Under the Volcano

“Sometimes I am possessed by a most powerful feeling, a despairing bewildered jealousy which, when deepened by drink, turns into a desire to destroy myself by my own imagination—not least to be the prey of—ghosts.”

In this excerpt from the Consul’s letter to Yvonne, the severity of his addiction to alcohol is revealed. His negative emotions are amplified by alcohol and possess him with self-destructive feelings. He identifies jealousy as one such feeling and later in the novel, he runs from Yvonne and Hugh after accusing them of carrying on an affair, triggering the tragic events that take both his and Yvonne’s lives.

“Not so much the beauty of this one necessarily, which, a regression on my part is not perhaps properly a cantina, but think of all the other terrible ones where people go mad that will soon be taking down their shutters, for not even the gates of heaven, opening wide to receive me, could fill me with such celestial complicated and hopeless joy as the iron screen that rolls up with a crash, as the unpadlocked jostling jalousies which admit those whose souls tremble with the drinks they carry unsteadily to their lips. All mystery, all hope, all disappointment, yes, all disaster, is here, beyond those swinging doors.”

Once again, the Consul’s addiction to alcohol is apparent early in the novel through his depiction of a cantina. He equates its doors opening to that of the gates of heaven and it evokes a celebratory mood in him to be able to enter and drink. While his addiction evokes despair and sadness in his loved ones, the opportunity to drink fills him with hope and joy.

“She’d tried to keep Quauhnahuac itself, as a sort of safe footway where his phantom could endlessly pace, accompanied only by her own consoling unwanted shadow, above the rising waters of possible catastrophe.”

Try as she might, Yvonne cannot abandon the Consul and cannot sever the connection she feels toward him. Even after leaving Quauhnahuac, she feels as though her shadow is still there with him. She recognizes the possible catastrophe that surrounds the Consul and his addiction, and yet her commitment to him brings her back to town and leads her to her death.

“You do not know how to love these things any longer. All your love is the cantinas now: the feeble survival of a love of life now turned to poison, and poison has become your daily food, when in the tavern.”

In this instance, the Consul is projecting his insecurities onto Yvonne, imagining her criticism of him. It demonstrates his own awareness of the impact his Addiction to Alcohol has on those around him. The love that he has for Yvonne, which used to be displayed outwardly for her, has drawn inward, focused on finding his next drink.

“This must be not unlike, he told himself, what some insane person suffers at those moments when, sitting benignly in the asylum grounds, madness suddenly ceases to be a refuge and becomes incarnate in the shattering sky and all his surroundings in the presence of which reason, already struck dumb, can only bow the head.”

One of the most unique aspects of Under the Volcano is its treatment of consciousness, especially the consciousness of the inebriated Consul. When the Consul is drunk, his ability to correctly parse what is happening around him is hindered. He exists in an altered state of mind that impacts his decision-making.

“He lay back in his chair. Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, that image of the perfect marriage, lay now clear and beautiful on the horizon under an almost pure morning sky. Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!”

In this moment of happiness, the Consul looks up to the volcanoes and sees a “perfect marriage.” These two volcanoes, close but not connected, allow each other to exist on their own, a notion he struggles with as Yvonne applies more pressure throughout the novel to leave and work on recovery.

“No, I’m merely fed to the teeth with myself, that’s all. Try persuading the world not to cut its throat for half a decade or more, like me, under one name or another, and it’ll begin to dawn on you that even your behavior’s part of its plan. I ask you, what do we know?”

Hugh, though younger, has begun to be jaded by the world. His experiences as a journalist have so destroyed his idealism that he realizes that his efforts are not making the difference he wishes to make. This realization pushes him into the next stage of his life, in which he plans to act for the beliefs he holds dear.

“Just as a long-planned offensive might be defeated in its first few days by unconsidered potentialities that have now been given time to mature, so a sudden desperate move might succeed precisely because of the number of potentialities it destroys at one fell swoop.”

A prominent aspect of modernist literature is the unpredictability and indifference of the universe. No matter how much one plans, everything can, and likely will, go wrong. In Under the Volcano, Yvonne returns with a plan to save the Consul, and despite her hard work, she dies because the Consul runs away from her and Hugh in desperation, leading to a horse being startled and trampling her.

“Mr. Quincey glanced at him over the top of the watering-can as if to say: I have seen all this going on; I know all about it because I am God, and even when God was much older than you are he was nevertheless up at this time and fighting it, if necessary, while you don’t even know whether you’re up or not yet, and even if you have been out all night you are certainly not fighting it, as I would be, just as I would be ready to fight anything or anybody else too, for that matter, at the drop of a hat.”

Once again, the Consul’s paranoia takes hold as he projects his insecurity onto those he interacts with. In this case, while bothering his put-together neighbor, he convinces himself that Mr. Quincey is judging his state of intoxication and his inability to go on with his daily responsibilities. Despite near-constant intoxication, the Consul is very aware of the impact his Addiction to Alcohol has on his daily life.

