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The Mosquito Coast 3 4 Penguin Readers Factsheets l e v e l E T e a c h e r’s n o t e s 1 2 The Mosquito Coast 3 4 by Paul Theroux 5 6 S U M M A R Y INTERMEDIATE he Mosquito Coast begins in contemporary Theroux says that his stories complete him as a person. T suburban America. Allie Fox is brilliantly clever He lives in every sentence he writes. He does not enjoy with his hands and his head is full of ideas. But he literary fame – he prefers to be anonymous. He likes to be hates the modern world. His children have no television or in remote places with people who have no need of books toys, they wear old clothes and they don't go to school. and do not know what he does. He writes in secret and He hates his boss, Mr Polski, who Allie thinks is only delivers his finished novels in brown paper parcels. He interested in making money and doesn't care about the says he is the shadow and his fiction is the reality. future. One day Allie decides to get out. He puts his wife and BACKGROUND AND THEMES children in his van and drives them away from their old life. They travel by ship to Honduras. At La Ceiba, on the Paul Theroux is a traveller. The nature of travelling means Honduran coast, his bewildered family watch as he buys that you move on. Moving on, leaving things behind and a place called Jeronimo, a small town on a river in the looking for new experiences is an important theme in The jungle. Mosquito Coast. Allie Fox doesn't like what he sees in America. His solution is not to stay and try to change it, When they get to Jeronimo they find nothing more than but to walk away. When things don't work out at various a broken-down house in a clearing. Mother and the places in Honduras, he makes the family move on and children are horrified, but Allie is delighted with it. Here he start again. can be king. He controls his family and the Indians who work for them. Together they create a new life from The Mosquito Coast is a character study of a man who nothing. However, there are elements he cannot control develops a paranoid obsession – of a man who thinks the and soon things start to go wrong. whole world is against him and only he can save the world. He lives his life in a state of high tension, never A B O U T PAUL THEROUX resting in his attacks on America and western civilization. He fights against the current of modern life. He thinks he Paul Theroux grew up in a large, middle-class family near is the last real man in the world. Boston in the United States. After university, in 1963, he In Allie's attempts to create a new world in the jungle, he began a life of travelling. He taught in Italy, as a Peace tries to control everyone and everything around him. He Corps teacher at a school in Malawi, as a university makes everyone see things his way. When he feels lecturer in Uganda and then for three years in Singapore. threatened, he reacts aggressively and violently. All this time, he was also writing and publishing short The novel also examines the relationship between father stories, articles and novels. In the early 1970s Theroux and son. Theroux elicits warm feelings towards Allie by and his family settled in Britain, where they stayed for 17 telling the story through the eyes of his loyal and believing years. Theroux continued to travel widely around the son, Charlie Fox. We feel sorry for Allie when Jeronimo is world from his base in Britain. During this time he wrote destroyed, but we feel more sorry for Charlie as he comes many of his famous and very successful travel books. to understand his father's failings and to lose his belief in Finally he returned to America where he now lives. him. Although he grew up in a large family, Theroux says that Theroux sets up an interesting paradox as the basis of he had a lonely childhood, which gave him plenty of time the novel. All the time that Allie is searching for a simple to dream and invent. Large families produce writers, he paradise, he is planning how to change it and tame it. In thinks, because everyone is trying to get attention and fact it is the children who learn better to live with nature – writing is a way of doing that. His family thought he was eating wild plants, protecting themselves against insects deaf because he never answered questions – he wasn't with leaf juices, building a simple shelter from materials in deaf, he just wasn't listening. In writing he found the the jungle. Allie, meanwhile, plants western crops in answer to what life was about. © Pearson Education 2000 l e v e l Penguin Readers Factsheets 4 T e a c h e r’s n o t e s neat rows, puts up elaborate mosquito nets and builds an saying to Gurney Spellgood, 'I'm much easier to ice-making machine. remember than you are'; p.9 making himself captain of Mr Haddy's boat. The jungle has lived for centuries without ice. Allie Ask students what other things about his character they brings ice from the modern world he has rejected. He have noticed. claims that ice has many uses, for example to keep food fresh and to treat sunburn, and will make the Indians' lives Chapters 6–10 better. But what comes after ice? Televisions and vacuum Put students into small groups. Get students to think cleaners? The machine also symbolizes his need for about the family's new life from Mother's point of view. Then they work out a conversation between Mother and approval. He wants to work miracles, to show that he is a the children about: (a) their new life, (b) their old life, (c) little like God. When he reaches Seville and finds that the their plans for the day, (d) Father, (e) students' own ideas. missionaries have already introduced ice there, he is Students act out their conversations for the class. furious, thus revealing his real motive. And when he tells Chapters 11–16 Peewee Maywit ‘you can tell your grandchildren about this great day’ – the day that ice came to the Mosquito Put students into small groups. Ask them to look up obsession in their dictionaries. Ask them to discuss Allie's Coast – then we realize that he is searching for obsession with making ice. What does it show about his immortality. character? Ask questions to guide the discussion if necessary: What A B O U T T H E F I L M does he make ice for? How does he behave when the villagers up the river already know what it is? Why does ‘The Mosquito Coast’ was filmed in 1986 on location in an he put himself, the Zambus and his children in danger to area of unexplored jungle in Belize in Central America. The take ice over the mountain? p roducer wanted to make the film because he ACTIVITIES AFTER READING THE BOOK sympathized with Allie Fox's reaction to modern life – to get out of it. Harrison Ford, the actor who plays Allie Fox, 1 Charlie Fox tells this story. We watch Allie Fox go slowly mad through his son's eyes. How does this found the character a welcome challenge after his more affect the story? How does it affect our feelings about conventional heroic roles, such as Han Solo in ‘Star Wars’ the characters? How would the story be different if it and Indiana Jones, and he found himself agreeing with was told in the third person? many of Allie Fox's opinions. The director, Peter Weir, 2 Put students into small groups. Ask them to discuss loved the strangeness of the story and the tremendous the missionaries in this stor y. Do they think the idea of range of emotions from optimism, to humour, to fear, to setting up a mission to tell people about a new religion tragedy. During filming, the crew made an unexpected is a good thing or a bad thing? archaeological discovery – a Mayan temple. G l o s s a r y Communicative activities It will be useful for your students to know the following new words. They are practised in the ‘Before You Read’sections of exercises at The following teacher-led activities cover the same the back of the book. (Definitions are based on those in the Longman sections of text as the exercises at the back of the reader, Active Study Dictionary.) and supplement those exercises. For supplementary exercises covering shorter sections of the book, see the Chapters 1–5 photocopiable Student’s Activities pages of this Factsheet. current (n) where the water moves strongly in a river These are primarily for use with class readers but, with the missionary (n) a person who goes to another country to teach the people about his or her religion exception of discussion and pair/groupwork questions, net (n) a piece of material with spaces between the knots, so that can also be used by students working alone in a self- water can go through it but fish cannot access centre. pump (n) a machine for making water move ACTIVITIES BEFORE READING THE BOOK mosquito (n) a fly that drinks blood from people and animals rope (n) a very strong, thick piece of string for tying things Put students into small groups.
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