Analysis Of The Riddle Of The Sands

The Riddle of the Sands is a psychogeographic story. Childers , like his main protagonist Carruthers, was a pillar of the British establishment: born in Mayfair to an Anglo-Irish land-owning family, Cambridge graduate, parliamentary clerk and veteran of the Boer War. But, like his other leading character, the unconventional Davies, Erskine Childers was a man not given to doing exactly what was expected of him. He became a committed Irish nationalist in later life and was executed by a Free State firing squad.

At the start of the book, Carruthers joins Davies on his yacht, the Dulcibella, in the Baltic. Davies reveals that he wishes to retrace his previous voyage around the sands of the Frisian Islands, where he had been

It is also a novel in which the nature of the landscape determines the psyche and the actions of its protagonists. Indeed, the 'sands' can be said to be the dominant character of the whole book.

The Riddle of the Sands can also be said to be part of a sub-genre known as the invasion-scare, or invasion-paranoia, novel. Three decades earlier, Germany's success in the Franco-Prussian War established her as a major continental power. British popular fears of German intentions were often expressed in fiction. George Tomkyns Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (1871) was an early example, and the genre reached its peak around the turn of the century, particularly with the writings of William Le Quex, who was vigorously promoted by The Daily Mail.

Invasion-scare fiction both played on and induced apprehension amongst the public and, in some cases, produced hysteria, paranoia and Germanophobia. The Riddle of the Sands addresses many of the concerns expressed in invasion-scare novels. But its tone is altogether different. The two English protagonists respect and admire their German rivals. Davies speaks approvingly of the German Emperor: "By Jove! We want a man like this Kaiser." (The Riddle. P.