“He had peered out at the garden, and it was as though bits of his eyelids had broken off and were flittering and jittering before him, turning into nervous shapes and shadows, jumping to the guilty chattering in his mind, not quite voices yet, but they were coming back, they were coming back; a picture of his soul as a town appeared once more before him, but this time a town ravaged and stricken in the black path of his excess.”

Throughout the novel the Consul falls victim to hallucinations and critical voices due to his inebriation or withdrawals. In this case, like others, he is subject to a vision of doom and destruction, realizing the extent of his addiction’s toxicity on his life. In this instance, he sees his soul as one destroyed, not merely because of alcohol but also because of the consequences of falling out with others in his life.

“And now at last, though the feeling had perhaps been growing on him all morning, he knew what it felt like, the intolerable impact of his knowledge that might have come at twenty-two, but had not, that ought at least to have come at twenty-five, but still somehow had not, this knowledge, hitherto associated only with people tottering on the brink of the grace and A.E. Housman, that one could not be young forever-that indeed, in the twinkling of an eye, one was not young any longer.”

In this one scene, Hugh grows up and realizes that his youth has passed. Not only is this reflected in his plans to return to sea and become more invested in the Spanish Civil War, but it is also reflected in his relationship with Yvonne. She looks to him for advice on how to help the Consul and confides in him throughout the novel. It also signifies the world’s approaching fall into fascism and war as the post–World War I peace decays.

“American women, with that rather graceful swift way of walking, with the clean scrubbed tanned faces of children, the skin finely textured with a satin sheen, their hair clean and shining as though just washed, and looking like that, but carelessly done, the slim brown hands that do not rock the cradle, the slender feet—how many centuries of oppression have produced them?”

In this excerpt, Hugh is observing Yvonne and wondering about her assuredness in the chaos surrounding them with the Consul. He wonders if it is precisely because of the oppression that women have always faced. It provides a commentary not only on Yvonne’s role in the novel but also on American women in a post–Roaring 20s America.

“And pride bade one go on, either go on and kill oneself, or ‘straighten out,’ as so often before, by oneself, with the aid of thirty bottles of beer and staring at the ceiling. But this time it was very different. What if courage here implied admission of total defeat, admission that one couldn’t swim, admission indeed (though just for a second the thought was not too bad) into a sanitorium?”

At this junction of the novel, the Consul is considering the paths laid out before him, one of death and one of new life. He understands that his pride will dictate his direction, but he considers which direction it could be. He wonders if he can admit to himself and his loved ones that he needs help and what that help will be.

“No angels nor Yvonne nor Hugh could help him here. As for the demons, they were inside him as well as outside; quiet at the moment—taking their siesta perhaps—he was nonetheless surrounded by them and occupied; they were in possession.”

Throughout the novel, the Consul hears his “familiars” or demons simultaneously criticizing and encouraging him to drink. At this moment, they are silent, and he realizes in their absence that if he is to receive help for his addiction, he cannot rely on the “angels” in his life (Yvonne and Hugh) to pull him in the right direction or the “demons” to push him. He must take those steps of his own volition.

“Why were there volcanic eruptions? People pretended not to know. Because, they might suggest tentatively, under the rocks beneath the surface of the earth, steam, its pressure constantly rising, was generated; because the rocks and the water, decomposing, formed gases, which combined with the molten material from below; because the watery rocks near the surface were unable to restrain the growing complex of pressures, and the whole mass exploded; the lava flooded out, the gases escaped, and there was your eruption.—But not your explanation. No, the whole thing was a complete mystery still.”

Once again, The Indifference of the Universe Toward Humans is the subject of the text as the nature of volcanic eruptions is questioned. While the science behind the eruptions and the havoc it can wreak is clear, precisely why they must happen remains a mystery. Volcanic eruptions can be unpredictable and are certainly apocalyptic, begging the question of why they destroy the lives and societies around them when they erupt.

“Nobody, therefore, who was genuinely concerned about the Indian’s money, must suspect anything of the sort, or at any rate, must not think too clearly about it; even if now, in the camión, he should choose to stop juggling the money from hand to hand, like that, or slip part of it into his pocket, like that, or even supposing what remained happened to slip accidentally into his other pocket, like that—and this performance was undoubtedly rather for their own benefit, as witnesses and foreigners—no significance attached to it, none of these gestures meant that he had been a thief, or that, in spite of excellent intentions, he had decided to steal the money after all, and become a thief.”

When the Consul, Yvonne and Hugh reboard the bus after seeing the injured man on the road, they notice that the pelado with them stole money from the man and is making no attempt to hide it. This suggests that the man feels no shame from having done so and does not see it as wrong. In this instance, there is a clash of values as the Hugh and the others grapple with their own values compared to that of this man.

