Dear readers,
For my sixth letter essay I reread the book Mutiny on the Bounty. This book is by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The book was first written nineteen thirty-two. Although this book was a reread I discovered many new events to add to the meaningfulness of the plot and it also has been about a year and a half since I first read this book.
The first thing I liked about this book was the setting. The setting of this book was in the golden age of sailing when many famous navigators were finding new lands. The reason I like this setting so much is that I have a good amount of background knowledge of how to sail boats and how they are built. Also I find the topic of navigation along with adventuring to undiscovered islands, or for that matter any undiscovered place a very interesting topic. Those are most of the reasons why the setting of this book appealed to me.
The second thing that I liked in this book was the word choice. This is one of the main reasons why this book was a slightly harder read than a lot of other books. Also this book was first written in nineteen thirty-two that was a time when a lot of people had much larger vocabularies than this time period does. Some examples of this language is malicious which means awful or bad natured and lethargy which means laziness or disregard. Mutiny on the Bounty increased my vocabulary quite a lot. In conclusion the word choice of this book definitely added to the challenge of reading this book and made it much more interesting the second time i read it.
The third thing I liked about this book was how the authors described the setting so well it almost felt like you were there. For instance when the main character first steps into his temporary island home he says “the house was a fine one-sixty feet long by twenty wide, with a lofty, newly thatched roof, and, instead of gables, semicircular extensions at each end. Such houses were built only for chiefs.”. That quote and many others like it really helped me to get a mental picture of where the story was set at and added a lot to the events that were taking place during it.
One of the things I thought was interesting about Mutiny on the Bounty was the ending of the story where Roger Byam (the main character) returns to the island paradise if Tahiti after being gone for over five years to find the island almost completely deserted and war torn. I thought this was a very interesting turn of events because usually stories end happily not sad and abrupt. I think the author did this to show what the European colonization of the world really did to the inhabitants of all the far away islands.
I think the morale of this story it that even when something is great or your life is perfect there will always be a price to pay for it or that there is always another side to a great deal. The main example of this is how at first when Roger Byam sails to Tahiti and its neighboring islands life is perfect he can do whatever he wants to and its always warm and sunny. But when the Bounty has to sail back to England there is a mutiny and he sails right back to Tahiti spending the next two years in paradise. But then he is caught as a prisoner he is then acquitted of his crimes and returns to the island paradise of Tahiti to find it war torn and ravaged by diseases. Now usually for the morale to be true there is usually the hard part before the good happens like having to go to college for eight years to become a doctor or working at a job for a very long time so you can get a raise or important position. This could work in the other manner if for instance you buy something online and it ends up being a piece of crap. Those are some of my reasons why I think the morale of the story Mutiny on the Bounty is that there is always another side to a great deal.
Rereading this book proved to be much harder but much more worthwhile considering I now have a larger vocabulary than before reading this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a hard but meaningful read.
Sincerely,
Zac Dietrich
