Leviathan

Leviathan is presented both as a vessel caught in wartime disruption and as the transport that carries Richard Ellsworth Savage overseas. The book sets a terse newsreel headline about its inability to put to sea beside a later departure scene, where Savage boards the ship and sees Sandy Hook recede.

Newsreel Appearance

In a newsreel sequence, Leviathan is identified by the headline “LEVIATHAN UNABLE TO PUT TO SEA.” The compressed announcement offers no explanation for the ship’s condition or the circumstances behind it. Its placement among other brief headlines—including one about the Bolsheviks abolishing postage stamps and another about an artist exposed to gas in New Haven—makes the vessel one image in a rapid collage of wartime news.

Transporting Richard Ellsworth Savage

Later, after receiving his commission and orders to report to Camp Merritt, Richard Ellsworth Savage is put in charge of a company of casuals. The transport carrying them is Leviathan. Savage shares what had been a first-class cabin with two other second lieutenants and a major; his prior experience at the front gives him an advantage over his fellow officers. He begins to feel like himself again as the ship passes Sandy Hook, and writes Ned a long letter in doggerel.

Narrative Significance

The two appearances give Leviathan sharply different narrative functions: first a ship stalled in a news headline, then a working transport carrying soldiers away. The book does not explain the relationship between those moments or the reason for the reported delay. Instead, the juxtaposition moves from the impersonal, fragmentary register of the newsreel to a specific departure experienced by Savage, whose renewed sense of himself marks the ship’s significance in his passage to military service.