Officer And Man

Becke, Louis, 1855-1913Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 33K words
Chapters: 4

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Officer And Man by Louis BeckeAuthor: Becke, Louis, 1855-1913,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 12, 2008

Editor's review

Officer And Man is another of Louis Becke's narratives set in the South Seas, its title placing the relationship between the officer and the common sailor or subordinate at the forefront; the tension arises largely from differences of rank, command and obedience, and the workings of power in a colonial setting. Becke spent long years in the South Pacific, and he writes skillfully of daily life aboard ship, island trade, and the cautious testing of one person by another, with details that are restrained yet convincing. The book serves well as a short reader for understanding class and discipline in late nineteenth-century English sea narrative, and also for reading alongside the same author's Foster's Letter Of Marque to compare how he handles maritime ethics and personal relations. As a public-domain ebook it is easy to obtain, but its English usage and sentence patterns bear the marks of their time and it lacks modern annotation, so readers should have reference works at hand. Overall it does not win its effects through sensational plot but is more worth close attention for the choices characters make in the crevices between institution and circumstance.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in seafaring life and shipboard hierarchy
Students, teachers, and enthusiasts of nineteenth-century English sea literature
Advanced learners with good English reading ability who want close reading of short fiction
Readers who prefer character relations and ethical conflict to action set pieces

Not a good fit for

Readers hoping for abundant sea battles and intense action
Beginners who need a Chinese translation or sentence-by-sentence annotation
Readers who prefer modern plain narrative and are unused to old-fashioned English

Reading tips

First sort out the lists of officers and sailors and their relations, then read the plot, to grasp the source of conflict more quickly.
Mark passages about orders, punishment, and obedience, and return to them together after finishing to sense the author's attitude.
Read alongside another South Seas work by the same author to compare narrative perspective and thematic emphasis.
If time is short, read first the key chapters around the conflict of rank, then fill in the surrounding context.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book related to Foster's Letter Of Marque?

Both are public-domain works by Louis Becke with South Seas and maritime settings, similar in theme and background, but they are not parts of one story. They can be read together to compare how the author handles sea discipline, differences of rank, and personal ethics.

How difficult is the English, and what level is needed?

The text is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century English, with fairly long sentences and some nautical and colonial usages uncommon today; it is harder than ordinary contemporary popular fiction. Intermediate to advanced English reading ability is advised, along with a dictionary or electronic lookup tool; if necessary, grasp the gist of a paragraph first, then work through the wording.

Does the electronic edition have notes or an introduction?

This is a public-domain ebook provided by Project Gutenberg, consisting mainly of the text and usually without modern editorial notes or introduction. Readers who want background can look up the author's life, the colonial history of the South Pacific, and nautical terminology, or compare with an annotated edition.

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About the author

Becke, Louis, 1855-1913 Author

Louis Becke (1855–1913) was an English-language writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; details of his life and nationality are limited in publicly available sources. The library holds thirty-eight of his works, including novels and short-story collections, mostly concerned with seafaring, island life and adventure. Representative titles include By Reef and Palm, Rídan The Devil And Other Stories, Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories, The Trader's Wife, Yorke The Adventurer and Tessa. His writing is often set against the backdrop of Pacific islands and maritime experience, with a realistic tone that portrays sailors, traders and islanders in foreign settings and the human nature they reveal, giving his work a distinct flavour of sea adventure. The library classifies his works under inspirational growth; his books retain a readership within the tradition of maritime adventure fiction, though overall scholarly material on him remains limited.