Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are a recurring physical presence in the novel’s hot waterfront and beach scenes. They mark the discomfort borne by people outdoors, interrupt movement and rest, and bring the surrounding air into scenes of work, courtship, and sexual conflict.

Recurring Presence

The mosquitoes do not form a separate plot, but their repeated appearance gives the settings a persistent bodily pressure. In Joe Williams’s shipboard scenes, they gather around exposed skin; in a later courtship scene, Joe and Della Matthews walk up and down while fighting them as they wait for a trolley to Virginia Beach. On the beach, a small fire becomes a practical defense. During Richard Ellsworth Savage and Hilda Thurlow’s encounter, mosquitoes remain around their heads as the surf approaches. Across these scenes, they are not simply scenic detail: characters must endure or contend with them while other concerns unfold.

Joe Williams’s Shipboard Discomfort

One airless night aboard ship, mosquitoes begin biting Joe’s bare neck and arms as a hot haze rises from slack water around the wharves and blurs the waterfront lights. After walking with the watchman, Joe leans over the side into the darkness, spits tobacco into the water, and returns to his bunk sweating beneath a blanket. The mosquitoes are part of a broader discomfort that includes the oven-like forecastle and the stifling night; their bites make the conditions immediate on his skin. The scene also places that bodily irritation beside Joe’s frustration with seafaring life and his desire for work that pays better.

Courtship and Conflict on the Shore

Mosquitoes accompany two very different beach scenes. While Joe and Della wait for the trolley, their repeated walking and struggle against the insects continue as Della reacts to Joe’s announcement that he is leaving. Later, under a full moon, Joe makes a smudgefire to keep mosquitoes away while he and Della sit together in bathing suits. The fire is a small, practical intervention in an environment that otherwise intrudes on their intimacy.

At another beach, mosquitoes hover around Richard Ellsworth Savage and Hilda Thurlow as their encounter turns physical and Hilda tells him she wants him but cannot afford to have a baby. The insects remain alongside the hissing surf while the scene moves from desire to fear and moral distress. Their recurrence links ordinary irritation with moments of emotional pressure without reducing either scene to a symbol: they are an environmental presence the characters must live and act within.