Travels With My Aunt

Novel Analysis

I’ve read a classic novel called Travels With My Aunt which is written by the English author Graham Greene. He has written over thirty novels on various subjects but the most well-known of his novels is probably Our Man in Havana which he wrote in 1958. One year later that novel also became film together with some of his other novels, like The Third Man. He born in Berkhamstead, England in 1904 and then became a catholic in his early twenties. Later on he died in Corseaux-sur-Vevey, Switzerland in 1991.

The story centres on a journey made by a man and his aunt, which takes them through large parts of Europe and South America. They travel together and build up a friendship which helps the man through a rough period when he finds out facts about his past and family that has earlier been hidden from him.
On their travels they meet very different people and cultures and get caught up in various, sometimes criminal, situations. And it all starts with a thought put into a sentence and a visit at a fortune-teller who makes an interesting prediction…

There are two main events in this story, the first one is when the two have reached Istanbul in their travel and discover that their moral believes diverge which causes a conflict that puts a tragic end to their journey and almost destroys the mutual respect they have built up.
The second main event is the classical end-event when all the loose ends are tightened up and the author finally lets the reader understand his original thought with the book.
The second main event is also the climax of the story, when all the pieces come together and form a complete puzzle.

But as in most stories there is also a parallel story (especially) about a father-daughter relationship but also about the problems a young woman could face in the 1960s, problems that are still to the fore, like problems with boyfriends and with finding out who one really is deep inside oneself.
The ending of this story is very happy; everybody gets what they want and are satisfied.

The story easily moves forward thanks to the ever changing environments and people and since there’s always a new adventure waiting around the corner it moves quickly forward.
The story takes place during one year in the 1960s in large parts of Europe and South America but it has a recurrent place in Southwood, a small village in the middle of England. The village is one of those places where everybody knows everybody. In the village the atmosphere is very respectful and correct, while on their travels it is very much curiosity and confusion that colour the atmosphere. Curiosity from the excitement of meeting new people and confusion in the meaning of what is most often expressed by the story-teller, who happens to be the less experienced traveller of the two. That often causes him to just follow his aunt without really knowing what they are doing, something that occasionally saves the couple from being arrested…

There are two main characters in this story and they are:
Henry Pulling who is a very ordinary middle-aged man, an early retired bank manager who has no other hobbies than his garden. Though during the travels he comes to re-evaluate his life and has the courage to start a completely new life.
To explain about his change of personality I will present a couple of quotations;

Before the travels:
“I have never married, I have always lived quietly, and, apart from my interest in dahlias, I have no hobby.”

(page 9, lines 8-10).

“I’ve always been rather stay-at-home, It’s quite an adventure for me coming as far as Brighton. /…/ I lead a very ordinary life. A game of bridge once a week at the Conservative Club. And my garden, of course. My dahlias.”

(page 42, lines 18-19, 28-30).

During the end of the first travel:
/…/ You’re not going to take that ingot back into England? /…/ Have you no respect at all for the law? – Henry to Augusta

(page 137, lines 28-31).

After/At the end of the travels:
“We own a complete Dakota now, for our partner was accidentally shot dead by a policeman because he couldn’t make himself understood in Guaraní /…/ Next year, when she is sixteen, I am to marry the daughter of the Chief of Customs /…/”

(page 265, lines 10-15)

As one might see, his has practically made a U-turn in terms of character; in the beginning he was the grey mouse neighbour who was nice but quite boring. He has a high respect for the law and rules in common. But in the end that changes and instead he practically runs a Dakota (which is a kind of smuggling company that deals with Scotch whiskey and American cigarettes in South America and can bring in lots of money).

Aunt Augusta Bertram who is Henry’s complete opposite in most things. She is seventy years old, colours her hair brilliant red and is very outspoken in her ways. She enjoys travelling, doesn’t say no to a drink and refuses to settle down.

Then there are also other characters that appear and play less significant but still important roles. They all come to affect Augusta and Henry’s lives and give them tools to manage all the tasks Henry and Augusta have decided to take on. Knowing these other persons has saved, or risked their lives more than once.

- “Tooley” (Lucinda O’Toole) is a young American woman in her early twenties who really lives the cliché life of a girl in the 60s (a hippie that means). She first meets Henry and Augusta on the Orient Express when she is on her way to Nepal to “find herself”.
- Mr Visconti is an eighty-something year old man who Augusta once used to know very well. He was her lover before the Second World War but then had to flee the country (Italy) after being considered a war criminal and being chased by Interpol.

Physically he is short, fat and bald and has expressionless brown eyes.
- James O’Toole who is “Tooley’s” father. He has a habit of writing lists about the weirdest things and hardly knows his own daughter. He is also a CIA-agent but refuges to admit so, and he enters the story pretty late.

This story is told by Henry and that means the pronoun “I” is being used most of the time. I think the reason why Henry was chosen to be the story-teller is that he is the one undergoing the biggest change in his life, and he also is the one a reader can personify the easiest with.
By letting Henry tell the story the reader gets to find out things by drawing conclusions and putting the facts together himself. The story-teller in this case isn’t the funniest, most interesting of the characters, but he is the most ordinary and the easiest to personify with which makes a reader much more interested in the story. The principle: “If it can happen to him it can happen to me to!” is put into action in the readers mind.

I find the story to have a large symbolic purpose in meaning of the travels, the one by train and boat for example, symbolises a mental journey made by Henry and Augusta. They build up a friendship and go through rough times when their pasts suddenly catch up with them. The story treats the problems with relationships, between friends and family and brings up the topic about whether it is possible to start to love someone even when you’re past your best years and whether it is ever to late for a couple to reunite. And with this novel Graham Greene clearly states that it is never too late to love or to make a change in our lives.

I really liked this novel and I find that I experience a new level of it now that I am writing about it. It was quite easy to read and some parts of it are almost poetic, with very painting descriptions of the surroundings and people in it. This occurs especially in the last quarter of the book and an example is:
“There was a pervading smell of orange petals, but it was the only sweet thing about Formosa. One long avenue was lined with oranges and trees bearing rose-coloured flowers which I learnt later to be lapacho. The side-street petered out a few yards away into a niggardly wild nature of mud and scrub.”

(page 201, lines 15-19).

This novel is written not to be one of a million but rather to be the reason to the author being given a Nobel Prize for literature. It contains words and sentences in for example French and Italian and sometimes the characters discuss classic literature, events and persons.
But there is one part of the book I have very hard to cope with and that is the ending. It feels as if Graham Greene just wanted the story to end and therefore decided to copy an ending from a Harlequin-novel or something. It is flat, boring and in any other book I would have thought of it as the probable, predictable ending. But not in this one, I expected something much more but instead I got deeply disappointed.