The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
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| The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle | |
| Author | Avi |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Douglas Smith |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | none |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Publication date | 1990 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback, Hardback) |
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is a fictional book set in 1832 written by Avi and published by Scholastic Press in 1990. While written for a young audience , the book is well liked by many adults as well. It won a Newbery Honor award in 1991. The book is told from a girl named Charlotte Doyle's point of view and is split into Part One and Part Two.
Contents |
[edit] Awards
- A Newbery Honor Book
- Boston Globe—Horn Book Award
- An ALA Notable Book
- An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
- An ALA Book Dave is coollist Editors' Choice
- A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
- A Texas Public Library Best Book for the Teen Age
- An IRA/CBC Children's Choice.
[edit] Plot summary
The book tells the story of Charlotte Doyle, a 13 year old girl, who boards a ship called the Seahawk in 1832 for a voyage from England to her home in Providence, Rhode Island. She is raised in an upper-class family and, as she says in the beginning, wants to be a lady. The author puts much emphasis on her wanting to be proper. Her family has already gone to Rhode Island and she was left to come alone in order to finish her year of schooling at the Barrington School for Better Girls. As the other families that were supposed to accompany her mysteriously fail to appear, Charlotte finds herself the only passenger on the voyage to Rhode Island and the only female on board.
Early in the voyage, she meets Zachariah, an old African cook. Zachariah gives Charlotte a small dirk "for her protection" and tells Charlotte that the crew seeks revenge against the captain for some of his actions. She later has tea with Captain Jaggery. During this meeting, Captain Jaggery tells Charlotte that he has a few muskets hidden inside a securely locked cabinet in his quarters and that those are the only guns aboard on the ship. As the book progresses, she slowly mingles with the crew and reads to them from her books. It bothers Charlotte that Zachariah and the others tell her the captain is vicious. She doesn't believe their stories, nor does she believe it is proper to talk ill about those in higher class.
Later in the book Charlotte finds herself watching a member of the crew sew. The needle snaps and Charlotte offers to get a new one for him. She goes into the forecastle, the crew's room. While looking for the needle she sees a pistol (contrary to the captain's words) and a round-robin, a pact telling of an imminent uprising of the crew against the captain. In fear, Charlotte rushes to tell the captain, who arms himself and heads off the rebellion. He shoots the stowaway, a former crew member, in the chest and has him thrown overboard unceremoniously. He then orders Zachariah whipped 50 lashes. Charlotte tries to protect Zachariah by grabbing the whip, but she accidentally slashes the captain's face. Jaggery is enraged and whips Zachariah unmercifully, leading to his death, Charlotte believes, as the crew holds a funeral for him on board.
After these events, neither the captain or the crew want anything to do with Charlotte. Charlotte was too naive to realize what would happen when she told on the crew. She wants to show the crew that she is sorry, so she convinces them to let her join the crew.
Later, the ship is about to sail into a hurricane, and the Captain now is treating Charlotte as one of the crew, and her believing that he is as bad as the crew said. When trying to climb up the riggings during the storm, she is saved by a man who she believes was Zachariah. But wasn't he dead? Charlotte questions herself. But when Charlotte gets down, the crew finds the body of the first mate, Mr. Hollybrass, stabbed in the back by the dirk Zachariah gave her. But she left that dirk in the cabin she lived in before moving to the forecastle with the crew. When she finds out Zachariah is hiding in the hold of the ship, she speculates he killed Hollybrass. Charlotte is summoned to trial by Captain Jaggery himself because she threatens to tell her father, the owner of the ship company, that she will tell about his behavior, possibly making him loose his job. After Charlotte's trial ends and she is supposed to be hanged, Zachariah and she comes up with a plan of her stealing the captain's guns because she knows where the captain keeps the key to the safe. When the plan backfires because a mole told the captain, the captain ends up waiting for Charlotte in his cabin and follows her out. He also admits he killed Hollybrass.
