His significant trait is his pliability, demonstrated in his inclination to bend to Rose’s will from the start. For much of the book Rose and Allnut are the only characters, alone on the African Queen making their way through rapids and other challenges as they approach Lake Wittelsbach.Īllnut doesn't rise much above caricature - he’s a solidly built, mechanically-inclined man of few words, not given to thinking too much about things outside his immediate view. It’s mostly a character study of Rose wrapped into enough of a plot to carry it off as a novel. Forester’s 1935 love story that later was the basis for the 1951 movie starring Humphrey Bogart as Allnut and Katharine Hepburn as Rose. With Allnut, she hatches a plan to take the African Queen down the river Ulanga to the lake where the German navy boat the Königin Luise patrols, and blow her up.Īnd so begins C.S. Rose mourns of course, but also finds her passions inflamed against the Germans whose actions caused the failure of her brother’s mission, and who she now blames for his death. Captain Charlie Allnut, a fellow Brit (Cockney in fact), who pilots the African Queen, regularly stops in to bring supplies to the mission, and shows up just in time to bury the Reverend. Rose Sayer, devoted sister of the British Anglican missionary Samuel Sayer, is alone with her brother at his mission when he passes on. The African Queen is a film that needs to be seen by all film buffs.The African Queen is set in the German East Africa of World War I. I wasn't blown away by anything that the film did, but it was undeniably entertaining and well constructed, written, directed, and acted. The African Queen wasn't the irrevocable masterpiece a expected, but nonetheless it is still a very good film. He reluctantly agrees and the river, as well as a German U-Boat create many obstacles for the missionary and alcoholic captain.

Rose wants Charlie to go down the river, which worries Charlie a great deal because as he says, there's only death down the river. When WW1 is launched, a missionary living in Africa with her minister brother, must leave with a rugged, riverboat captain after her village is destroyed by German soldiers and her brother dies. So there's really nothing to deter you from wanting to watch it. On top of that, it stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and is directed by John Huston. It has the distinction of being one of those classic films that very film fan has to see. The African Queen is a movie I have wanted to see for a long time. 'The greatest adventure a man ever lived. Gave myself up for dead back where we started. Charlie Allnut: Oh, I'm not worried miss.

The african queen book