The Ebb-Tide (1894)

"I should find room also for Stevenson's "Wrecker" and "Ebb Tide." " --Through the Magic Door, p. 241

The Ebb-Tide was published in 1894, the same year Stevenson died suddenly of a brain hemnerage. It was a joint project with Stevenson's step-son Llyod Osbourne. It was the beginning of a new project to depict the Pacific in serious literature, to show the evils and contradictions of European colonialism. This had never been done before and it was a loss to the world with Stevenson's untimely death. It would have been a noble and important project, as Joseph Conrad would eventually demonstrate. The Ebb-Tide reverses the typical stereotypes and shows the Europeans to be uncivilized and the natives to be righteous and upstanding. Of course this all seems old hat now, but at the time it was a break from the norms that would eventually lead to post-colonialism, which is still ongoing to this day.

This story itself is very entertaining and has Stevenson's trademark psychological drama. The character of Captain Davis is particularly dynamic. The cockney language of Huish is priceless, right out of Dickens. Mr. Attwater is a bad-ass missionary, a sort of piratical devil in the clothing of the lord, operating in the wilderness beyond the pale of civilization., a prototype of Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness and Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )