Cup of Gold
A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional References to History
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4.1 • 11 Ratings
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Publisher Description
Henry Morgan is a young boy growing up in a small town in Wales. One day, a sailor returns to regale Henry with tales of the West Indies, and the glory that awaits those adventuresome enough to go. Henry, dazzled, quickly finds a place aboard a ship heading to the islands, thus setting himself on the path to becoming the brutal and fearsome pirate Captain Morgan.
Cup of Gold, Steinbeck’s first novel, is the fictionalized story of the real Sir Henry Morgan. Morgan’s early life is mostly obscure, but his later life is well documented. Steinbeck takes a broad artistic license across all of Morgan’s life, so the novel is historical fiction that’s only loosely based on historical fact.
The portrait Steinbeck paints of Morgan is of a complex, lustful, and largely unhappy man, set in evocative locations laced with traces of magical realism. Though Morgan’s life was filled with blood and violence, Steinbeck portrays him as a thoughtful and intelligent commander of men, whose tragic flaw is an unquenchable lust for great accomplishments combined with a misunderstanding of what great accomplishments actually are.
Through his cunning he repeatedly attains the ever-grander victories he seeks—but he quickly discovers what so many before and after him have discovered: that achievement is not always as satisfying as the quest to achieve.
Customer Reviews
“ Pity is misplaced in a public servant or a robber. A man may do what it is profitable to do. ”
“I wanted it. Above all desires I wanted it. I reached for it and then —then I grew to be a man, and a failure. But there is this gift for the failure; folk know he has failed, and they are sorry and kindly and gentle. He has the whole world with him; a bridge of contact with his own people; the cloth of mediocrity. But he who shields a firefly in his hands, caught in reaching for the moon, is doubly alone; he only can realize his true failure, can realize his meanness and fears and evasions.”