The Sailor-Boy’s Tale (Criticism)

Criticism

Liz Brent

Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in cinema studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in American cinema at the University of Michigan. In the following essay, Brent discusses Dinesen’s story in terms of rites of passage. Isak Dinesen’s “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” is a coming-of-age story, told in the style of a fairy tale, in which a young man, Simon, must go through a rite of passage to make the transition from boyhood to manhood. This rite of passage involves the psychological themes of Eros (love) and of relationships with mother figures and father figures.

Simon’s transition into manhood is marked by a symbolic transition from homosocial to heterosexual encounters. The term “homosocial” refers to a situation in which members of the same sex are primarily inclined to socialize with one another, whether or not their sexual identity is heterosexual. As Simon is a sailor, he comes from a strongly homosocial environment, as there are no women in the ships’ crews. Even when they go ashore for recreation, the sailors in the story seem to be primarily interested in interacting with one another rather than seeking out the company of women. When Simon wanders into a house in which a large room is being used as a dance hall, he encounters a strong example of the sailors’ “homosocial” tendencies. He observes, “There were some women in the room, but many of the men danced with each other.” He also notes that the crowd then clears the center of the room to watch “two sailors, who were showing a dance from their own country.” This scene epitomizes the homosocial environment of the sailors in which Simon has spent his boyhood. This is not to say that the sailors do not engage in sexual contact with women. It is made clear that the sailors go ashore in part to go “wenching” — seeking out prostitutes. But their interest in exchanging money for sexual encounters with women is contrasted to Simon’s romantic interest in Nora:

These people will be believing that I am going in to town, wenching.’ And then he felt, with some pride, that they were right, although at the same time they were infinitely wrong, and knew nothing about anything.

But the homosocial borders on elements of the homosexual when, earlier in the story, Simon captures the attention of Ivan, a large, burly Russian sailor. When Simon joins the Russian sailors for a drink, Ivan’s affection for him is overbearing and carries sexual undertones: “He got drunk at once, and then fell upon the boy with a bear-like affection, pawed him, smiled and laughed into his face, made him a present of a gold watch-chain, and kissed him on both cheeks.” When Simon later gets lost on his way to find the girl, Nora, he runs right into Ivan. Again, Ivan’s demonstrations of affection toward Simon are overbearing, and suggest the talk of a lover to the object of his affections, despite Simon’s attempt to resist him:

The Russian folded his arms round him and held him. “Good! Good!” he cried in high glee, “I have found you, my little chicken. I have looked for you everywhere, and poor Ivan has wept because he lost his friend.” “Let me go, Ivan,” cried Simon. “Oho,” said Ivan, “I shall go with you and get you what you want. My heart and my money are all yours, all yours.” Ivan held him so that it hurt, and patted him with his other hand. “I feel it, I feel it,” he said. “Now trust to me, my little friend. Nothing shall part you and me.

The animal presence of Ivan’s body is especially odious to Simon, implying that he is repulsed by the sexual implications of the large man’s affections: “Suddenly he crushed the boy to him, like a bear carries off a sheep. The odious sensation of male bodily warmth and the bulk of a man close to him made the lean boy mad.” Simon’s anger toward Ivan is in part motivated by his romantic expectations of the promised kiss from Nora. The homosocial affection of Ivan, with its erotic implications, becomes odious to Simon. This feeling is in contrast to the heterosexual affection he hopes to win from Nora. “He thought of Nora waiting, like a slender ship in the dim air, and of himself, here, in the hot embrace of a hairy animal.” It is this desire for Nora that motivates Simon to stab Ivan to escape from his embrace. It is thus the heterosexual impulse that motivates him to rebuke the homosocial company of a fellow sailor.

The murder of Ivan takes on further symbolic implications, especially in the context of the story’s elements of a fairy tale. Sigmund Freud theorized that the symbolic murder of the father by the son is an important step in the process of the development of male children. Freud pointed to examples from literature to support this theory, particularly noting the Greek tragedy in which Oedipus unknowingly murders his own father. Because “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” is written in the form of a fairy tale, it invites interpretation at a symbolic level. The death of Ivan thus connotes Simon’s symbolic murder of the father as a key event in his rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. Other figures of male authority in the story also threaten to impede Simon’s passage into manhood. Having found their compatriot, Ivan, murdered, the Russian sailors attempt to seek out and punish his murderer. It is these men whom Simon must successfully evade to “live to tell the story.” Furthermore, Nora’s father represents a figure of male authority who poses a threat to Simon’s progress. When he asks Nora if she can hide him, she explains that she cannot because her father is a parson, and ‘“he would be sure to hand you over to them, if he knew that you had killed a man.’”

