Harry Thompson

This paper provides an "evolutionary" reading of Harry Thompson's novel THIS THING OF DARKNESS, a historical fiction on Darwin's Beagle voyage and the life of Captain FitzRoy. Special attention is paid to the novel's narrative anchoring of its events within the grand narratives of modernity and imperialism, of scientific and cultural development, and of human evolution at large.

"This Thing of Darkness", a phrase describing the half-human creature Caliban in Shakespeare's "The Tempest", is the British title of Harry Thompson's novel titled "To the Edge of the World" in the USA. It deals with Darwin's Beagle voyage and the European encounter with primitive civilizations, with the figure of the Beagle's captain FitzRoy taking center focus. This paper reviews Thompson's novel as a portrait of the impact of evolutionary theory on traditional world-views, with FitzRoy's experiences embodying an old order of values and beliefs which is displaced by modern imperial bureaucracy and by the new understanding of mankind ushered in by Darwin. In the meantime, we find a portrait of the Western world order, both political, economic and conceptual, displacing and driving to extinction the primitive societies of "the edges of the world". Darwin's science is thus both a symptom and a diagnosis of the struggle for existence in human cultures.

Una nota sobre el destino trágico de la vida y obra de Robert FitzRoy, el capitán del 'Beagle' de Charles Darwin, tal y como se cuenta en la memorable novela de Harry Thompson 'This Thing of Darkness' ('Hacia los confines del mundo').
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A note on the tragic destiny of the life and work of Robert FitzRoy, the captain of Charles Darwin's 'Beagle', as it is told in Harry Thompson's memorable novel 'This Thing of Darkness'.

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Note: Downloadable document is in Spanish.