Plot summary a man who loved isands

1. Mr. Cathcart was born on an island. It does not suit him, however,
because there are too many other people on it. His life purpose becomes
to own an island that he can make into a world of his own. The would-
be islander acquires an island, four miles around, with three cottages on
it. It has a smaller island lying off it, which also belongs to him. He
loves his island, but there is a sinister side to it. It is a timeless world in
which the souls of the dead live again, pulsating actively around the
living. At night, places and things that seem uncanny in the day become
threatening.
To escape such awareness, Cathcart concentrates on the material aspect
of the island. He tries to fill it with his own gracious spirit and render it
a minute world of pure perfection, made by man himself. He begins by
spending money. He brings a housekeeper and butler from the mainland,
and installs a bailiff in the farmhouse. He acquires a herd of cows and a
yacht. He fills the cottages with tenants, all of whom display a smooth
and deferential manner to "the Master." The Master visits his tenants
and is treated almost with adulation, but after he leaves, they have
subtle, mocking smiles on their faces. It is doubtful that any of them
really likes him, or whether he likes any of them.
At the end of the first year on the island, the bills flood in. Cathcart is
shocked at how much money the island has swallowed. He thinks up
projects to make the farm more efficient and conveys them to the bailiff,
who watches him as if he were a strange, caged animal but does not
register any of his suggestions. There is a good harvest and, at the
harvest supper, everyone toasts Cathcart, dances, and seems happy.
Underneath the gaiety, things are not well. A cow falls over the cliff.
The men haul her up the bank and bury her, as no one will eat her meat.
This incident is symbolic of the periodic malevolence of the island.
More catastrophes happen: A man breaks a leg, a storm drives the yacht
on a rock, the pigs get some strange disease, families come to hate each
other.
Cathcart begins to fear his island. He feels strange, violent feelings he
has never known before. He now knows that his people do not love him.
Several of them grow discontented and leave, including the
housekeeper. At the end of the second year, the island has lost thousands
of pounds. The housekeeper has swindled him. He gives notice to the
butler and the bailiff.
In the fifth year Cathcart sells the island to a hotel company, which
plans to turn it into a honeymoon-and-golf island. He then moves onto
the smaller island, which still belongs to him-taking along a few faithful
staff-an old carpenter, and a widow and her daughter. The island is a

2. refuge, with no human ghosts. The islander no longer has to struggle
and believes himself free from desire. He begins a book on flowers,
which he does not mind if he never publishes.
Cathcart and the widow's daughter, Flora, become lovers, and
immediately he feels disturbed. Caught in the automatism of sexual
desire, he resents losing the state of desirelessness that he had achieved.
Eventually, even his desire for Flora dies, and he is left feeling that his
island's purity is soiled. He leaves the island to travel but receives a
letter from Flora saying she is going to have a child. At an auction of
islands, he buys another tiny island to the north. This island is even
smaller and more barren than the last, with no buildings or trees on it.
Cathcart marries Flora, but as soon as the child is born, he escapes, as if
from a prison, to his new island. He builds a hut and lives on the island
with a few sheep and a cat. He is glad there are no trees or bushes, as
they assert their presence too strongly, and this would offend him. He
loses interest in his book about flowers and avoids contact with anyone.
When he watches the mail steamer on the horizon, his heart contracts in
fear lest it molest him. He becomes shocked by the sound of his own
voice and irritated by the mew of the cat and the bleating of the sheep.
He wants only the sound of the sea and silence.
One day, the mail steamer comes and Cathcart talks to its men. He
resents their intrusion into his neatly ordered environment. He cannot
bear to open the letters they bring because any contact is repulsive to
him. The cat disappears, for which he is glad. Sometimes he gets ill, but
he knows this only because he falls down; he has ceased to register his
own feelings.
In winter, the snow walls in the house. Cathcart tries to get on his boat,
but he is too weak and is overcome by the snow, so that he must crawl
back inside. When he reaches the boat, there is a great storm. He digs
himself out, and when he emerges, the island has changed, with great
white hills where no hills had been. He is repulsed: He cannot win
against the elements. He climbs a hill, and, as the sun feels hot, he
reflects that it is summer, the time of leaves. However, he already senses
the snow rolling in over the sea.