The Innocents Abroad · Chapter
LX explained
The final leg of the journey home is marked by a flurry of packing, a broken leg, and a series of mass meetings.
What happens
The final leg of the journey home is marked by a flurry of packing, a broken leg, and a series of mass meetings. After stops in Cadiz, Funchal, and Bermuda, the pilgrims finally steam into New York harbor, ending their long cruise.
Themes in this chapter
Home and Belonging
The chapter culminates in the return to New York, emphasizing the emotional pull of 'home' after a long voyage.
Satire of Tourism
The narrator satirizes the passengers' habit of holding mass meetings for trivial matters, such as complaints about cookery.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
The narrator admits to being the passenger who mistakenly complained about coffee that was actually tea.
- Captain Duncan
Captain Duncan is the recipient of the narrator's complaint about the coffee/tea.
Key passages
“We bade goodbye to 'our friends the Bermudians,' as our programme hath it—the majority of those we were most intimate with were negroes—and courted the great deep again.”
We said farewell to the Bermudians, most of whom were Black people we knew from doing our laundry, and set sail once more.
The narrator casually notes the racial makeup of their local acquaintances.
“He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown the captain’s table over the other tables in the ship.”
The passenger complained that the coffee was terrible, but when the captain showed him his own coffee, which was fine, the passenger became angry, accusing the captain of favoritism.
This incident highlights the narrator's own foolishness and the absurdity of shipboard complaints.