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Chapter 4: English Gothic—II
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Handful of Dust, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Communication Breakdown and the Loss of Meaning
Religion, Morality, and Tradition
Chance and Fate
Civilization vs. Barbarism
Summary
Analysis
Tony is on a drab midsized vessel setting out from England. To an overly conversational fellow passenger asking about his destination, Tony replies that he’s looking for a city. The passenger thinks he’s crazy, but later apologizes, saying he hadn’t realized that Tony is actually an explorer. Tony reflects on how he got here, leaving England for one of the few times in his life: just two weeks ago, he was casting about listlessly for ideas at a travel agency, looking to go anywhere far away from Brenda, John Beaver, and Hetton, which for the moment was only a source of bitterness to him.
The sudden change of scenery underscores the sudden and drastic change of outlook that Tony has just undergone. Realizing that he’s lived his whole life within limited horizons, and simultaneously wanting to flee the toxic atmosphere lingering around his life in England, he doubles down on his strong rejection of Brenda’s demands with an equally bold journey to unknown lands.
Themes
One afternoon, Tony was approached at a dining club by the eccentric explorer Dr. Messinger. Messinger informed Tony of his upcoming expedition to Brazil in search of a lost, glorious City in the Amazon, mentioned in various legends. Messinger seems to have detailed leads on the city’s possible whereabouts, speculating that it lies in the territory of the Pie-Wie Indians. Though a totally inexperienced traveler, Tony enlists with him on a whim. On board, he has vivid fantasies of the City as remarkably Hetton-like.
The proposal for Tony’s journey is almost unbelievable, which perhaps was why he chose to embrace it. It seems that he finally wants to break free of the familiar habits that have defined his whole, bland existence, and sees an opportunity to do so in the most un-Tony proposition imaginable. However, his habits quickly overrule his imagination, and Hetton reasserts its primacy for him.
Themes
Amidst the weeks-long boredom of life at sea, while Dr. Messinger remains in his cabin with seasickness, Tony strikes up a romance with fellow passenger Therese de Vitre, an 18-year-old Trinidadian girl from a rich family. She’s taken with Tony’s status as an explorer, and he expounds on the dangers and difficulties of his upcoming journey. She regales him with tales of her home, where life is easy for the island’s few aristocrats. Tony quickly spoils the brief romance by revealing that he’s married. The ship reaches Trinidad and Therese disembarks quickly without much thought for Tony.
Tony’s uncharacteristic behavior continues to provoke a stream of unexpected new developments: a fun, spontaneous affair with a young foreign girl would not have been conceivable for him a month ago. Once again, however, his self-defeating attachment to the familiar blocks his path: he could easily have just not mentioned his marriage, but this does not even occur to him.
Themes
Tony and Dr. Messinger disembark at Demerara. They assemble supplies, a boat, and six Black hired hands. They then take to the river and set off upstream, well past the furthest trading outpost and inland into the heart of the jungle. Insects and unfamiliar noises assail Tony incessantly; sores, scratches, and bites proliferate all over his body. Dr. Messinger is more accustomed to the jungle surroundings and reprimands Tony for constantly scratching his bites. And yet, while sleeping, Messinger is bit by a vampire bat.
The reckless and romantic decision to cast his lot with a harebrained Amazonian expedition is no longer the abstraction it was while on board ship. The mission has suddenly become very real, and the harsh realities of the alien environment are quite severe. The vampire bat seems to literalize the metaphorical bloodsuckers that surrounded Tony back in England.
Themes
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Tony reflects on the time change and speculates what may be going on in England at that moment. He remembers his days of courting Brenda. The narrative briefly pivots to Jock and Brenda, dancing at a party in London. Brenda mentions that John Beaver seems to be growing tired of her, and that her divorce cannot proceed without word from Tony. She wonders whether Tony is safe on his harebrained expedition, and Jock reassures her that “the whole world is civilized now.”
The narrative moves back and forth between England and the Amazon, juxtaposing Tony’s increasingly inhospitable surroundings with Brenda’s similarly growing difficulties. Jock’s “civilized” comment is ironic because not only is Tony totally removed from civilization, but England’s own degree of “civilization” has come into question in the course of the novel.
Themes
Tony and Dr. Messinger arrive at a village of Macushi Indians, where only women are present. Messinger tries communicating in Wapishiana and is surprised that they can’t understand him. One of them, Rosa, speaks English and clarifies that their tribe doesn’t speak Wapishiana. She explains that the men are gone for the next three days on a pig hunt, and then she demands cigarettes. Back at Westminster, Jock, a member of parliament, reads a long-prepared but trifling request on pig-farming legislation to an under-secretary of the Minister of Agriculture. He leaves feeling proud of having served his constituents.
