9. "'I had a breakdown back there. A breakdown isn't bad. It's an Experience. I'm stronger than ever.'. . .'Before my Experience, I wouldn't have though of doing this. Listen, consider what we're attempting! It's staggering, really. I have nothing up my sleeve, and look' -- he turned to face us on the path, and pulled out his limp white pockets -- 'nothing there!' . . . 'This is test of true ingenuity,' Father said. 'We're trusting to brains and experience. I'm glad Jeronimo was destroyed!' . . . 'This is the way the first family faced things,' Father said. 'That's it, Mother. We are the first family on earth, walking down the glory road empty-handed.'"**
 * **pg. 270-1. "'I think I can take credit for inventing that boat.' 'That a pipanto,' Mr. Haddy said. 'That a pitpan.' Father said the fact that it was used by the Zambus and Miskitos made no difference. He had dreamed it up as the best design for our river, and he was pleased that the same design was used here." . . . Father said, 'I invented this boat.' 'Everybody got pipantos,' Mr. Haddy said. 'And them that ain't got cayukas.' 'This is my boat,' Father said."**
 * **pg. 271. "I felt he had not changed at all, for he had always said this in Jeronimo . . . 'I'm saving up for later,' he said. 'Hunger's a good thing. Makes you determined. Food puts you straight to sleep. That thing you've got in your hand there' -- the Miskito was holding the burned and greasy curassow -- 'that's a soporific. Sure, you knew that, didn't you? I'm not talking about starvation, but hunger. It's nature mainspring. It's a kind of strength.'"**
 * **pg. 273. "'You've got a gleam in your eye, Allie.' 'Because I've just worked out what kind of hut suits this terrain.' 'You said your were through with inventions.' 'I didn't come here to live in a grass hut,' he said. 'I'm not Robinson Crusoe. Give me a little credit, will you? Hey, don't touch those baskets!' Jerry had taken a tomato and was polishing it on his knee. Father ordered him to put it back. 'We'll stop and get monkey food, if you're hungry, but don't eat those vegetables. Those are hybrids. Eat those and you're living on our capital. When we get where we're going, we'll take them apart and use them for seed. They're ripe enough.' Mother said, 'That's unfair.' 'It's propagation.' 'You haven't changed a bit.' 'Father swept his broom back and forth. He said, 'My whole way of thinking has changed. No more chemicals, no ice, no contraptions. Jeronimo was a mistake. I had to pollute a whole river to find that out.' Mother said, 'All Jerry wants is one lousy tomato!' 'That tomato represents a whole row of vines. It contains a garden, Mother. Use your imagination.'"**
 * **pg. 274. "Cape Cod's been blown away. We got out just in time. There's nothing left -- nothing at all. It's gone, don't you understand?' Mother said, 'What are you talking about?' 'The end of the world.' Father pointed north with his broom handle. 'That world. Burned to a crisp.' 'Jeronimo is back there,' Mother said. 'Jeronimo was nothing compared to the destruction of the United States. It wasn't only the burning buildings and the panic. Think of the people. Remember Figgy's curassow? The way roasting made the meat fall off the bones? That's what happened to millions of Americans. Their flesh just slipped off their bones.'"**

