West With The Night Analysis

West with the Night is memoir written by Beryl Markham, she writes about her life growing up in Kenya, the colonial British East Africa at the time and how she aspired to become a female aviator. It is argued that Markham didn’t write her memoir, but rather her third husband Raoul Schumacher, a ghostwriter and journalist. Regardless of who wrote the memoir, Markham’s adventurous life is written for the readers to explore.

The first half of the novel Markham writes about her life growing up in Kenya and how adventurous she was. She spent her childhood years exploring Kenya and once her dog was attacked by a bore and Markham, still being a child, chased the bore and hunted him down. Her father was a horse trainer and Markham followed in his

Her flight took place on September 4th, 1936, from Abingdon, England and her destination was to be New York. Before her flight she said, “a map in the hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man’s faith in other men; is it a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that beats mere words, ambiguous and artful, and who’s most believing reader – even whose author, perhaps – must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. A map says to you, ‘Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.’ It says, ‘I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.’” When asked about her solo flight she responded, “before such a flight it was the anticipation of alonesss more than any thought of physical danger that used to haunt me a little and me wonder sometimes if mine was the most wonderful job in the world after all.” However, after 20 hours of flight her Vega Gull named The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation and she crash landed in Nova Scotia. After crash landing she said, “the only disadvantage in surviving a dangerous experience lies the fact that your story of it tends to be anticlimactic. You can never carry on right through the point where whatever it is that threaten your life actually takes it – and get anybody to believe you. The world is full of sceptics. Markham will still be known as the first female aviator to fly solo non-stop from east to west over the