Euphoria

The motif of travelling by boat is central to Euphoria. Whereas in the era of air travel a journey across the world is a relatively brief means to an end, the month-long boat journeys taken by the characters are full experiences in themselves. Whole communities form and relationships take place on board.

The main boat journey is the ship where Nell and Fen meet, following her first field trip in the Solomons. At first, Nell entertains a group of Canadian tourists with her stories of the Solomons, and Fen ignores her, refusing to become part of her adoring onboard community. However, the next day, he asks her about her dreams and says that he has been studying those of the Dobu. After ignoring Nell, Fen enchants her with everything he knows, imitating the Dobu who “kept putting spells and hexes on people” (53). The two become like “little kids, giddy at having found a friend among all these stuffy grown-ups” (53). They form a team onboard, so that “all the other passengers fell away” (53) during the two and a half months they travelled to Marseille. Nell confesses to Andrew that “you really think you know a person after that kind of time together” (53), implying that she did not get to know Fen at all in this contextless place, away from the Dobu tribe he worked on, the outback farm where he lived his early life, and the America where she is from.