The Watch that Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic

I love reading about all things history, especially the opulence of the Gilded Age.  Reading this novel about the sinking of the Titanic fueled this reading fire.

There are many variations on Titanic novels out there, so what makes this one special?  Not only does it mix poetry, prose, songs, and memos; it also is visually intriguing.  As a very visual person, looks do matter.  Usually with novels, how a book looks isn’t taken past the cover art, but with this book, Wolf took the time to create a story with how the words are placed on the page.  For example, one character we meet is the ship’s rat who is continually scampering down the page instead of going straight left to right.  Another is when the ship starts sinking, the words start tilting side to side to further emphasize the point.  When moving to the perspective of the Marconi operator, Morse code is interspersed with the text.  Wolf’s attention to detail just amazes me!

This book technically has nine “chapters” or as they call them “watches” with twenty-five different character’s perspectives.  This is interesting because each character has their own voice.  The three-year-old traveling with his father has a very broken speech with no punctuations.  The immigrant Olaus writes exclusively in letters and prose while Margaret Brown, the socialite, writes in free verse poetry while the iceberg is in pompous iambic pentameter.  The only downfall of having twenty-five main characters is…there are twenty-five people to remember who they are.  Some are easier than others to remember because they show up more frequently, like Jamila Nicola-Yarred, a third-class passenger traveling with her brother, or Frankie Goldsmith, another immigrant child who’s obsessed with dragons, or E.J. Smith, the ship’s captain.  But other characters are less memorable, like Eugene Daly, the bagpiper, or Isaac Maynard, an entree cook with a ridiculously long mustache.  This also hinders the start of the novel and makes the action move slowly.  Most young adults I know won’t wait until page 200 for the real action to start.

Allan Wolf says in his author’s note, “My aim in writing [this novel] was not to present history.  My aim was to present humanity.  The people represented in this book lived and breathed and loved.  They were as real as you or me.  They could have been any one of us.” And he has succeeded in this aim.  By humanizing the characters, showing their flaws and choices, it makes the reader think about what their choices would have been and shows how all choices have consequences.  This is a theme anyone can relate to.