Foolishness Is Self-Delusion
The overarching definition of foolishness that gives the novel is self-delusion. Every character aboard the ship believes wholeheartedly they are actually blessed with self-awareness and insight which allows them to honestly believe that they know why they do what they do. Motivational psychology and behavioral intuition flies out the window for nearly every single character as one after another they are revealed to be gripped firmly within the dark, stormy clouds of delusion.
How Evil Survives Through Collusion with Good
Porter wrote that while there have been many obvious manifestations of true evil in the world, the same did not hold true for the truly good. Since pure evil exists within a world absent its opposite, evil almost always wins simply by virtue of only needing to be helped along now and then by the failure of the good to come true. The novel began to take the shape it would eventually be published in as the Nazis began demonstrating that without enough “good Germans” willing to stand by and do nothing, the deepest and darkest depths of inhumanity might not have been known for years or decades.
Anti-Anti-Semitism
The novel is robust in its condemnation of anti-Semitism. Some decades had passed since the infamous Voyage of the Damned in which a ship filled with Jewish refugees desperately searching for a port were denied entry by countries that professed to be anti-Hitler so there was a bitter resonance to this assault against racist views that brought back into the American consciousness a dark chapter from its history it had almost succeeded in burying in the past. The ship is not a recreation of the Voyage of the Damned, but the parallel is unavoidable to anyone with a knowledge of that particularly offensive chapter in American history.
Unhappily Ever After
It’s a great big ship and many of the passengers are linked romantically. Not all, by any means, but at least as many as you might expect on such a passage. One of the more tragic implications of this ship filled with foolish self-deceived souls is that so few seem to have found soul mates. Or even partners with whom they are any too particularly happy. Love affairs are not in short supply aboard ship; true love, however, may be the rarest commodity.
