The Innocents Abroad · Chapter
II explained
The narrator describes the preparations for the voyage, including the impressive but ultimately mundane credentials of a fellow passenger, the widespread enthusiasm for traveling to Europe, and the chaotic, rainy departure from New York.
What happens
The narrator describes the preparations for the voyage, including the impressive but ultimately mundane credentials of a fellow passenger, the widespread enthusiasm for traveling to Europe, and the chaotic, rainy departure from New York. He introduces his roommate and the cramped but satisfactory stateroom, and recounts the anticlimactic start of the pleasure excursion as the ship anchors in the harbor due to a storm.
Themes in this chapter
Satire of Tourism
The narrator humorously critiques the grandiosity and absurdity of the excursion, from the inflated titles of passengers to the anticlimactic rainy departure.
Travel as Education
The widespread enthusiasm for traveling to Europe and the Paris Exposition reflects the idea of travel as a broadening experience.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
The narrator recounts his observations and experiences during the preparations and departure.
- Mr. Blucher
A fellow excursionist who naively believes everyone is going to Paris and is incredulous when a store clerk says he is not.
- Mr. B.
Identified as Mr. Blucher in the text; he buys a handkerchief and expects to pay in Paris.
Key passages
“I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material that would alone be permitted to pass through the camel’s eye of that committee on credentials”
I had resigned myself to being a lesser figure among the distinguished passengers approved by the strict selection committee.
The narrator expresses his initial humility and awe at the supposedly elite company.
“Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and that his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting of seeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the Smithsonian Institute, I would have felt so much relieved.”
If I had realized he was just an ordinary person tasked with gathering plants and animals for the Smithsonian, I would have been far less intimidated.
The narrator satirizes the inflated importance of a fellow passenger, revealing the mundane reality behind the grand title.
“It was a pleasure excursion—there was no gainsaying that, because the program said so—it was so nominated in the bond—but it surely hadn’t the general aspect of one.”
Officially it was a pleasure trip, as stated in the itinerary, but it certainly did not look like one.
The narrator contrasts the advertised joy of the excursion with the dreary reality of the rainy, stormy departure.