B. Traven’s Death Ship [1] is
unusual among proletarian novels for its anarchist ideology which allows the
author to criticize all governments and all political parties, including those on
the left. His protagonist Gerry Gales’
work experience is a fierce caricature of the worker’s plight under
capitalism. On an ordinary ship Gales
had been overworked and underpaid; on the Yorikka his exploitation seemed to
have been exaggerated to the limit; but when he was shanghaied into the crew of
the Queen of Madagascar which was bound, he rightly suspected, for the bottom,
an even deeper level of the owners’ depraved greed emerged. The novel exposes thereby the extreme of
inhumane treatment by bosses and corporations Traven regarded as always
inherent in the system. In different
times and places the injustice of capitalism may differ in degree, but the
worker is always cheated.
For Traven government bureaucracies are more
genteel but no less heartless. Every
consul with whom Gales deals is free enough with hypocritical good wishes and
regrets, but each refuses to help him, claiming ironically to be simply a
worker under orders, implying that no individual but only the bureaucracy as a
whole is responsible for his plight. To
Traven as an anarchist every structure of governance is oppressive. His loyalty is to the anarcho-syndicalism of
the Industrial Workers of the World which posited decentralized voluntary groupings
around the workplace as the basic form of social organization. He had then no difficulty in opposing Friedrich
Ebert’s Social Democratic regime in Weimar [2], denouncing strike-breaking
under a “socialist” (245) and calling the supposedly socialist leader “more
nationalistic than old man Bismarck ever was” (57). The temporary hope inspired by the Munich
Soviet of 1919 was, disappointingly, quelled by those who claimed to represent
the people’s interests (271) [3]. Traven’s
lack of rigid ideology allows him to avoid the simplistic reductiveness of agitprop
literature. He willingly concedes, for
instance, that the solidarity of the working class envisioned by Communists is
an illusion and that workers’ rivalries are effectively exploited by owners to
maintain control [4]. According to Traven
the omnipotence of the state has become an end in itself and government
bureaucracy has become “the great and almighty ruler of the world” in service
of financial interests. “Expanding
markets” and making large profits” is, he says, “the oldest religion in the
world” with “the best-trained priests” and the “most beautiful churches” (216).
Traven’s radical questioning of the
economic and political order will strike the reader strongly on first reading. Even a reader unsympathetic to anarchist
principles may appreciate the author’s critique of the status quo. His stance, never positively advocating for any
specific form of social organization allows him to appear as a critic of all. His narrator is the universal “little man,”
put upon by the powers that be, and his sympathies are given only to others
like himself. He is, after all, a “nobody”
(20), “always chased and hunted by police,” “hungry,” “tired from sleeping in
gateways, in corners, in nooks,” “chased and hunted by policemen” (33), a
member of a class that can do nothing but stand and wait” (58).
Far from alone in this status, he depends
on “true fellow workers” (102) for charity [5].
The most livable country among the many he traverses is Republican Spain
where he finds a warm reception and no officials eager to interrogate him (95). There “wherever I asked I got food, and the
peasants were always willing to put me up for the night in their barns” (82-83). While his story might seem singular, his
friend Stanislav’s history is similar, as are others more briefly recounted [6].
These specific political themes,
however, seem less the book’s center
than the protagonist’s attitude, expressed more in tone and rhetoric than in
explicit ideas. In his penniless
wandering, the narrator may remind readers of Jack London and Jack Kerouac
(both of whom like Traven spent time at sea as well). His literary family tree might include as
well the Ancient Mariner, the good soldier Švejk, Céline’s Ferdinand Bardamu,
and Henry Miller’s persona in the Tropics. The alienated labor of Traven’s sailor is
depicted in comic form in the factories of Chaplin’s Modern Times and
Clair’s À nous la liberté. Though
both rely on the predicament of the stateless individual, Traven’s story is in
a way an antidote to the simple-minded patriotism of Edward Everett Hale’s ”The
Man Without a Country” (1863) whose hero spends his life regretting his disavowal
of the United States [7].
Unlike Philip Nolan, Gerald Gales never
regrets shedding his national identity, finding that the common man is more
friendly to a supposed German than to an American in spite of the recent war. He has his hands full always hustling, just
trying to look after his immediate interests.
He is totally cynical, expecting nothing, but buoyant in spirit, rolling
with every pitch and roll life sends him.
This mood is expressed throughout the text.
Even when describing the bleakest
conditions, the narrator maintains a grim humor. In a brief passage he can satirically
denounce not only capitalism, but militarism, reactionary Christianity, social
prejudices and, at the same time, the failure of most workers to realize their
predicament.
We go to hell without martial music and without the prayers
of the Episcopalians. We die without the
smiles of the beautiful ladies, without holding their perfumed handkerchiefs in
our hands. We die without the cheering
of the excited crowd. We die in deep
silence, in utter darkness, and in rags.
We die in rags for you, O Caesar Augustus! Hail to you, Imperator Capitalism! (151)
His characteristic tone is here: stoical
in the face of injustice, but uncompromising in his view of the system’s unsalvageable
savagery. In spite of the inimitable tone,
the voice is wholly collective. “We”
suffer everything together.