“Yvonne straightened her back, pulled down her hat and began to powder her nose, peering into the traitorous mirror of the bright enamel compact. It reminded her that only five minutes ago she had been crying and imaged too, nearer, looking over her shoulder, Popocatepetl.”

Yvonne refuses to let the Consul see the pain he causes her. She does her best to hide it, wishing to project strength and confidence in hopes that it will convince him to leave Mexico. However, she feels a presence—at this moment it is Popocatepetl—that suggests someone, possibly herself, is always watching, and she cannot hide her feelings from them.

“The poor old creature seemed now indeed like someone being drawn, lured, into events of which he has no real comprehension, by people with whom he wishes to be friendly, even to play, who entice him by encouraging that which and by whom, because they really despise and desire to humiliate him, he is finally entangled.”

In this scene, Yvonne is observing a bull in the arena at Tomalín, and the bull’s treatment by the men in the ring evokes memories of her father and the Consul. She sees in both men the flaw of being easily drawn into foolish endeavors and the inability to recognize bad intentions in others. Her father, who also had an addiction to alcohol, was constantly drawn into unstable economic schemes while the Consul frequently places himself in unfavorable situations in cantinas, such as the one that leads to his and Yvonne’s deaths.

“All a pathetic joke, of course, still, this plan to climb Popo, if just the kind of thing Hugh would have found out about before arriving, while neglecting so much else: yet could it be that the notion of climbing the volcano had somehow struck them as having the significance of a lifetime together? Yes, there it rose up before them, with all its hidden dangers, pitfalls, ambiguities, deceptions, portentous as what they could imagine for the poor brief self-deceived space of a cigarette was their own destiny—or was Yvonne simply, alas, happy?”

As the Consul listens to Yvonne and Hugh discuss climbing the volcano, he comes to wonder if they have a romantic interest in each other. He sees the climb as a romantic relationship itself and cannot help but think that it either means that the two of them plan to be together or that Yvonne is just happy in her new life. This spark of jealousy will smolder until it burns and results in the Consul accusing them of having a relationship and storming out.

“The cage was set between the cantina and a low thick tree, really two trees embracing one another: an amate and a sabino. The breeze blew spray in her face. The falls sounded. The intertwined roots of the two tree lovers flowed over the ground towards the stream, ecstatically seeking it, though they didn’t really need it; the roots might as well have stayed where they were, for all around them nature was out-doing itself in extravagant fructification.”

Yvonne sees two trees entangled and imagines them as lovers. It has been her hope for the entire novel that she and the Consul will be able to reunite, and she sees these two trees as reaching for water for life when they could stay where they are and survive from their immediate surroundings. When compared with their relationship, it examines the influence Yvonne and the Consul’s surroundings impact them and what exactly they will need to truly reunite.

“Popocatepetl towered through the window, its immense flanks partly hidden by rolling thunderheads; its peak blocking the sky, it appeared almost right overhead, the barranca, the Farolito, directly beneath it. Under the volcano! It was not for nothing the ancients had placed Tartarus under Mt. Aetna, nor within it, the monster Typhoeus, with his hundred heads and—relatively—fearful eyes and voices.”

Throughout the novel, Malcolm Lowry makes many allusions to classical texts and mythologies, and in this scene, he is comparing the cantinas under the volcano to the pits of various hells and monsters that have often been depicted as living under volcanoes. In many mythologies, mountains and volcanoes have been homes to terrible creatures and diverse infernal afterlives. The Consul may not actually be under the volcano, but in its shadow, he finds a similar punishing monster and existence in the form of his addiction to alcohol, which is fed by the many cantinas in the area.

“God is it possible to suffer more than this, out of this suffering something must be born, and what would be born was his own death […] for ah, how alike are the groans of love to those of the dying.”

In this moment, the Consul is sleeping with a sex worker in the Farolito, and he realizes that this will be his undoing. He equates the sounds of love that he hears to the sounds of the death to come. While he may not be dying in this moment, this action seals his fate and he realizes that he has crossed a line.

“He laughed once more, feeling a strange release, almost a sense of attainment. His mind was clear. Physically he seemed better too. It was as if, out of an ultimate contamination he had derived strength. He felt free to devour what remained of his life in peace. At the same time a certain gruesome gaiety was creeping into this mood, and, in an extraordinary way, a certain lightheaded mischievousness. He was aware of a desire at once for completed glutted oblivion and for an innocent youthful fling.”

In the aftermath of his sexual tryst at the Farolito, the Consul realizes that he can never return to Yvonne. Rather than feeling sorrow, he feels at peace, and believes that his mistake gives him new life. He has attained Self-Determination in the Face of Interference, and he now sees a path on which he can traverse the rest of his life without the pressures of pleasing his loved ones weighing on his shoulders.