Having symbolically murdered the father figure, the next event in Simon’s rite of passage is the kiss from Nora. It is this kiss that completes his transformation from boyhood to manhood. Again, in the fairy tale mode, the kiss seems almost magical, as if the transition to manhood were a mystical event, or a good spell she has cast upon him. Nora

clasped her arms round his neck. She pressed her young body to his, and kissed him tenderly. He felt her face, cool as the moonlight, upon his own, and when she released him, his head swam, and he did not know if the kiss had lasted a second or an hour.

Nora imbues the kiss with a cosmic significance, declaring with a certainty beyond her years, ‘“I promise you that I will never marry anybody, as long as I live.’” Nora’s statement here is odd; she does not promise that she will marry Simon, rather she says she will ‘“never marry anybody.’” The future of Nora is left entirely uncertain by the end of the story. The reader may, perhaps, speculate that just as the falcon reentered Simon’s life as Sunniva, the old woman, so perhaps Nora will reenter his life in another form, at another juncture. If Sunniva has mystical powers, such as the ability to transform herself into a falcon, perhaps Nora, too, has such mystical powers. Her parting words to Simon — ‘“Do not forget Nora”’ — sound almost like an omen.

After kissing Nora, Simon runs off in hopes of evading capture for the murder of Ivan. When he wanders into the dance hall, he becomes aware of his transformation from boyhood to manhood. That fact that “he had killed a man, and had kissed a girl” marks this transition:

These five minutes during which he stood by the wall of the dancing-room, in the midst of the gay, sweating dancers, were of great significance to the boy. He himself felt it, as if during this time he grew up, and became like other people. He did not entreat his destiny, nor complain. Here he was, he had killed a man, and had kissed a girl. He did not demand any more from life, nor did life now demand more from him. He was Simon, a man like the men round him, and going to die, as all men are going to die.

It seems that his overpowering a father figure, in the form of Ivan, and his encounter with the feminine principle, in the form of Nora, have enacted Simon’s transition to manhood. His encounter with Sunniva, the old woman who helps him to escape punishment for murdering Ivan, represents another encounter with the feminine. Whereas other men in the story function to impede Simon, the women function as his allies. Sunniva, in recognition of Simon’s affinity for women, rewards him with a spell that will endear him to women: ‘“So you are a boy,’ she said, ‘who will kill a man rather than be late to meet your sweetheart? We hold together, the females of this earth. I shall mark your forehead now, so that the girls will know of that, when they look at you, and they will like you for it.’” Yet, this does not mean that Simon renounces his homosocial occupation of sailor. Sunniva assures him that he will not “need to” stick his knife in another man, for, she explains, ‘“from now you will sail the sea like a faithful seaman.’” Simon’s rite of passage, whereby he murders a man and kisses a girl, does not alienate him from his fellow man, but better equips him for the company of both men (as a fellow sailor) and women.

Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale,” in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2001.

Emily Smith Riser

Riser has a master’s degree in English literature and teaches high school English. In the following essay, she explores the fairy tale form and the initiation theme ofDinesen’s story.

The word “tale” in the title of Isak Dinesen’s short story “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” lends insight into the nature of the story. This is not to be a realistic true-life account; rather, it is to be a story in the sense of a fairy tale or a parable. In the tradition of her countryman Hans Christian Andersen, the writer of well-known children’s tales, Dinesen uses the form of the fairy tale for the stories in her collection Winter’s Tales, of which “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” is one. However, Dinesen subverts the traditional form to make this a story most children, as well as adults, might find disconcerting. Moreover, the word “boy” in the title of the story indicates that the subject of the story is to be an innocent character, suggesting again that perhaps this is a children’s tale. However, though the story starts out as the tale of a boy, it ends with the boy having been initiated into manhood, with some unusual and not-so-innocent events happening in the meantime. Thus, Dinesen’s “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” is a subverted fairy tale that shows a boy’s transformation into manhood — and confronts some rather adult questions along the way.

