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    A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools
    A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools
    A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools
    Ebook43 pages31 minutes

    A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's "Ship of Fools," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 21, 2015
    ISBN9781535833035
    A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools - Gale

      1

      Ship of Fools

      Katherine Anne Porter

      1962

      Introduction

      The idea for Ship of Fools (Little, Brown and Company, 1962) originated in a voyage that Katherine Anne Porter took from Mexico to Europe in 1931. Some of the passengers she encountered on the ship became the models for the characters in Ship of Fools. Porter began work on the novel in 1941 and it took her twenty years to complete.

      The title is taken from a moral allegory published in Latin in the fifteenth century. Porter wrote that the title of her novel symbolizes the ship of this world on its voyage to eternity. The wide cast of characters includes German, Swiss, Spanish, Cuban, Mexican, Swedish, and American first-class travelers. In steerage, there are 876 Spanish workers who are being deported from the sugar fields of Cuba.

      Ship of Fools is notable for its pessimistic view of the human condition. In particular, the Germans are portrayed in a harshly negative light. They are mostly anti-Semitic and contemptuous of races other than their own, with an arrogant sense of their own superiority. Critics have remarked on how accurately Porter conveyed the German mentality on the eve of the rise of Nazism. However, the other characters, with few exceptions, are unsavory also. The one Jew on the ship is filled with hatred for all Gentiles; the Spanish, who are members of a dancing troupe, are presented as amoral thieves, pimps and prostitutes. There is little genuine human love present in the novel, although there is much comedy and satire.

      Ship of Fools is the only novel Porter wrote. It was an immediate bestseller and was made into a movie in 1965. Critical judgment, however, was sharply divided over the merits of the novel, a debate that continues today.

      Author Biography

      Katherine Anne Porter was born Callie Russell Porter on May 15, 1890, in Indian Creek, Texas, the daughter of Harrison and Mary Alice Jones Porter. Porter's mother died in 1892, and the family moved to Kyle, Texas, to live with Porter's grandmother. In 1901, the grandmother died and the family moved to San Antonio.

      Porter married John Henry Koontz, a railway clerk, at the age of sixteen; she left him after seven years and was divorced in 1915. Also in that year, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent two years in sanatoriums. In 1917, Porter began her journalism career, writing for the Critic, a weekly newspaper in Fort Wayne, Texas. The following year she wrote for Rocky Mountain News in Denver. She also caught influenza and was dangerously ill.

      In 1919, Porter moved to New York, where she

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