Journey to the River Sea

The novel explores the role of human greed and exploitation in the Amazon through its historical setting of the story at a time of booming colonial immigration and exploration in Brazil. Many of the characters in the book, such as Sergei and the Keminsky family, prosper from their willful exploitation of the Amazon’s natural resources and cheap labor force, which the novel attributes to their relationship with their workers. The Indigenous Brazilians in the novel are portrayed either as victims of exploitation (such as when Mr. Carter steals Tapuri land and destroys their sacred longhouse), or else they act as cooperative helpers to the colonizers. The deeper social undercurrents become apparent, for example, when Mrs. Minton attempts to shield Finn from the truth of imperial violence: the unavoidable fact that “tribes had been wiped out by illness, or fighting, or been kidnapped” (126). This mention creates an oblique awareness of the greater history of exploitation that permeates the setting of the novel. Likewise, the servants who live at the back of the Carters’ property are treated poorly but feel compelled to remain because of circumstance or poverty; the character of Conchita is a prime example, for she stays “because she ha[s] a crippled brother to support in Manaus” (105). Thus, despite the fact that Journey to the River Sea is intended to be a children’s novel, the author does not ignore the darker aspects of the time in which the story is set.

The novel also portrays colonizers and Indigenous people working in cooperation with one another as well as engaging in conflict. The novel thus uses various subplots to explore exploitative power dynamics and the issue of cultural insensitivity. For example, when Trapwood and Low go to the tribal village without “any of the presents one usually brings when visiting a tribe—fishhooks, and knives and cooking pots” (77), the tribespeople demonstrate their own strong sense of agency by punishing the investigators in their own way; in exchange for Trapwood and Low’s lack of respect, the villagers lie to them about the whereabouts of their quarry. Similarly, the Carters’ servants deceive the family about their level of fluency in English, acting sullen inside the bungalow and lively outside it. In contrast with the Carters, Maia, Finn, and Bernard Taverner are protected by the Brazilian people, who are portrayed as generous helpers. For example, Furo warns Finn when the inspectors are coming for Clovis and ferries Maia secretly between the Carters’ house and Finn’s hut. Likewise, when Finn leaves Maia, he asks Furo to protect her. Colonel De Silva also asks the local tribes to protect Finn because of their loyalty to his father, who used to spend a lot of time in the jungle with the local Indigenous people. These various relationships reflect the nuances of cooperation versus exploitation that exist in a colonialist setting.

The novel captures the excitement and mythical status of the Amazon and its potential for scientific and natural discovery through its setting and characters. The wild jungle of the Amazon is described romantically in lavish detail as both a fearsome and awe-inspiring place that comes alive in the imagination of Maia and her boarding school peers, who fantasize about creatures like alligators, jaguars, mosquitoes, leeches, and piranhas. Maia reads about “the maze of rivers,” the “thousand plants and animals that had never been seen before,” and “the wisdom of the [Indigenous people] who could cure sickness and wounds that no one in Europe understood” (11). The Amazon is therefore depicted as a place of great mystery and hidden discoveries, reflecting the popular imagination of its historical setting.

Both Finn’s late naturalist father Bernard Taverner and his friend Professor Glastonberry, the latter of whom runs the Manaus Natural History Museum, add to the novel’s portrayal of the value of natural exploration and entrepreneurship. Bernard dies in a tragic canoeing accident while out looking “for the blue waterlily whose leaves were used as a painkiller” (69). The romanticized image of a wilderness explorer facing danger on a scientific adventure is upheld and idealized by the other main characters, who long to pursue adventures in the wilderness themselves. Even secondary characters profess their love of the idea of adventure, for Professor Glastonberry admires his friend Carruthers, who died looking for a mythic giant sloth, and Miss Minton reflects that dying on an adventure is “better than dying in a hospital with strangers” (143). She also encourages Professor Glastonberry to search for the missing rib piece of the museum’s giant sloth skeleton, and her belief that “anyone who can walk can go on expeditions” (93) encapsulates her adventurous spirit and leads her to boldly follow Maia and Finn up the river on their trip to the Xanti tribe.