Lionel Trilling suggests that the word “tale” indicates that the story is going to contain the “marvelous” or the supernatural, which rational adults generally do not accept but are willing to put aside for the sake of being entertained or instructed. Trilling states, “the element of the marvelous in literature has important moral implications: it suggests that life is not to be understood in terms only for our daily practical knowledge of it, that it is also a mystery evoking our wonder no less than our fortitude.” Certainly, this is true in “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale.” The transformation of the bird into the old woman can only be described as marvelous or supernatural. This is something we might see happen in a children’s tale — we expect children to somehow be more receptive to such ideas. Though, as Trilling points out, stories meant for adults often contain the supernatural as well, and we simply set aside our disbelief for the sake of the story. This begs the question of “why?” Why are adults willing to accept things in stories that we know could not happen in real life? As Trilling points out, we want the stories to work their magic on us. We want to believe them so that we can be affected by them and learn from them. Therefore, we “suspend our disbelief” for the sake of the story.

Another part of the story that makes it more of a parable and less of a realistic story is the extensive use of symbolism. There are only a few objects in the story with color: the yellow eyes of the falcon — and of Sunniva, of course; the orange that Simon gives to Nora; Nora’s blue dress and eyes; the blue handkerchief. These few bright spots in an otherwise gray story point to objects of great importance. The yellow of the falcon’s eyes leads us quickly to conclude that we have met the falcon again in the person of Sunniva. The complementary colors of the orange fruit and Nora’s blue dress and eyes indicate the potential intimacy between Simon and Nora. Simon buys the “small blue handkerchief,” which is “the same colour as her eyes,” but he does not give it to her — this might represent their failure to form a meaningful relationship.

Pointing out additional symbolism in the story, the critic Antonine M. L. Marquart Scholtz reads the story as a series of Jungian symbols (after Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961). She focuses on the symbols of city, tree, and sea, which are all symbols of motherhood. Scholtz sees “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” as a story about the birth of art and reads the end of the story as Simon’s “birth” as an artist. Indeed, at the end it says that he “lived to tell the story” (Sholtz’s emphasis) — thus, he lived to be a sort of artist. Scholtz views Sunniva as a mother symbol who “delivers” Simon’s creative power through “the blending of their blood.” Though Scholtz’s Jungian analysis of the story is tenable, the story can also be read as a story of initiation into manhood.

Through her extensive use of symbolism, Isak Dinesen successfully avoided the restrictions that realism placed on many of her contemporaries. Dinesen insisted that she was a “storyteller” and not an “author,” which might sound like a pointless distinction, but in fact she was alluding to an integral aspect of her writing. Dinesen wished to confront existential questions in her writing and found that modern literary techniques, which depicted social and psychological reality, were not adequate for her own expression. Just as Dinesen shares a literary kinship with her countryman Hans Christian Andersen, she also shares the philosophical outlook of another Dane, Soren Kirkegaard, who was the first writer to call himself an “existentialist.” Existentialism emphasizes individual existence — subjectivity — in contrast to an absolute morality in which the individual has little choice. According to Kirkegaard, a person must find his vocation and must live a completely committed life, which often requires that a person defy society’s norms.

The story “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” deals with the existential question of “what is our place in the world?” At the beginning, the boy has the view that “in this world everyone must look after himself.” However, he begins to identify with the falcon struggling in the ship’s lines. He frees the falcon despite the ridicule that he knows might follow from his fellow shipmates; as Kirkegaard would say, he defies his society’s norms in pursuit of something he knows from within himself to be right. Seeing himself in another creature is the beginning of his transformation, his initiation into manhood. He realizes that in the world, everyone does rely on others in some way.

For the two years following this experience, Simon grows physically, and in the story’s next scene he takes the lightness in the air as “a sign of unwonted good-will in the Universe, a favour.” He feels that his growth is due to “a new benevolence in the world.” Simon is willing to take this “favor” but feels now that he is on his own again: “he asked for no more. The rest he felt to be his own affair.” Again, he has returned to the philosophy he had at the beginning of the story, the philosophy nobody should expect help from others. He has regressed, and it takes a drastic turn of events to put him back on track towards his initiation.

On shore one day, Simon meets a girl, Nora, who agrees to give him a kiss if he returns the next evening. So, the next night, he hails a ride to shore with some Russian sailors. One of these sailors, a jolly but obtrusive drunk named Ivan, gets in the way of his seeing Nora. In response, Simon stabs Ivan under the arm, killing him.

The murder of Ivan is a disturbing scene. Why does Simon kill Ivan? It seems like an extreme response. Is Ivan trying to take Simon as his lover? Certainly there is language to suggest this: Ivan clasps Simon

like a bear that carries off a sheep. The odious sensation of male bodily warmth and the bulk of a man close to him made the lean boy mad. He thought of Nora waiting, like a slender ship in the dim air, and of himself, here, in the hot embrace of a hairy animal.

