The Death Ship was the first major novel by the legendary, anonymous anarchist novelist, B Traven (188? - 1969). Traven’s adventure novels of the ‘20s and ‘30s document proletarian struggle, as outcasts and downtrodden workers confront the absurdity and agonies of capitalist exploitation, borders, and statecraft. Most of his novels are set in Mexico, and are uniquely concerned with Mexico’s rural and indigenous proletariat.
The Death Ship stands out in Traven’s oeuvre primarily for its setting. It follows an American-borne sailor whose lost passport leaves him both jobless and stateless. Through landlocked European misadventures, he eventually finds work as a coal-drag on a broken-down steamship whose owners’ relentless drive for profits lead to the barest condition of life for the ship’s polyglot crew of luckless proles. Through his unnamed protagonist, Traven mocks the border regimes and bureaucracies, the petty caste systems that emerge amongst workers, and the innumerable insults of life as a forgotten debt-slave. He also searches, relentlessly, for connection, solidarity, and a contradictory affirmation of life through common struggle and shared labor.
We also discuss B Traven’s remarkable life.
Traven biography: B._Traven:_The_Life_Behind_the_Legends
Outro Music: Lord Creator - John B
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Art by Eli Mack
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