Toilers of the Sea

The Toilers of the Sea and The Devil Ship ( in the original: Les Travailleurs de la mer ). 's A novel by Victor Hugo from 1866 venue is the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, on the Hugo lived during his exile in Hauteville House and where extensive studies of geography, nature and population of the island operation.

The novel takes place in 1820 on Guernsey. It tells the melodramatic story of the fisherman Gilliat, who is in love with Déruchette, the niece of the owner Lethierry. In a dramatic battle with the forces of nature, it is possible the hero, the precious machine of a ship by the shipowner, which is geratenen by sabotage in distress to rescue. When he learns that Déruchette loves another, the uncle refuses as a candidate, he selflessly helps the young couple to flee.

Action

The Guernseyer captain Lethierry has two things that are dear to him: The steamship " Durande " that embodies its entire economic and social existence, and his orphaned niece Déruchette that he spoils after forces.

Through the fault of the abysmally poor skipper Clubin who wants to settle with the assets of the captain, runs the " Durande " on an infamous reef and shatters. The rescued passengers (except Clubin, the seemingly heroic remains ), but testify that the machine of the steamship had remained intact. The desperate Lethierry now promises to him who holds the machine and brings back the hand of his niece. The only one who will venture this seemingly hopeless endeavor, is Gilliatt, a poor, solitary fisherman, the suspects the island nation of witchcraft and is in love with the beautiful, arrogant Déruchette.

At night and in fog Gilliatt breaks on the reef. In days long, grueling work with the expenditure of all his strength, he is able to recover the machine; he is cold, hunger, a storm and the fight with an octopus, until he can eventually return to Guernsey with the machine. There he received jubilantly, and the grateful Lethierry will let the wedding take place the next day. Déruchette but, as Gilliatt must find love with a young priest. Without hesitation he offers her his -won happiness and allows the lovers, the secret wedding and escape, after which he, the departing ship of the two nachblickend, drowned in the rising tide.

The plot is, as in the Hunchback of Notre -Dame and the poor, interspersed with personal reflections Hugo, here mostly about the nature and the metaphysical importance of the sea and its inhabitants.

The narrator

The novel is written from the perspective of the omniscient narrator. The extradiegetic separation of his characters allows the narrator's external perspective on the events. The narrator takes a heterodiegetischen a point, his opinion on the action is personal and shows, for example, in an ironic narrative and evaluative comments on the action. Although the narrator is with self- involved by strong personalization in the narrative, but without losing any of its omnipotence. He takes a moralizing role, especially in the comments to his hero Gilliat. The narrator will get more presence in the novel as the other major and minor characters. His " omniscience " allows him to overlook getting all characters, spaces and time relationships in the novel. He is the one who selects information, hints makes the reader led to speculation in order to stimulate the emotional sympathy of his readers and direct.

Main characters

Gilliatts origin is surrounded with mysteries. Whether he is the son, nephew or grandson of " La Gilliatte ", after which he is named Gilliatt, le malin ( = Gilliat, the fox ), and the first name and last name is at the same time, remains in the dark.

Its salient trait is contradictory, namely what concerns its physical properties and its mentality and its behavior towards its environment. On the one hand he is tanned as a fisherman on the weather, looks older than he is, on the other hand, his attitude and his dealings with women is rather boyish, coy and immature, which is accompanied by an idealization of women. He lives in a dilapidated hut, is an avid reader and self-taught and sees himself as an atheist, isolated in the midst of a bigoted and hypocritical island population. He knows the nature and is a skilled craftsman. He knows perfectly all the skills you need as a fisherman, and also has creative powers. His creativity are fed to the dream of him as " l' aquarium de la nuit" ( = literally " nocturnal aquarium " ) allows access to the subconscious. As a " homme du songe " ( = man of the dream ), he has a visionary perspective on things, which remains closed to the superstitious islanders.

Giliats opponent is Sieur Clubin. He is Charkaterisiert than reasonable, calculating, cunning, cold and this definitely a risk taker. He builds his life on his good reputation to finally commit the perfect crime: the shipwreck of the " Durande " and his escape with Lethierrys assets. The islanders be fooled by its "mask": one respects him, appreciates him as a pious and capable captain. Clubin embodies the social ideal type of an " homme de l' ordre " ( = man of order ).

Unlike Gilliat life has left no traces on the sea on Clubins face, his skin is pure, like wax. Behind his immaculate appearance he hides malice and wickedness. Pointedly shows Hugo the contrast between the two men in their handling of money: there Gilliat, exchanged and does not count, is little rational and embodies the disorder, on the other hand Clubin plan and system.

