Edward Everett Hale’s story “The Man Without A Country” and RudyardKiplings book Captains Courageous are both fabrications in which the maincharacters, Philip Nolan and Harvey Cheyne both go through drasticchanges in both life and attitude. Each learns a different life lesson, but ina way that is slightly unpleasant.
Philip Nolan, also known as the Man Without a Country, wishes tonever hear of his country again, and his wish is granted. He spends thelast 56 years of his life on the sea, never but once hearing of his countryand, as most of us do at some point, doesn’t realize how great a thing hehas until he loses it (pages 27-28). He makes this realization, that hiscountry, the United States of America, is wonderful and to be respected atall costs. He becomes the most patriotic man (pages 32-33), along withsome help from a poem, that he begins to read aloud to the sailors duringsome free time, about patriotism to a mans home (pages 17-18).
In Captains Courageous, however the rich and snotty, not especiallyliked, Harvey Cheyne, son of a multi-millionaire, falls off an ocean liner enroute to Europe. He is found by the schooner “We’re Here”, where he istold to do something entirely new to him: work for your money, or don’t, anddon’t eat. Taking a punch in the nose from Disko Troop (page 18) helpsHarvey to understand that the fishermen are serious in what they say, anddon’t believe what he says about his fathers wealth or the life he fell from. His bloody nose helps to humble him, and he begins the process oflearning how to work for a dollar, which even his wealthy father, HarveyCheyne, Sr., agrees is better than anything Harvey can learn at school, oranywhere else (page 131).
Both Harvey Cheyne and Philip Nolan learn important life lessons,the hard and sometimes painful way; their arrogant attitudes, and self-centeredness, completely disappearing, and they mature into men whounderstand and value what they do not early on in their story’s. Theirexperiences at sea changing their view of the world around them, in veryrealistic, and believable ways, hopefully allowing us, the reader, tounderstand these life lessons, without going through the same kind ofordeals that Harvey Cheyne and Philip Nolan go through in these greatpieces of American literature.
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