Like Moby Dick, it spends a lo of time (far too much in my opinion) examining in excruciating detail the life of sailors aboard a ship. Maybe Captains Courageous is actually intended as a proscriptive book, urging parents to embrace the value of hard work for children, but coming from an era that primarily makes me think of child labor laws, I'm not sure I'm willing to buy that.Īs a lifelong landlubber, and someone who's never really gone in for the romanticism of the sea, this probably isn't the book for me. Maybe I'm misreading this, however, and it's not actually a fish-out-of-water story. Kipling's hero, however, adapts quite quickly, shedding his spoiled exterior within a few chapters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the joy of a fish-out-of-water story comes from watching the fish flop around in unfamiliar territory for a while before finally figuring out how to get by. In fact, the book seems just fundamentally flawed. Not nearly as much fun as Kipling's other books (or at least the ones I've read).
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