Lethierry is the owner of the first steam ship of the island, is considered revolutionary and man of progress and wants to revolutionize the local seafaring, in which he invested in a steamboat. As a freethinker and rationalist he is the church and the clergy as enemies. With Gilliat it combines its intellectual independence, both read Voltaire, and both are conservative islanders alike suspicious. Gillat loves the Druchette, the niece of the shipowner, which is, however, love to the displeasure of her uncle, the parish priest of the island.

Fiction

The romantic demand for realism in the novel he comes by it spreads meticulous descriptions of sea and land, explains scientific phenomena and explains nautical techniques. Thus, the novel receives a "scientific " flavor. The use of technical terms and foreign words that are translated or explained to the French reader in footnotes and passages in the Anglo-Norman dialect colored population of the island as well as the dialogues of the smugglers in Spanish generate both authentic looking and exotic atmosphere.

Hugo makes the Anglo- French island of Guernsey to the scene of the novel. The action takes place in an isolated, the French reader familiar framework. Due to its position as the omniscient narrator and historically documented events from Guernsey, the author gives the impression that the story about Gilliat have actually happened in the 1820s there.

Hugo is his criticism, embodied in a concrete island's population, represent, without encountering the proportion receiving reader over the head. He condemned the vices of society - selfishness, superstition, bigotry - and simultaneously provides its heroic protagonists the prevailing social system against. In essence, such an optimism rooted in the glorification of human labor. The main part of the novel is devoted to the Odyssey Gilliats. In these passages, reminiscent of an adventure novel, the story takes on fantastic features. Gilliatt ekes out the existence of a Robinsons, accomplishes work that would be worthy of a Hercules and fight like the Knights of Chrétien de Troyes against a monster. The superhuman Gilliats requires a realistic framework, so that the novel for the reader holds at least a morally convincing identification figure.

Intention

In the preface to the workers of the sea writes Hugo, he had completed this work a trilogy, the parts treated each one of the powerful forces to which man is exposed: The Hunchback dogma in the guise of religion, in the poor laws in the form of human society and in the workers of the sea, the nature, in the form of the sea. To print this comes in the heroic struggle Gilliatts against the unbridled power of the elements and in the Durande itself, which moves as a symbol of human ingenuity on their own, instead of being directed as the sailing ships from the wind, and finally triumphed over wind and water.

However, the conception of the novel goes beyond the limits of a prose text addition. " C'est le drame Le roman hors cadre", this quote Hugo meets for the dramatic alignment of Les travailleurs de la mer to. In the theatrical division of the novel, the complexity of the plot, with its multiple time entangled storylines, the intended cathartic action, the archetypal conception of the figures and the means of Panoramic view, the intention Hugo shows to create a drama that is too extensive to on any stage to find space.

The novel can be seen as a seismograph of romance. The demand for realism comes after Hugo by the use of inferior scientific explanations. The drawing has the hero, who suffers from the society because of its indeterminate origin, and by the dream access to the world of the unreal and driven by his Sensibilité refuge in nature, stands in the romantic tradition.

Also, the local color of the Channel Islands, coupled with the exotic countries of origin of the smugglers, and also the adventurous life of the sailors are characteristic features of this period. The novel fulfills the functions of an exile novel; Hugo transforms personal experiences into the fate of the hero, which initially looked Guernsey as his grave. At this point is where the most profound criticism.

Parmi ces unproductive personne ne travaille. Lethierry spécule, Rantaine vole Lethierry, Clubin dépouille Rantaine des fruits de son vol; Gilliatt songe, rêve, Flane et toute l' année soupire, et deux mois que ne travaille parce qu'il croit gagner en champ clos dans un combat contre l' Océan la main de Mlle Déruchette.

The quote Alfred Cute Apartments presupposes a false expectation. Hugo's goal is not to make maritime career fields immortal, and also to attack their working conditions as Émile Zola in Germinal. The essence of the work of a man presenting as epic conflict as well as the humanist belief in progress can be seen as an intention Hugos.

In the implementation of this subject in the psychology of the characters of the novel falls in the implied trilogy. Thus, the figures are designed on one side. Also, most of the few dialogues lack of mental depth. It is the artistic management, Hugos " clarté visual", which is the real charm of the novel and sets it apart from its predecessors. The author illustrated the novel with 356 of landscapes and figures. The literary critic Jules Levallois came to the judgment:

"Il n'a jamais été mieux comme peintre. "

Leaving aside here the focus of the novel, the lack of understanding becomes less important, to see nature as human destiny. This viewpoint Hugo will probably maintain its biographical attribute. And finally, you can see the Roman on Hugo's own point of view on " Le plus que raconter poète fait, il montre. " Victor Hugo, in William Shakespeare.

Expenditure

• The Toilers of the Sea. With a foreword by Herbert Kühn. From the French by Lisa Haustein. Leipzig 1954.
• The Toilers of the Sea. Preface and translator's Rainer G. Schmidt. Hamburg 2002. ISBN 3-928398-82-2