Research Paper on:
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling and Protagonist Harvey Cheyne

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Courageous, is a delightful coming-of-age story set in the high seas. Young Harvey Cheyne is a privileged fifteen-year-old American boy who is used to getting everything he wants and  answering to no one, including his overly indulgent parents. During a cruise to his parents to Europe, fate intervenes and when a seasick Harvey is swept overboard, his life,  perceptions and character are changed forever. Captains Courageous is a truly memorable tale of a boy who learns the meaning of an honest days work, the value of true  and lasting friendships, and glimpses for perhaps the first time in his life the anguish and heartaches that often intrude upon the real world that extends beyond the sequestered boundaries  of sprawling mansions and manicured lawns. Harvey learns lifes lessons the hard way, and his experiences lay a solid moral foundation for responsible manhood. Captains Courageous begins with the  complaints of passengers aboard a luxury liner concerning a petulant Harvey Cheyne. When one explains that the lad was going to Europe to continue his education, another perceptively observes,  "Education isnt begun yet" (Kipling 1). Of the spoiled Harvey, Kipling wrote, "Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order--never, at least, without long, and sometimes  tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself  walked on the edge of nervous prostration" (8). It is believed that Kipling based his arrogant protagonist on a real-life boy named Albert, who seriously tried his patience while  on a ship traveling from India to China in 1889 (Carpenter and Carpenter 56). Kipling would say of Albert, "Some day a schoolmaster will get hold of it and