Voyage in the Dark is a portrait of the loneliness and disorientation of leaving home. Anna Morgan experiences intense social isolation after moving to England from her home in the West Indies. Living in England makes her feel like everything in her life is new, but she doesn’t see this transformation as positive or rewarding. To the contrary, she feels as if a “curtain ha[s] fallen” over her life, suggesting that she doesn’t see her move to England as the beginning of something new but rather as an ending of sorts. She has, in other words, been estranged from everything she once knew and loved, and this estrangement makes her feel like her life has drawn to a close. Still, she eventually gets used to England—or so she claims. And yet, she frequently finds herself slipping into daydreams about her upbringing in the West Indies, often basking in the memory of the sights, sounds, and smells of her childhood. In doing so, she idealizes her birthplace and essentially makes it impossible for her current circumstances to live up to her past. Although nostalgia after leaving home is to be expected, then, it’s arguable that Anna’s intense yearning for the West Indies interferes with her ability to fully engage with her current surroundings. To that end, she’s emotionally removed from her present life because she’s always thinking about her past.
To make matters even more difficult, nobody in England seems to know much about the West Indies, nor are they interested in hearing about Anna’s memories. For instance, when she talks to her lover, Walter, about the flowers that bloom in the West Indies, he dismisses the conversation by saying he thinks the island climate would be too “lush” for him. Anna thus has no outlet to express her intense longing for home, and this makes her feel even more isolated and alone. When Walter demonstrates his indifference about listening to Anna talk about home, it becomes clear just how difficult it is for her to connect with people in England, since nobody can relate to her upbringing (nor do they seem to want to relate). Therefore, as Anna struggles to invest herself in her current life, she experiences homesickness not just as a pang of nostalgia but also as an acute loss—a loss she has no choice but to mourn all by herself.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Homesickness, Memory, and Belonging ThemeTracker
Homesickness, Memory, and Belonging Quotes in Voyage in the Dark
It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feeling things gave you right down inside yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat, cold: light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy.
Sometimes it was as if I were back there and as if England were a dream. At other times England was the real thing and out there was the dream, but I could never fit them together.
After a while I got used to England and I liked it all right; I got used to everything except the cold and that the towns we went to always looked so exactly alike.
I wanted to be black, I always wanted to be black. […] Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad.
‘I hate men,’ Ethel said. ‘Men are devils, aren’t they? But of course I don’t really care a damn about them. Why should I? I can earn my own living. I’m a masseuse—I’m a Swedish masseuse. And, mind you, when I say I’m a masseuse I don’t mean like some of these dirty foreigners. Don’t you hate foreigners?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I do; but, you see, I don’t know many.’
‘What?’ Ethel said, looking surprised and suspicious, ‘you don’t hate them?’
She came over and helped me to undo it. She seemed very tall and her face enormous. I could see all the lines in it, and the powder, trying to fill up the lines, and just where her lipstick stopped and her lips began. It looked like a clown’s face, so that I wanted to laugh at it. She was pretty, but her hands were short and fat with wide, flat, very red nails.
Joe lit a cigarette and crossed his legs and watched us. He was like somebody sitting in the stalls, waiting for the curtain to go up.