__**III. BREWER'S LAGOON, Chapter 23**__

This chapter begins with the fullest description of Allie Fox's personality and his obsession with invention. It begins from a dialogue among the children in response to the announcement Father made at the end of the last chapter. When they reach Brewer's lagoon, the Foxs part ways with Mr. Haddy, and like other figures -- Polski, Smalls -- Mr. Haddy had been a check on Allie Fox's most grandiose and dangerous schemes, but now, once again, the family was on its own. Later Charlie observes that his father and the "savages" appear to have switched roles. Most of the rest of this chapter details the beach combing activities of the Fox family. However, this is mostly to illustrate that the Foxs have become the scavengers that Allie Fox has often criticized. Tensions within the family are building up and it has become a test of wills. Charlie summarizes the situation
 * **pg.276-7. "'He whispered, 'Dad thinks he's great,' and looked at me with a scolded scowl. clover put her head down. 'He //is// great.' 'There are lots of inventors in the world. He's not the only one.' 'He's not like the others,' I said. 'Anyway, the world is destroyed,' April said. 'Dad said so.' . . . Father was ingenious because he needed comfort. He never admitted it, but I knew it from Jeronimo and from the spruced-up pipanto. he had not changed, he was still inventive, he still needed comfort -- more than we did. he was dead set on improving things, but he was not like any other man. I could not tell Jerry while Father was listening. He invented fro his own sake! He was an inventor because he hated hard beds and bad food and slow boats and flimsy huts and dirt. And waste -- he complained about the cost of things, but it wasn't the money. It was the fact they got weak and broke after you bought them. He though of himself first! . . . It explained his lack of interest in his industrial inventions -- potboilers, he called them. And it also explained his mania for ice. It was the reason he wept when Jeronimo was destroyed. He didn't want to live, as he said, like a monkey. His movements, his travel, were inventions, too. When it looked to him as through America was doomed, he invented a way out. Leaving the country on a banana boat was one of his most ingenious schemes. And Jeronimo had been full of examples of his ingenuity, gadgets he had devised to make life -- his life -- easier. These schemes and tactics were his answer to the imperfect world. But I sometimes pitied him. Discomfort and dissatisfaction made his brain spin . . . Everyone thought of him as rough and ready. But I was not fooled. He was the opposite of a camper! . . . An everlasting supply of free ice was his reply to the tropics, a complicated system of pumps his reply to the dry season. He liked the odds stacked against him . . .Selfishness had made him clever He wanted things his way -- his bed and his food and the world as well."**
 * **pg. 280. "It was painful for me to see him go. He was not ours anymore. We were alone again -- the first family, as Father kept repeating. But without our old friends -- Mr. Haddy, and the Maywits, and our Zambus, and Ma Kennywick and the rest -- it felt like the last family."**
 * **pg. 282-3. "The difference between the two men surprised and scared me. The Zambu in his yellow shirt and straw hat and walking stick, and Father, tall and bony and red, with long greasy hair and a beard and wild eyes and a missing finger and sailcloth shorts. Father was skinnier than the Zambu! And I had not noticed until now just how wild looking he was. If you didn't know better, you would have thought he was the savage, and no the Zambu. if the Zambu had had hair and eyes like that I would have run for my life. But we had gotten used to Father looking like a live scarecrow, the wild man of the woods, and hollering."**
 * **pg. 286. "Apart from the talk about the United States ('It was terrible' -- why was he smiling?), he had not changed. But our circumstances had changed a lot. We had a house and food and a routine, and yet life here was difficult. It took all day. Total activity was good, Father said -- the job of survival made you healthy. But we were often ill with the squitters and fever and sand-flea bites, and ahd to stay in the hammocks. Mother picked the nites and lice out of our hair. Every cut became infected and had to be scrubbed with hot seawater."**

__**III. BREWER'S LAGOON, Chapter 24**__

The dry season continues and the lack of water is a metaphor for the status of the Fox family. It is also endangering their plans for a garden as the ground is drying up making planting difficult. The first interesting point is Allie Fox's new found appreciation of the Zambus lifestyle. Charlie makes the most succinct and pointed comment on his Father's vision Mr. Haddy returns and tries to persuade them to relocate before the rainy season sets in, but is unsuccessful. One interesting exchange is how Haddy traded Allie's watch in for a new boat and Allie Fox's indignant reaction.
 * **pg. 291-2. "'When I came here to the Mosquito Coast, I was appalled that these people had done so little to better themselves. They live like hogs. I used to wince at their weedy crops and their pathetic houses. What do they eat -- corn shucks? do they chew their toes? Do they sleep face-down and let the rain run off their shoulders? What do they use to wipe themselves with? Where's their tools? Do they dream, and, if so, what of?'. . . That's what I used to think,' he said. 'Now, after a year, it amazes me that they've got so much!' 'Jerry says you don't respect the Zambus,' Clover said . . . 'I'm full of admiration for them,' Father said. 'Even though they do live like hogs. But that's not my style. This is a permanent settlement. I never promised it would be easy. We're laying proper foundations. This is an organism. When it's working, thing will be different.'"**
 * **pg. 292-3. "'. . . our settlement looked like a dump on a gray shore, where desperate people come to die. 'We're escaped prisoners,' Father said. that's what he thought of America. But if we were lost, and trapped in this coastal swamp, weren't we still prisoners?"**
 * **299-300. "'I want to go home,' Jerr said. It was a forbidden word. 'This is home,' I said. I told him that as America had been destroyed, we had escaped just in time. There was nothing of it left, except what washed up on the beach near Brewer's Lagoon . . . 'Don't you see? We have to trust Dad.' 'I don't trust him. He's just a man who sleeps in our hut.' I could not cheer him up. And his anger gave me doubts, so -- secretly, while Father was hammering a coop for the curassows he planned to rear -- I asked Mother. What had happened to the Untied States -- had it been destroyed? The question made her sad. But she said, 'I hope so.' 'No,' I said. 'Yes.' She pushed my hair out of my eyes and hugged me. 'Because if it has been, we're the luckiest people in the world.' I said, 'What if it hasn't?' 'Then we are making a horrible mistake,' she said . . . 'But it has,' she said. 'You heard Mr. Haddy.'****"**

