At times, the two writers’ conclusions and reactions resemble each other in spirit and theme, enhancing the novel’s enigmatic stream of consciousness. Gregory resided in the hotel before Lawrence’s arrival, and Lawrence consults and quotes Gregory’s diary (written in green ink) at length. The other is the novel’s secondary narrator, the writer Herbert “Death” Gregory. One is the unnamed woman (often referred to simply in the second person) whom Lawrence addresses, often when driving in the countryside at night (sometimes in a car borrowed from “Durrell”).
Two other characters are key to Lawrence’s story. Morgan is a Welsh veteran of the Great War, a custodian in the hotel’s boiler room with practicable working-class insights. Chamberlain disdains the “desire” that Lawrence and Tarquin often debate, opting instead for carnal experience with his own wife, Dinah. The Peruvian cartographer Lobo attempts to overcome his Catholic inhibitions to form relationships with numerous women, including Miss Smith, an African woman whom Lawrence helps to read Chaucer Lawrence finds her exotic speech and manners meaningful to counteract the stiff coolness of English manners. They include Tarquin, an undiscovered writer who struggles with his own sexual identity. These surrealistic asides are woven into the episodic encounters with the other characters in Lawrence’s life: residents of the Regina and the colleagues and students at the school where he works. Furthermore, the story’s chronology is intentionally disrupted through ambiguous tense-the “gnomic aorist” is referenced-and “magical” facts. His flights of imagination employ mythic and literary motifs of birth, death, drowning, crucifixion, with copulation and frank sexual descriptions chief among these.
Overwhelmed by the rush of details and ideas, Lawrence is unable to embark upon a plan of action to improve society or even himself. The disjointed and dreamlike narrative expands on the theme of dying English culture. Now living on a Greek island, Lawrence Lucifer (not named until halfway through the novel) recounts his formative year in the Regina Hotel in England.
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