Show Boat (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Edna Ferber
- First Published: 1926
- Type of Plot: Local color
- Time of Work: The 1880’s to the 1920’s
- Setting: The Mississippi River and Chicago
- Principal Characters: Magnolia Hawks Ravenal, Captain Andy Hawks, Parthenia Ann Hawks, Gaylord Ravenal, Kim Ravenal, Julie Dozier
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Middle classes
- Locales: Chicago, IL
The Novel
Show Boat re-creates the little-known phenomenon of life on a turn-of-the-century showboat as it brings theatrical entertainment to backwoods Midwestern river towns from Ohio and Illinois to New Orleans. The rivers themselves, the Mississippi especially, become live participants in the stories of the people who travel them—the actors, the steamboat operators, the cooks, the African American dock workers. The popularity of this particular development of American theater is told through three generations of hardworking middle-class people, centering on the...
[The entire page is 1932 words long]
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