Janet Handler Burstein posits that after meeting Nora, Simon realizes that he desires women and abhors the embrace of another man. Even at that, we have seen Ivan to be a friendly, if overbearing, companion, and it seems unnecessary to kill him. Dinesen does not address in any way the morality of Simon’s action. It is perhaps more useful to see Ivan as a symbol; he is an obstacle to Simon’s realization of his transformation into manhood, which Simon believes will happen with a woman’s kiss.

After Simon kills Ivan and therefore is able to see Nora and get his kiss, he feels like he “grew up, and became like other people. . . . he had killed a man, and had kissed a girl.” Here it appears that it is not only the kiss but also the killing of a man that Simon sees as prerequisites for manhood. He maintains here his original view of the world that nobody helps anybody, that one is responsible for one’s own destiny. If something gets in one’s way, it is to be eliminated. Like the day before on the boat, he still does not expect anything: “He did not entreat his destiny, nor complain. . . . He was Simon, a man like the men around him, and going to die, as all men are going to die.” He thinks of himself as a “man” now, not as a boy. Here, he is mimicking society’s expectations of a man, rather than following his own individual truth of which he saw a glimmer two years before when he freed the falcon from the ship’s lines. This evening, he feels that he has been transformed into manhood through his two “adult” actions.

However, this assuredness is soon to end. Sunniva, who has familiar yellow eyes — the eyes of the falcon Simon saved at the beginning of the story — comes to hide him from Ivan’s friends. Suddenly, Simon is no longer a “man.” Sunniva calls him “my boy,” and she transforms him by combing his hair in the Lapp fashion so that he will not be recognized. Through Sunniva, Simon achieves his real transformation. She hands him a hot black drink and says, “You have drunk with Sunniva now .. . you have drunk down a little wisdom, so that in the future all your thoughts shall not fall like raindrops into the salt sea.” The “wisdom” that he drinks with her is the knowledge that he is not alone in the world, that everyone does not simply look out for himself but rather relies on others. There is a common thread that runs through all creatures, which is what he sensed at the beginning when he helped the falcon. Before Sunniva tells him that she was the falcon, he feels “as if he were swaying high up in the air, with but a small hold” — just as she must have felt before he freed her from the boat’s rigging. The fact that creatures share this “common tragedy” is why she tells him not to kill again. The “moral” of the story is that we must honor that commonality in all creatures.

Thus, it is through the falcon/Sunniva that Simon is initiated, not through the kiss of a woman or the killing of a man. Simon’s transformation is accomplished through his recognition of the “common tragedy” and through his taking action to help another creature, even at the risk of ridicule. Sunniva reminds him of this by rescuing him from an equally perilous situation, completing his initiation. Dinesen’s tale may not be as morally satisfying as some children’s tales, but it successfully addresses the existential question of humans’ place in the cosmos.

Source: Emily Smith Riser, Critical Essay on “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale,” in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2001.

What Do I Read Next?

• Winter’s Tales(1941) is Isak Dinesen’s second collection of short stories. It includes “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale.”
• Seven Gothic Tales(1934) is Dinesen’s first collection of short stories. It includes “The Deluge at Norderney”; “The Old Chevalier”; “The Monkey”; “The Roads Round Pisa”; “The Supper at Elsinore”; “The Dreamers”; and “The Poet.”
• Out of Africa(1952) is Dinesen’s nonfiction memoir of her years spent managing a coffee plantation in Kenya between 1914 and 1931.
• Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen: The Work and the Life(1988) by Aage Henriksen is a biography of Dinesen, which includes critical essays on her work. It has an introduction by Poul Houe and is translated by William Mishler.
• Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller(1982) by Judith Thurman is a biography of Dinesen.
• Written by Herself, Volume II: Women’s Memoirs from Britain, Africa, Asia, and the United States(1996) is both edited and has an introduction by Jill Ker Conway. Memoirs of famous female authors from around the world, including an excerpt from Dinesen’s memoirs, are in this collection.
• Longing for Darkness: Kamante’s Tale from Out of Africa, with Original Photographs and Quotations from Isak Dinesen(1975), collected by Peter Beard, includes excerpts from Dinesen’s memoirs on Kenya and the Kenyan people and is accompanied by photographs taken during her years in Kenya, 1914-1931.