Mosquito Coast Essay

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The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux illustrates the paranoia of the main character Allie Fox, and how that mindset shapes his behavior. As the story progresses, Allie becomes similar to Crevecoeur’s “back settlers and even resembles Slater’s version of what an American has become to be. The novel begins in Massachusetts with Allie, a self made inventor and labor man, working for a farmer named Polski. Charlie, the protagonist of this novel, works by Allie’s side learning to work with his hands instead of going the traditional route by going to school. Allie does not believe America is going in the right direction and therefore picks up his family and moves to Honduras. In Honduras, the Fox family overcomes many trials and tribulations due to their tremendous faith they have in Allie. He even leads them into the middle of the jungle into a run down town that he purchased from a man that they came across on the coast. This faith is short lived for the family begins to see that he is not as prepared as he thinks he is. After many hardships, adventures, and troubles, Charlie even sets out with the other children, including the Maywits, to build their own camp. This was to escape the stress and tremendous pressure that Allie puts on his entire town of Jeromino. In this camp called “The Acre,” the children learn survival skills, how it must have felt to be a normal child in America and how it feels to be Allie regarding building up a civilization and taking care of it. This area was the children’s paradise mainly because of Allie’s ignorance of its existence. Towards the end of the novel, “The Acre,” ends up saving the family because of its plentiful food and water supply. The fact that it had not been industrialized like the town of Jeromino seems to make it invisible from human destruction. The wilderness changes Allie in many ways. He resembles Crevecoeur’s “back
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