It’s been said that when faced with a threatening situation, human beings have three choices; adapt to the circumstances in order to survive, migrate away from those circumstances in order to survive, or, well, you know… die.
This triumvirate of options is premised by the existential nature of the threat; that, if we neither adapt nor migrate, we will die. What if the threat, however, is not so much existential as it is inconvenient? What if the circumstances under which we find ourselves are simply, unpleasant, obnoxious, and repulsive?
Well, now that we no longer face the threat of death, we still have the other two alternatives to consider. We can adapt to these circumstances, accept them, tolerate them, complain about them…and suffer them. Or, and now I am finally getting to my point in this meandering, we can migrate, move away, find something better.
I think of this now after stumbling across a recent (2021) TV adaptation of Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast (1981). While Season 1 was intriguing, Season 2 fell flat on its face in a number of ways; I bailed after two episodes and then reverted to the proper order of these things. I found an old copy of The Mosquito Coast at my local library—which is quite something for a 45-year-old book—and read it before watching the 1986 movie adaptation.
Theroux’s critically acclaimed book centers upon brilliant inventor/genius Allie Fox and his family; wife he calls Mother, his son 13-year-old Charlie, his younger brother nine-year-old Jerry, and five-year-old twin sisters April and Clover. Thoroughly disgusted with what the American people have become in a country reeling from an energy crisis only a few years after the failure of Vietnam, Fox rambles incessantly to anyone who will listen; although many of those subjected to his rants do all they can to avoid him.
The primary audience for Allie’s non-stop opinionating is Charlie who, as narrator, provides us his public reaction to his father’s misanthropy while offering access to his private thoughts.
Allie is sickened with American materialism, whose economy produces consumer goods meant to be thrown away. He is also bothered that little effort is made to protect the environment while individual Americans conform to a culture in decay. He often describes himself as the “last American man,” hinting early on that this is a story of toxic masculinity and misogyny, directed especially towards his wife and children.
Since my study of these things is almost always done in the spirit of making sense of the world which we all currently occupy, I’ll add that if Allie Fox were here with us today, he would most certainly be drawn to the type of fictional nostalgia being touted by the current MAGA crowd. With that said, he would also most surely abhor the ignorance of those who stand as their leaders (there is a lesson here for that MAGA crowd, but I can’t quite put my finger on it).
Anyway, while Allie does not necessarily face an existential threat, he imagines one by proclaiming that the country is on the verge of nuclear war. So, in deciding to migrate, he is compelled to be the kind of man he imagines himself to be, in a country that has gone to pot, a country that once was great… which is my way of saying that migrating includes dragging along his befuddled, reluctant, and sometimes terrified family.
So, only a few chapters in, Allie decides, without consulting anyone, that the family is going to move to a place where they can build a proper life; although no one knows where this might be. While his wife hesitates, she seems to have enough faith in her husband to accept that he knows what he is doing. I don’t believe I am spoiling anything to let you know that this faith will not endure.
“Goodbye, America, Have a Nice Day!” Allie says, as the boat pulls away from the shore… on its way to a place where life has supposedly been untouched by materialism, conformity, and, the very foundation of his angst, religion. Surely, the remote jungles of Honduras in Central America will be the place to build a civilization from scratch, to start over as only a real man protecting his family can do.
On board the ship, however, Allie discovers that this might not be as easy as he first thought. Sharing passage to Honduras is the Spellgoods, a missionary family headed south to continue bringing God’s blessing to one of the remotest places on earth, the jungles of Honduras.
I’ll mention here that the dictum to read the book first and then watch the movie is critically important in this one. The exchanges between Reverend Spellgood and Allie Fox in the book are foundational to what is happening in the larger story. With this in mind, I was not surprised to discover that, even though the movie received very positive reviews from the critics, it was not received well at the box office. I’ll venture to say that those movie critics understood what was happening while viewing the movie because they first read the book.
The movie also stars Helen Mirren as Allie’s wife, and River Phoenix as Charlie Fox. While being extremely true to the book, its only shortcoming is one of omission. If one had, however, say, eight hours or more, to tell this story, a fuller, more complete telling of the book might be possible. Unfortunately, actually given the extra time to tell this grand tale of escapism, the producers of the recent TV adaptation of Mosquito Coast, starring Paul Theroux’s nephew Justin Theroux, completely failed at the task. Not only does the second season come undone, as I suggested earlier, but even the more entertaining first season strays so far from the storyline in the book that one can only say that in the TV telling, we have a family on the run and we eventually have a jungle. The misanthropy and disgust with a country gone bad at the very heart of Paul Theroux’s book are nowhere to be found.