The extent of Messinger’s preparedness for this expedition begins to come into question in this encounter. The narrative once again juxtaposes Amazonian “barbarism” and English “civilization” to bring out the commonalities between them. Despite the baroque bureaucratic architecture they’ve erected to handle the problem, the English just as much as the Macushi are simply men hungry for pigs.
Themes
When the Macushi men return, they have a drunken week-long feast. Finally, they sober up, but they are reluctant to join Dr. Messinger’s search for the Pie-Wie people, whom the Macushi dread. Eventually, Messinger succeeds in negotiating for 12 men and 7 of their wives to join and guide his expedition. The Macushi celebrate the agreement with another three-day binge. At last, they send the Black hired hands back downstream, leave a cache of provisions in the village, and set off again. Dr. Messinger proudly tells Tony that maps are useless henceforth.
It is telling that Dr. Messinger never inquires why the Macushi fear the Pie-Wie people; he merely chalks it up to stubborn superstition. The uselessness of maps after a certain point in their journey encapsulates the unprecedented conditions of Tony’s life in recent months. Tony, for his part, remains mostly silent throughout this portion of the journey, keeping any doubts or complaints he may have to himself.
Themes
Back in London, John Beaver fails to get elected into Brown’s social club, an effort for which he was relying on Allan and Reggie’s endorsement and support. He responds by displaying coldness to Brenda, whose own social stock has also fallen. His reaction upsets Brenda, who has begun to survive off sandwiches ordered from the corner deli as she spends two or three days at a time in bed. Even Jenny Abdul Akbar is now getting invited to more social events than Brenda. Mrs. Beaver is disappointed with the way things seem to be shaping up for her son. She decides to bring him along on a holiday in California in the coming summer.
Beaver’s interest in Brenda fading as her financial lines and ability to open social doors for him dries up was totally predictable; he never seemed to even try to reciprocate her affection. And yet, with Tony gone, this fraying relationship leaves Brenda in an increasingly desperate social situation, with less and less contact with the women she considered her friends.
Themes
For weeks, Dr. Messinger and Tony march deeper into the jungle, losing their bearings and struggling to communicate with their guides. Dr. Messinger’s confident assessments of the topography are repeatedly proven wrong. The land becomes more arid and desolate, and water grows scarce. Tony and Dr. Messinger rarely speak to one another due to their constant exhaustion. The mosquitoes are relentless around their camp. Tony and Messinger instruct the Macushi women to fan them away as they rest, but as soon as they fall asleep, the women abandon their post, and they awake covered in bites. The Macushi claim there is no game in this region, but Messinger speculates that they refuse to hunt out of fear of the Pie-Wie Indians.
Dr. Messinger’s stated expertise grows increasingly doubtful, but Tony still raises no objections. Messinger’s vanity with regard to the Macushi continues unabated. The women’s refusal to continue swatting mosquitoes away from Tony and Messinger while they sleep exposes the men’s vulnerability: they cannot punish the women with force, because they need them, whereas the Macushi don’t need the explorers at all.
Themes
Dr. Messinger resolves to have canoes made and travel down a nearby stream, since he calculates that the Pie-Wie City must be downstream of them. While the men are put to work on the canoes, Messinger and Tony spend the time guarding their sugar supplies from the Macushi women. After several days, the Macushi finish the canoes, but Rosa tells Messinger that they will not accompany him downstream. She repeatedly insists that the Macushi people and the Pie-Wie people do not mix. Bribes of cigarettes, and threats, are fruitless: Rosa and the Macushi will not budge, insisting on returning to their village. Messinger calls them cowards, but now Rosa says that they must return for the cassava harvest.
By this point, there is no real reason to believe Messinger’s geographical calculations, but no one else has a better idea, so the canoe plan goes ahead. He and Tony, of course, don’t take part in the arduous construction. Messinger’s ignorance will not be reasoned with by any amount of Macushi explanation. Unfortunately for him, this means that he has hit a brick wall: he has no leverage on Rosa and the Macushi, only some novelty goods that they would like but can easily live without.
Themes
Finally, Dr. Messinger—claiming, “I know the Indian mind”—unveils a wind-up, green-and-white mechanical mouse and sets it ticking. The Indians are horrified and flee instantly. Night falls, but Messinger remains confident they will return. They do indeed return that night, noiselessly retrieving their scattered tools and then vanishing again, permanently. Back in London, John Beaver and Brenda eat breakfast at a restaurant after partying all night. Beaver reflects wistfully that the partygoing season is drawing to a close. Brenda asks him to pay, and he complains about the prices. He confirms that he’s heading to California soon with Mrs. Beaver, which spells the end of his and Brenda’s relationship, despite her apparent attempts to convince him to stay. She tells Beaver he shouldn’t bother to walk her home.