Much of the book in fact reads like an
extended stand-up comedy routine.
I don’t know where jobs as presidents and as millionaires
could be found for all the readers of success stories if they who should try to
cash in on the promises. A hundred and
twenty years ago there was a saying: “Every one of my soldiers has a marshal’s
baton in his bag.” Today it is: “Everyone
of our employees may become president of our company. Look at Mr. Flowerpot, he did it.” I think all these successful men must have
shine boots of a different sort than I, and the newspapers they sold must have
been different from the papers I carried.
(139)
Traven’s persona is so humble that he
seems cocksure and so readily adaptable it seems he can survive anything. Yet he never reassures the reader with the
conventional left-wing optimism typified by this exchange between Steinbeck’s
Tom Joad and his mother.
"Why, Tom –
us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the
people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people – we go
on."
"We take a
beatin’ all the time."
"I
know." Ma chuckled. "Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up
an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep
a-comin’. Don’ you fret none, Tom. A
different time’s comin’." [8]
Indeed, in the end, Gerry Gales and his
friend Stanislav drown. (Though Gales might very well tell his story from beyond the grave without violating
fictional proprieties, his voice certainly gives the impression that he somehow
survived. The question of whether the
narrator is alive may be undecidable, but it is fortunately also
immaterial.) Their position on the
lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder has been for them fatal.
This conclusion may seem to conflict with
the narrator’s jaunty tone throughout, but it could scarcely be a surprise to
any reader who had noticed the title or the consistent reminders throughout of coming
doom. The last lines, however, do come
as a surprise. As they bob about in the
open sea, Gales salutes his fellow worker calling him “Brother. Comrade.
Sailor. Dear, dear comrade,” but it
is too late. His fellow worker has gone
under.
He had signed on
for a long voyage. For a very great
voyage.
I could not
understand this. How could he have
signed on? He had no sailor’s card. No papers whatsoever. They would kick him off right away.
Yet he did not
come up. The Great Skipper had signed
him on. He had taken him without papers.
An the Great
Skipper said to him: “Come Stanislav Koslovski, give me your hand. Shake.
Come up, sailor! I shall sign you
on for a fine ship. For an honest and
decent ship . . . Can you read what is written above the quarters, Stanislav?”
Ans Stanislav said:
“Aye, aye, sir. He who enters here will
be forever free from pain.” (372)
The one sense this cannot convey is the
conventional Christian salvationist solace one hears at funerals. It has a range of other significances,
though, which combine in a harmonic chord of meaning.
In the first place, such an ending is a
satisfying technical device, leaving the reader with a feeling that normalcy has been in part restored. This effect comes at the cost of a bit of the
lameness of the old story-telling gambit in which fabulous adventures turn out to have been a dream, as in Alice in
Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. The deaths do round out the story arc tidily.
On a strictly realistic level, the passage
may imply a kind of intoxication, a near-death delirium born of wish
fulfillment. Of course, the cliché about
release from suffering is true, even for the unbeliever, as life ends. Part of this final rapture, though, might be
attributed to the brotherly love expressed a few lines earlier. Perhaps, in a materialist’s version of
Christian dogma, the emotion of these affectionate salutations is in fact
redemptive, uplifting Gales’ spirit in his last moments. Finally, the conclusion recalls a sentiment
most associated with Alexander Pope that need not rely on no supernatural
authority: “Whatever is, is right.”
Traven succeeded in representing a working-class Everyman whose struggles are unnecessarily multiplied by the greed of
others, who reacts with good-humored winning spirits, doing the best he can,
and laughing rather than weeping about life’s suffering. While he sees the mechanisms of oppression,
he expresses no apocalyptic hopes of revolutionary change. He simply endures until he finally goes under
at which point the story becomes not merely an analysis of a cruel economic
system, but a case study in the tragedy of being human, an early twentieth
century soul scrabbling for subsistence.
For all his travails, Traven’s main character does not lament (for what
good could that do?) but instead displays a cheeky irreverence and finds, in
the end, the human attachment of friendship a comfort in a hostile world. He endures, and his type endures yet today.
1. First published in German as Das
Totenschiff in 1926. Though the book
had originally been written in English, this version with the title The Death
Ship was not printed until 1934.
2. Ebert had in
fact strongly supported Germany’s role in WWI and made alliances with reactionary
forces.
3. Though little of Traven’s biography is known
for certain, e is alleged to have held a role in the Press Department of the revolutionary government. He expressed his political views at that
point in his journal Der Ziegelbrenner.
See, for instance his essay “Im freiesten Staate der Welt,” Der
Ziegelbrenner 1.1917-5.1921, p. 9.
4. “Workers are not all so chummy toward each
other as some people think when they see them marching with red flags to Union
Square and getting noisy about a paradise in Russia” (101). On 282-3 he explains the status distinctions
on shipboard and their use by capitalists to divide and dominate their workers.
5. Another example is the kindly waitress who
gives him free food (103).
6. The lives of Frenchy (who had died in the
boiler room) and Kurt, for example.
7. The story was written to increase national
feelings during the Civil War. It
continued this role into the 1950s when I recall its being included in my elementary
school reader.
8. Grapes of Wrath Ch. 20.
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