Davis, Richard Harding. Soldiers of Fortune. 1897. Ed. Brady Harrison. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Editions, 2006.
Summary:
The protagonist, Robert Clay, is a mining engineer and sometimes soldier, arrives in Olancho, a fictional Latin American republic. He falls for Alice Langham in the U.S., the eldest daughter of the owner of the mine in Olancho. However, when Robert and the Langham family goes to Olancho, he meets the youngest sister, Hope Langham, he falls for her. She is the smart, wild, tomboy to Alice’s prissy and snobbish nature. Hope proves her character when a coup breaks out on the island and she assists in helping everyone escape safely. The end scene is of Robert and Hope, who married, looking off into the distance toward Africa (and the whole world) with an eye to American culture, business, and superiority.
Themes:
– social darwinism
– manifest destiny
– imagined communities
– U.S. exceptionalism
Quotes:
– At the end of the novel, when Clay declares his love for Hope, the speech is similar to the one in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It’s an interesting characterization of appropriate U.S. American marriages and couples as under a capitalist system.
Response:
While the bulk of the focus for my list should be on the expansionist narrative, it is interesting to see that discussions of the coup, from the wealthy, royal family, are more about doing them a favor than colonizing. It would be interesting to see what one could make of how the imaginary community is often steeped in rhetoric about doing well for the community. (This makes me think of anti-communist rhetoric from the Chiquita company that Ed lent me.)
– Again, the pairing of a love/marriage as in the national imaginary (and imperial imaginary) also strikes me as strange: united and individualistic at the same time.
Comp Exams Reading Notes and BEYOND! 