Messinger’s vanity finally does him and Tony in: his bizarre deployment of the toy mouse was perhaps intended to exploit some known feature of local mythology, since it does provoke such a strong reaction—just not the one he wanted. They have run out of options to convince the Macushi to stay on with them. Meanwhile, the Amazon-England parallels continue, as Brenda has similarly run out of ways to make Beaver stay with her. Beaver is as cheap and unpleasant as ever, and his opportunistic abandonment of Brenda is as unsurprising as the Macushi’s of Tony and Messinger.
Themes
Tony and Dr. Messinger paddle on alone, hazardously and inefficiently, still spotting no signs of human life. The minimal supplies they decided to keep are still dangerously overloading the craft. Their journey at this stage is slow but peaceful, until Tony develops sudden and severe fever. The fever waxes and wanes in intensity, but it nevertheless majorly hampers their progress. Tony wants to wait and recuperate onshore, but Dr. Messinger insists that they paddle on.
With the Macushi gone, Tony and Messinger’s prospects have grown bleak. Tony’s fever only compounds the dire outlook for their mission. The search for the elusive lost City still nominally remains their goal, but at this point, simple survival would probably be welcomed, as it no longer looks guaranteed.
Themes
Tony begins hallucinating: Brenda appears, nonsensically recycling fragments of speech and incident from throughout the novel. As he talks to her over the next day and a half, Messinger realizes how sick Tony is and sets up a “temporary emergency base camp.” The next day, Messinger explains to Tony that he’s seriously ill. He sets off alone downstream to find help for Tony but is sucked over a waterfall and killed.
The hallucinations brought on by Tony’s fever provide a capsule summary of the chaos into which his life has been plunged. His reckless attempt to escape his life in England has not worked, as thoughts of it continue to torment him. Messinger’s death, the second in the novel, seems to spell certain doom for the fever-bound Tony.
Themes
Back in London, Brenda visits the family solicitor in desperate need of money, but he explains that Tony explicitly instructed not to give Brenda anything in his absence, and that Tony’s presumptive heirs are his cousins, the family of Richard Last. Brenda can’t believe that Tony meant to stay abroad for as long as he has, but her legal resources in the situation seem to be nonexistent. Later, in the flat, she cannot muster the will to feed herself with the meager food she has procured. She breaks down crying about all her friends abandoning her. John Beaver, Jock, Marjorie, Allan, Polly Cockpurse, even Jenny Abdul Akbar: all of them are off enjoying varied and fabulous summer vacations, while she lies miserable in bed.
As Tony languishes beyond contact in the Amazon, talk of his potential demise finally begins to air in London. Tony’s adamant rejection of Brenda’s extortionate demands was no mere show, it turns out: he has ensured that even his death will not let Brenda get her hands on his wealth. Brenda’s situation is now totally abject. Just as one might have imagined, John Beaver and her ruthless socialite friends have totally lost interest in her since her money has dried up. Yet Brenda still does not seem to accept any responsibility for her change of fortune. She rather sinks into unreserved self-pity.
Themes
Meanwhile Tony, alone, dozes at the camp in delirium. In a brief moment of lucidity, Tony recognizes that he’s too weak to feed himself, and he begins to cry. Later, he tries to refill the kerosene lamp but knocks over the oil keg, causing him to cry again. Soon, the fever returns.
Tony’s conditions again directly parallel Brenda’s in London: like her, he is too weak to feed himself and collapses in a flood of self-pity.
Themes
Tony’s fever completely takes over his consciousness, subjecting him to a hallucinatory trial where the characters and events throughout the novel get nightmarishly refracted and redistributed at random. Reggie, Winnie, the Hetton butler, Mrs. Rattery, and others all appear before him in a terrifying phantasmagoria. Finally, he imagines that he’s approaching the City after all: it rises up before him in total neo-Gothic splendor. The gates are thrown open, trumpets hail his arrival, and everything is as beautiful as Hetton.
As Tony succumbs to a horrifying chaos formed out of his own past, the final image of him arriving at a splendid Amazonian twin of Hetton is meant to be ambiguous: has Tony died? Or is this just a further delusion? If still alive, his prospects for making it out of the jungle seem at this point nonexistent.
Themes