__**III. BREWER'S LAGOON, Chapter 25**__

The rain comes and Mr. Haddy visit during the night to provide the Foxs with the spark plugs and gasoline for them to survive. He does it secretly because he knows that Allie Fox is too proud to accept help. The rains are devastating. First too little, now too much. Allie Fox's reaction to the storm is predictable. It shows the imperfection of nature, the mistaken faith of religious belief, and the need for more invention. A fairly clear statement about why Allie Fox dislikes animals who scavenge. For Allie Fox, his struggles have become epic. It is a war of him against civilization, nature, God, and even his family. He would rather go down fighting than admit defeat. He wants to swim against the current, just because.
 * **pg.306-7. "The storm had terrified everyone except Father. he was impressed by the way it had destroyed trees, and he marveled at all the uprootings. He calculated that six inches of rain had fallen in the night. You had to admire that. And look at the beaten bushes. And think of the velocity. You could build a machine that operated on falling rain -- the collected rain would spin a flywheel, the same principle as a water wheel but more efficient -- no drag. Only the rain was undependable, because the world was imperfect. Nature tried to burn you, then starve you, then drown you, and it made you dig a garden like a savage with a stick. It surprised you and made you fearful that something was going to go wrong. That fear made people religious nuts instead of innovators."**
 * **pg. 309-10, 12-13. "'Know why I hate scavengers?' Mother said, 'Allie, please,' and turned away. 'Because they remind me of human beings.'. . .'What if we die?' April asked. 'There are worse things.' Clover said, 'What's worse than dying?' 'Being turned into scavengers.' Father slapped his list. 'It's already started to happen. I scavenged this paper, I scavenged this pencil. But I don't need this stuff -- you do.'. . . 'Down the creek!' Father grinned angrily. 'With the current, the broken branches, the rotten fruit. I won't do it.' 'Why not?' 'Because I'm not a broken branch. Dead things go downstream. That's a funeral procession on that creek. If we surrender to the current, we're doomed.' He pointed his finger stump in the direction of the coast. 'Everything tends that way. But we've got to fight it, because down there is death.' 'We could live at Brewer's. You know that.' 'Like savages. Like scavengers. I'll die before I turn into one of those garbage-eating birds.'"**
 * **pg. 313, 315. "Clover said, 'What about us?' 'We'll all go up in flames! It's no disgrace to be the last ones to go. It means we've made our point.' . . . 'Anyone can float down to the coast,' Father said, and pushed his pole. 'I could have done that without an engine. But I hung on. I fought it' -- and he pushed -- 'I wasn't cut out to grow vegetables. I'm an inventor. I make things, Jerry. But that Mosquito Coast is a dead loss.' That's the edge of the precipice. One false step and you're gone.' he kept shoving at the pole, pushing the floating hut into deeper water. 'There's death down there. Wreckage. Scavengers. Garbage eaters. Everything broken, rotten, and dead is on that stream and being pulled down to the coast. And that's the nearest place to the United States -- how do we know it hasn't been poisoned? I've been fighting the current all along' -- and he pushed -- 'and it's been a draw. I haven't given an inch. When did I say, 'Okay, let's drift and God help us'? never! That's why we're winning.'"**

__**IV. UP THE PATUCA, Chapter 26**__