In the book and the 1986 film version that was directed by Peter Weir and starred Harrison Ford, Allie Fox, his family, and about a dozen or so indigenous Hondurans build a small community in the jungle called Jeronimo; housing, a water system, a latrine, a large garden, and a fish farm.
Allie also constructs a massive monolithic structure straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey; although no one knows what it is he is building. What we do know is that Allie visited a town through which they had traveled and returned with two huge canisters; one of hydrogen and the other ammonia.
During his absence we learn that the family functions quite differently while Allie is away, offering the reader an idea how suffocating their lives are when he is ordering people around and raving against what America has become.
Once the structure is complete, Allie strikes up a small fire within it, and after just a few minutes, he has made ice; because with ice, one can have civilization. Ice can preserve food, ice can ease pain, and ice can cool the stifling heat of the jungle. It becomes Allie’s mission to deliver ice to those human beings who have never seen it. It is no coincidence that Allie calls his monolith Fat Boy, the bringer of civilization in contrast to the other Fat Boy, the destroyer of civilization (Fat Boy was the name of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945).
While building up the “town,” everyone was required to work and Allie was their overseer. Charlie, throughout most of the book finds the silver lining to the drudgery, and his father’s mania, even within his private thoughts. “Everyone worked like mad,” he ponders, “because the alternative was to upset Father. So there was always something to do, which was perhaps just as well because it took our minds off the heat and the insects. And the uncertainty, too, for though Father said confidently, ‘This is why I’m here,’ we did not know why we were, and were too scared to ask.”
While slaving away, Harrison Ford’s Allie Fox rails against the degraded society he has left behind: “We eat when we’re not hungry, drink when we’re not thirsty. We buy what we don’t need and throw everything away that’s useful. Why sell a man what he wants? What he doesn’t need. Pretend he has eight legs, two stomachs and money to burn. It’s wrong. Wrong! Wrong! There are people in New York who’ll kill you for a quarter. You don’t take a walk for fear somebody’ll stick a knife in your ribs. Stay home and they come in through the windows. Ten-year-old homicidal maniacs on every corner. They go to school. They go to school. You know what the biggest problem with the twentieth century is? People can’t stand to be alone. Double-digit inflation and a two-dollar loaf of bread.”
Allie’s wife becomes concerned that with all the physical labor, they have been neglecting the children’s studies. “‘This is the very education they need,’ Father said. ‘Everyone in America should be getting it. When America is devastated and laid to waste, these are the skills that will save these kids. Not writing poetry, or fingerpainting, or what’s the capital of Texas—but survival, rebuilding a civilization from the smoking ruins.”
As Allie demonstrates his ability to conjure uses for seemingly worthless objects, he speaks to the nature of invention. This from River Phoenix as Charlie, who clearly listens and learns when his father rants: “Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as invention, you know. It’s just magnifying what already exists. Father often talked of things being revealed. That was true of invention, he said. Revealing something’s use, and magnifying it. Discovering its imperfections and improving it…and putting it to work for you. God had left the world incomplete, he said. And it was man’s job to understand how it worked. To tinker with it and to 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.”
Allie Fox described the Bible as God’s Owner’s Handbook… and the Lord came up quite short, he says. After building up their “town” Charlie reflects on the significance of what they’d done because now, “Jeronimo was home. And for this, Father said, no one had said a prayer or surrendered his soul or pledged allegiance or dog-eared a Bible or flown a flag. We had not polluted the river.”
And just because the town is built, this does not mean that their work is done. After a long trek through the jungle to deliver ice to a group of natives who Allie believes had never interacted with white folks, it becomes clear that they are not going to make it back to Jeronimo before nightfall. Charlie’s younger brother Jerry asks, “Where are we gonna sleep?”
Allie responds with the sarcasm that always seems to populate his thoughts. “So,” he asks the nine-year-boy, “where are we gonna sleep? Right over there. Across the street. At the Holiday Inn! You two kids can lounge by the pool while I fix us up with a couple of rooms. You want a king-size bed, don’t you? I know I do. I sure hope there’s a color TV. Want a roll of quarters, Jerry, for the jukebox? Play a few tunes? I’m so sick of this whining from you! Pull yourself together! Be a man!”
As Allie’s mental state deteriorates and the family begins to openly challenge him, we see a dark story getting even darker. “‘Listen to me,’ Father said. ‘It’s not a question of what you want. It’s what I want. I’m captain of this ship, and those are my orders. Anyone who disobeys them goes ashore. Your lives are in my hands. I’ll maroon you—all of you.’”
There is much more to this great novel that informs the current situation, especially the role of organized religion and the maintenance of human conformity. One way to get away from these troubling times, then, is to pick up a book like The Mosquito Coast. If you really want to get away however, please consider that, as bad as things may get, migration often presents some perils of its own… especially if you bring Father along.
