San Fernando Valley State College A Criticism of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English by Betty Koerber Received: Approved: C:fiairman, fZommittee on Honors June, 1965 With grateful acknowledgment of the help of Richard W. Lid, Ph.D Under the Volcano is the story of a man to whom the problem of his own relationship with the universe is over­ whelming; pursued by guilt and harassed by those Who love him, he allows himself to be destroyed. In a particular way, the details of Under the Volcano closely mirror those of Lowry's own life, particularly his tragic preoccupation with alcoholism. (See appendix for a brief biographical account of Lowry's life.) Fact and fiction are so interwoven in Under the Volcano that it is impossible to separate them--nor is it necessary, for it is the larger pattern of Lowry's life, his search for a personal identity and a meaningful life to accompany it, which informs his work and gives depth and perspecti.ve to otherwise isolated fragments in the his­ tory of a man's personal destruction. Evidence of Lowry's preoccupation with his various selves and their fictional counterparts can be found in Conrad Knickerbocker's brief biographical account, "The Voyages of Malcolm Lowry." Knickerbocker tells how Lowry reacted when he was notified that Under the Volcano had been accepted finally in both America and England: What Lowry ..•recogni zed in a moment of terror was the self-consuming quality of the work. The Consul [the main chargcter in the novel] had taken more than his share; like an insolent fam­ iliar, he was never too far away. Lowry could not perform the vital surgery of separating himself from his characters. He suspected at times that he was not a writer so much as being written, and with panic he realized that self­ identity was as elusive as ever. (p.311) 1. 2. The wider pattern of Lowry's involvement with self can be seen from his plan to unite his individual novels eventu­ ally into a physical and spiritual journey under the general title of The Voyage That Never �· Ultramarine, published first in 1933, was to have been the first in this series. This early novel reflects Lowry's travels at sea as a young man, and it shows the beginnings of the themes and problems so agonizingly worked out in the latter two novels. Lowry describes, through the eyes of the young sailor Hilliot, his feelings of isolation from the rest of humanity- -no doubt dating partially from his forced absence from school in his early teens--and he expresses a great need for identification with some worthy cause or person he can respect. He also manifests a strong sense of guilt for the young life he feels he has wasted. (111 have lived only nineteen years, most of them badly, " Lowry wrote in his first letter, to Conrad Aiken, the man who became both mentor and guide to the young writer. See appendix for details of this friendship.) By the end of Ultramarine, the young sailor has turned more and more to alcohol as a method of escape from his problems. Lowry brings about a mechanical solution to the boy 1 s sense of iso.lation, which was something he could not do in real life, and only in this way was he able to end the novel on a note of hope. Under the Volcano was to have formed the center of the - series. In this novel, Lowry explores more fully the prob­ lems stated in Ultramarine, in part through the opposition of attitudes and goals of the two brothers. Hugh, with his 3. idealism and his desire for positive action reveals, it seems to me, one facet of Lowry's complex personality. Geoffrey--pessimistic, addicted to alcohol, frequently de­ pressed and hopeless in outlook--seems to exhibit the other side of the coin from Hugh, and suggests parallels with Lowry himself. He is the book's major figure, and it is his despair that in the end dominates. If Hugh represents the latent idealism in Lowry, and Geoffrey the open and un­ relenting despair, the failure of Lowry to achieve a realis­ tic relationship with the rest of the world is mirrored in Geoffrey's inability to come to terms with the ruined land­ scape of his life. Lowry reache� a theoretical resolution to the problems posed in his earlier novels and stories in Hear Us 0 Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, and he intended it to be the last in his series. A collection of seven short stories, all but one dealing with the lives of alcoholic writers, Hear � 0 Lord was not published until �962, five years after the author's death. In the seventh and last story, The Forest � to the Spring, Lowry drops the thin disguises found in his other works, and writes a frankly autobiographical account, of his early attempt at rehabilitation. In 1940, he and his wife Marjorie went to live in a shack on the beach at Dollar­ ton, British Columbia; this is the setting for The Forest Path !£ the Spring. After leading a very precarious existence under elemental conditions for some time, and closely observing his hardy neighbors who handled their lives so successfully, Lowry 4. developed a sort of code for living, which is embodied in the lives and beliefs of five or six persons in The Forest Path. This ''code11 solved to a great extent the problem of identity which constantly pursued him throughout his life. In sum, one had to be generous, compassionate and humble; he must by physically able to withstand the elements of nature and almost completely independent of the rest of the human race. But most important, he must respect the privacy of others, taking care not to interfere or to force his will upon anyone else. In order to maintain these qualities, it was necessary to lead as simple a life as possible, and to develop an acute awareness and concern for all aspects of natur�:;. Such a way of life was impractical and idealistic, particularly in respect to isolating oneself from humanity; but it worked for him, because of his problem with alcohol, if only for a time. Unfortunately, he chose to ignore his own good advice, so painfully reached, knowing that a re­ turn to alcohol--and to the "outer world"--meant a return to the path of self-de.struction. The fact of his final choice, if indeed Lowry actually had a choice at this point in his life, makes Under the Volcano his most representative book. When this novel is examined apart from the other two, it appears almost as a rationale for the right of a man to destroy himsel f without interference from the rest of the world. Geoffrey Firmin, the Consul, spends the last day of 5. his life trying to understand the nature of his relationship to the world around him; he rejects help and he rejects life, 1 ending by choosing "Hell .••because, 11 he says, nr like it." Under the Volcano grew out of a short story which Lowry wrote in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in about 1936. The action of the original story consists mainly of a bus ride from the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, Mexico, to the neighbor­ ing town of Tomalin. There are three main characters: a British Consul, his daughter Yvonne and her husband, Hugh. The Consul, an alcoholic, suffers from a hangover, and has convinced himself he has "sworn off" as the story begins. Half way to Tomalin, the bus stops in the open country; what is at first taken to be a man sleeping in the sun turns out to be an Indian, robbed and left dying with a wound in his head. Beside him is his horse, its saddle bags now empty. The passengers on the bus refuse to become involved in any way with the dying man; they think of every possible reason for not touching him: there are no phones in working order, no doctors available anyway, the police are on strike, and so on. Yvonne cannot stand the sight of blood, and flees back to the bus. The Consul tells Hugh that if they should touch this man, they would in fact be considered "accomplices" to the crime. While they debate, a man who is either drunk l Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, (New York, 1958),p.316. Further references will appear in the text. 6. or drugged, steals some money which the dying man has hidden under his collar; he later pays his bus fare with these blood­ stained coins. The em otional strain is too much' for the Con­ sul, and he realizes that he will drink again at the earliest opportunity. When the bus reaches Tomalin, the three charac­ ters are stopped by the sight of an old lame Indian carrying another one on his back, an obvious reminder of their guilt at leaving the Indian to die alone by the roadside; for as feeble as he is, the old man is able to perform some service for one in worse circumstances than he. The author has taken the central incident of this short story, that of the dying Indian, and made it the focal point of his novel; around it he has developed each of his four main themes. Isolated from its maze of symbols, the plot of the novel is fairly simple, although Lowry attached great importance to details.