Under the Volcano

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses depictions of addiction to alcohol and offensive language referencing Indigenous peoples, which feature in the source text.

“Though tragedy was in the process of becoming unreal and meaningless it seemed one was still permitted to remember the days when an individual life held some value and was not a mere misprint in a communiqué.”

The opening chapter of Under the Volcano occurs in 1939, a year after the deaths of Yvonne and the Consul, and this quote reflects the worsening global situation as World War II begins to tear the world apart. A year prior, it was easier for Jacques to see the deaths of his colleagues as utterly tragic, but as the horrors across the world worsen, tragedy begins to become less personal.

“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.