She flees, pursued by the Captain. He follows her onto the bowsprit, which he cannot keep hold of, and as Captain is about to fall over board, Charlotte has the option to save him, or let him fall to his watery death. Charlotte grabs his hand, but nevertheless captain falls into the ocean and drowns. Her friend, Zachariah, tells the crew they need a new captain, and Charlotte is chosen to be the new captain of the ship (though only in name after Jaggery's death, while Zachariah takes charge).
A few days later the Seahawk lands in Providence, Rhode Island, where her family lives. However, she finds her family unwilling to believe her story, and they disapprove of Charlotte's outlandish tales. Eventually she decides to leave her family and sneaks out of her house one morning to return to life at sea, the place where she now believes is home on the Seahawk.
[edit] Characters
[edit] The Doyle family
- The Doyle family as follows
·Mr. and Mrs. Doyle
·Charlotte Doyle
·Albert (Charlotte's brother)
·Evelina (Charlotte's sister)
[edit] Doyle family associates
·The two families that are not able to board the Seahawk: one of the families, according to Mr. Keetch, the Second Mate, could not reach Liverpool in time (the place from which the Seahawk was departing.) The other family, Mr. Keetch told Mr. Grummage, had a "...seriously ill child. There is concern that she should not be moved."
·Mr Grummage: the gentleman in Chapter One who escorted Charlotte to the Seahawk, where he insists that her father's written directions clearly stated that she would sail "...on this ship at this time."
·Miss Weed: one of Charlotte's teachers.
·Miss Emerson: Charlotte's companion on the trip to Liverpool, where the Seahawk was scheduled to sail from.
- Servants
·Mary
·Bridget
[edit] Crew Members on the Seahawk
·Captain Andrew Jaggery- Cruel captain who murders Mr. Hollybrass and falls from the bowsprit in chapter 21. He also strikes Charlotte and accuses her of killing Hollybrass while he did it himself. In addition, he whipped Zachariah to near death. He has a eye on the crew from tellings of Keetch.
·Mr. Samuel Hollybrass- First mate; murdered by the captain with Charlotte's dirk. While alive, he was the only thing that linked the captain and crew by repeating whatever the Captain had ordered him to say to the crew. It was suggested in the novel that he was murdered because he blamed Jaggery for driving them right into the storm deliberately.
·Mr. Keetch- Second mate; he was secretly going to Captain Jaggery and feeding him information about the crew after supposedly making friends with Zachariah and the rest of the crew. He was thrown into the brig after Charlotte took 'command' of the ship.
·Zachariah- Cook, surgeon, carpenter, and preacher. He was the first of the crew to offer friendship with Charlotte. After Jaggery falls from the bowsprit, Zachariah proclaimed Charlotte be the new captain of the Seahawk.
·Captain Rodrick Fisk - He is printed as captain of the Seahawk in a newspaper Charlotte gets Bridget to give her. He got his 'Captain' title after Captain Jaggery fell off the bowsprit.
·Ewing - A young, blond Scottish sailor. He has a tattoo of a mermaid on his arm. While attempting to patch an old canvas jacket, his needle snapped in two. Charlotte volunteers to go fetch a new one in a chest under is hammock. While taking it out, she discovers a gun. This discovery and the one of the Round Robin led to her telling the captain of her sightings.
·Johnson - Man who refused to sign the round robin against Captain Jaggery during the rebellion. After the rebellion, Fisk is moved into Zachariah's place, Keetch moves into the forecastle, and Johnson becomes second mate. After the death of Jaggery, Johnson is moved back into the forecastle and replaced by Barlow as second mate.
·Dillingham
·Grimes
·Barlow- was "deputized" to carry Charlotte's luggage and warned her that she should not be on the ship.
.Fisk
·Foley
- Morgan
·Mr. Cranick- Former crew member; became a stowaway at the beginning of the story and officially appeared in Chapter 10. He was shot and killed by Captain Jaggery during the rebellion. He was the man Charlotte had seen while retrieving clothes and books from the brig.
