The Resounding Relevance of James A. Michener's The Drifters

This line of dialogue, spoken by the character of Britta in The Drifters, is one of the best examples of a final sentence in a novel I have ever read. If James A. Michener was anything at all, he was a man with a point. With a great many points, in fact.

The Drifters is a fairly epic tale, following the lives of eight principle characters thrown together in a great journey from Torremolinos, Spain, through Algarve, Portugal; Pamplona, Spain; and Mozambique; to Marrakech, Morocco in turbulent 1969. Joe is escaping the draft; Britta the dark winters of Norway; Monica the shadow of her father, a failed English diplomat to Vwarda (a fictional African nation); Cato a seemingly losing battle for racial equality in Philadelphia; Yigal the tug-of-war in the choice between American or Israeli citizenship; and Gretchen the psychological scars of sexual abuse at the hands of police officers following the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. All flee to the resort town Torremolinos where they meet each other and, by chance, sixty-one-year-old George Fairbanks, the story's narrator and one- or many-time acquaintance of most of the six drifters. Through what can only be described as fanciful fiction, these seventeen- to twenty-one-year-olds allow George to join them on their ensuing adventure and even let him be their guide around the world.

Throughout the back stories of these young people and the tale of what they come to experience, think and feel in the book's narrative, Michener paints a picture of a world that is exploding. Joe, Cato and Gretchen are Americans and represent, respectively, the fierce opposition to the war in Vietnam, the anger and bewilderment felt by black Americans long oppressed in every facet of society and the inability of national and community leaders to effectively or ethically respond to these crises. Published in 1971, The Drifters offers questions extremely relevant to the times and very few answers. Joe does not veer from his plan to dodge the draft throughout the story, nor does Cato escape his self-assigned black militant identity. Gretchen stands alone among the Americans as a representative of hope. Acknowledging she cannot escape the memories of violence - the riots in Chicago, the beating of a friend by the police and the cops who ordered her to strip naked so they could "search" her - Gretchen seeks answers in history that might lead to new ideas for America. Perhaps her pain, the collective pain of young Americans downtrodden by wars both civil and foreign, can fuel ideas for a new tomorrow instead of merely triggering a fight or flight response as it does in the men.

The other three exhibit conditions on the other side of the Atlantic, in the post-World War II era. In the wake of the conflict that defined twentieth-century American foreign policy, driving it toward another so-called moral imperative in Vietnam, meanwhile 1969 saw Israel pitted against its neighbors, Africa fractured into nations that were little more than European inventions and northern Europe simply forgotten. Respectively, these theaters are represented by the characters of Yigal, Monica and Britta. Following the Six-Day War against Arab aggressors in which he had a brief but famous role, Yigal pits the insanity of living in a place surrounded by religious fanatics bent on its annihilation against the soulless confusion of the United States, a nation torn from within and partially responsible for inciting the crisis in the Holy Land. Fairbanks makes it clear that Yigal's decision whether to claim citizenship in America or Israel involves a tacit denunciation of the other; to choose America is to call Israel a nation of martyrs with little hope, while choosing Israel is to dismiss the U.S. as spiritually lost. Though English, Monica's experience in the fictional Republic of Vwarda - where her father was displaced by native leaders bowing to political pressure to staff the government with blacks - draws the battle lines between the white establishment and black desire for self-efficacy. Her turbulent relationship with Cato mirrors precisely the show put on by white leaders wanting to appear progressive while thinking of native Africans as intellectually and morally inferior. While loving her as much as a young man can, Cato bears the brunt of all Monica's animosity toward those who cast her father aside and ultimately resolves to turn the tables in her own relationship with one she sees as just another member of the same inferior race. Her self-hatred, due to her inability to cast out her own demons, rapidly propels her down as dark a path as those targeted for elimination in white-dominated Vwarda and real historical African nations. The stories of Yigal and Monica represent times and places that appear hopeless, and in which there is still much work to be done today.

Then we come to Britta, and the final thought which so beautifully sums up the book. Coming from the city of Tromsø in Norway, she represents the dark, cold north whose economic woe reflects well her own psychological depression. Daughter of a radio operator whose mission it was to alert the Allies to the arrival of German ships, Britta grew up watching a forgotten hero's dream of seeing Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) slowly fade into a distant vision never to be realized. Her determination to live a life of adventure, to actually go to exotic places before she dies drives her to Torremolinos where she meets the young people, George Fairbanks and eventually his friend, Harvey Holt. In Holt she sees a man whose life is built around adventure, working in exotic locales and heading to Pamplona every year for the San Fermín festival to run with the bulls. Like Gretchen, her resolution is to reinvent herself. Understanding she belongs nowhere and inspired by this man so unlike her father, she intends to make her life into what she desires it to be rather than simply run from what it was.

And this is the thread that ties these six young people together in that turbulent time: the idea each of them share, that life ought to be purposeful, that each of us ought to direct our own course. Michener himself spent the years of his youth travelling the globe as a naval historian and seems to be saying that despite the point in history in which we find ourselves, youth is meant to be spent in exploration of self and world. We don't know a thing until we know ourselves. Only from an understanding of who we are can we benefit from our experiences and in turn benefit the world around us. But most don't get there, as the majority of Michener's main characters exemplify. By the end of the story, each of the six make progress, begin to draw conclusions about love and progress and society, but most of their fates remain as ambiguous as that of the world must have seemed at the beginning of the 1970s. Nevertheless, it is a given that mankind have dreams. And as Britta insists, men ought to inspect them and know them for fortune or folly.

As a novel, I found the story itself to be a bit weak. The characters are clearly mere devices to make observations about the world while the narrative is slow and largely uneventful. Really, The Drifters is thinly veiled nonfiction, and understood that way we see its real strength. Michener was a master of description, taking the reader to faraway lands with a delightful fervor. He was a poet as well. The dialogue should be read as impassioned responses to a world we cannot control and hardly comprehend. In this way he left us with a striking snapshot of a time we can easily see parallels to today, the legacy of those events surrounding the journey of the six still resounding throughout the world.

What dreams do we have today for ourselves and for the world in which we live? Let us search them out and discover where the journey takes us while we're still young at heart. Because once we have ceased to dream, Michener seems to say, it is simply time for us to die.