Ready Reference Treatise: Tropic of Capricon

By Raja Sharma

“Tropic of Capricon” by Henri Miller was first published in 1939 in Paris. It is a semi-autobiographical novel. Like the previous novel “Tropic of Cancer” it was also banned in the United States until 1961.

Eventually, the court ordered the ban to be lifted because the Justice Department declared that the contents of the book were not obscene. It was also banned in Turkey.

Ready Reference Treatise: Tropic of Capricon
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Plot Overview
Chapter Three: Characters
Chapter Four: Complete Summary
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Aug 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311839800

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Tropic of Capricon

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Tropic of Capricon

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2015 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Tropic of Capricon by Henri Miller was first published in 1939 in Paris. It is a semi-autobiographical novel. Like the previous novel Tropic of Cancer it was also banned in the United States until 1961.

Eventually, the court ordered the ban to be lifted because the Justice Department declared that the contents of the book were not obscene. It was also banned in Turkey.

Tropic of Capricon is a prequel to Tropic of Cancer that was published in 1934.

The story is set in New York in the 1920s. Henry V. Miller, the narrator of the novel works in the personal division of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company.

The author, Miller, had also spent time in New York while working for the Western Union Telegraph Company. The narrator’s experience in the novel parallels the authors own time in New York.

Although the narrator of the novel shares the author’s name, Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricon is definitely a work of fiction.

Most of the story revolves around the narrator’s years of struggles with his first wife Beatrice in New York. It is the story of a kind of spiritual awakening. Later on, the narrator meets June, aka Mara, and marries her.

The book Tropic of Cancer was written before the present novel, but the novel Tropic of Cancer begins where the novel Tropic of Capricon ends and the narrator sets off for Paris.

Tropic of Capricon is often paired with Tropic of Cancer but it is very much different in narrative and tone. The setting of the Tropic of Cancer is Paris whereas the setting for the most part of Tropic of Capricon is New York and its environs.

Chapter Two: Plot Overview

The author begins the novel with a kind of burst of philosophy. He thinks about life in general. He clarifies that there will be loosely linked, clearly autobiographical musings or accounts in the following part of the book.

The main story begins with the descriptions of several jobs that young Miller. He is eventually able to get a long term job at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America.

He begins to work there as a makeshift employment manager. He begins to hire and fire at a rapid pace. In a short period of time, Miller gets swept into the system. He begins to wonder about the system’s crazed and inhumane logic, or the lack of logic.

While working there, he begins to write seriously for the first time. One day, his boss just says casually that he would like to see a Horatio Alger-esque tale about the telegraph company.

Miller admits that his first book was terrible, but it was undoubtedly the first step on the