Cup of Gold

Henry Morgan is a young boy growing up in a small town in Wales. One day, a sailor returns to regale Henry with tales of the West Indies, and the glory that awaits those adventuresome enough to go. Henry, dazzled, quickly finds a place aboard a ship heading to the islands, thus setting himself on the path to becoming the brutal and fearsome pirate Captain Morgan.

Cup of Gold, Steinbeck’s first novel, is the fictionalized story of the real Sir Henry Morgan. Morgan’s early life is mostly obscure, but his later life is well documented. Steinbeck takes a broad artistic license across all of Morgan’s life, so the novel is historical fiction that’s only loosely based on historical fact.

The portrait Steinbeck paints of Morgan is of a complex, lustful, and largely unhappy man, set in evocative locations laced with traces of magical realism. Though Morgan’s life was filled with blood and violence, Steinbeck portrays him as a thoughtful and intelligent commander of men, whose tragic flaw is an unquenchable lust for great accomplishments combined with a misunderstanding of what great accomplishments actually are.

Through his cunning he repeatedly attains the ever-grander victories he seeks—but he quickly discovers what so many before and after him have discovered: that achievement is not always as satisfying as the quest to achieve.