Master and Commander O\'Brian, Patrick.

Master and Commander

O'Brian, Patrick. Master and Commander. Aubrey Maturin Series W.W. Norton & Company: Reprint edition 1990.

The first section of Patrick O'Brian's novel Master and Commander details the meeting between the surgeon Jack Maturin and Captain Jack Aubrey. The two meet when the surgeon accidentally bumps into the captain during a chamber-music recital "The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet." (3) Thus, this novel of the high seas is immediately set as a series of contrasts, between the wealth and opulence of the life of the governor, and the common wants of ordinary sailors. Despite the beauty of the music, Maturin still desires to find a way to escape the confines of the effete chambers and seek to prove his manhood and his skills as a doctor of the real wounds of real men, under the observing and watchful eye of the Captain.

In the book's first chapter where the recital is held, the house is constructed as a kind of tall fortress, pillared from the world like a ship with high sails, only rather than the rough chanteys of sailors, classical music filters through the rooms, creating a sense of triumph and jubilation in Her Majesty's subjects that is actually removed from the real sacrifices captains like Aubrey must make of limbs and life over the course of the Napoleonic wars.

Part II (53-109)

The second major section of the text begins in a similar domestic scene, only aboard rather than in a fortressed home. It begins: "is the Captain on deck?'" asks the common sailor. "Oh no, sir, no,' said the [responding] marine. 'Breakfast only just carrying in this moment. Two hard-boiled eggs and one soft.'"(55) the breakfast scene of ship domesticity shows the hierarchy of the Captain, who is not only able to have eggs for breakfast, but even to order a "soft-boiled egg was for Miss Smith, to recruit her from her labors of the night, as both the marine and Mr. Dillon knew well; but the marine's knowing look met with a total lack of response. James Dillon's mouth tightened, and for a fleeting moment as he ran up the ladder to the sudden brilliance of the quarterdeck it wore a positively angry expression.