It involves two children, Judy and Nicky, and their dog Jokey, who are stranded on
Rockall, an extremely small, uninhabited, remote rocky
islet in the North Atlantic Ocean. They find that it is hollow and inhabited by a mysterious person who aims to take over the world.
Characters
The captives' family
Nicky: He is resistant to
telepathy, and the Master hopes to train him as a successor.
Judy: She is more susceptible to the Master's mind control.
The Duke: The twins' father. His estate in England called Gaunt's Godstone.
The Duchess: The twins' mother, first name "Fanny."
Mr. Pierrepoint: The Duchess's brother, the twins' uncle.
The captors' team
The Master: 157 years old, he communicates by telepathy, which he can also use to control people's minds. He has invented a kind of vibrator-ray to take over the world.
Mr. Blenkinsop ("the Chinaman"): His Chinese name means "Golden Tiger in the Tea Forest", but he took the name Blenkinsop while studying at
Oxford University. The Master befriended him at first because he found the Chinese language superior to English for expressing his ideas, but now he and Blenkinsop communicate by telepathy.
Dr. Totty McTurk: Originally a ship's surgeon named Jones. Although probably
Welsh, he affects various accents (
Irish,
Scottish,
Cockney and
Australian) when talking with the children.
Pinky or Pinkie: Sometimes referred to as "the
negro" or "the
blackamoor," he is the island's cook. He is
mute, his tongue having been cut out. He is a follower of
Gandhian nonviolence.
Squadron-Leader Frinton: Pilot of the
helicopter which carries mail and supplies between Rockall and Ireland. He tries to help the children escape.
Major themes
Like White's better-known work, The Once and Future King (1958), The Master deals with moral questions of killing, war and peace, and response to evil.
Allusions
References to other works
The novel makes several allusions to the play The Tempest by
William Shakespeare and begins and ends with quotations from the play.
In trying to impress upon the children the meaning of the Master's great age, Mr. Frinton says:
References to actual history, geography and current science
In the opening chapter, White delineates a brief history of the exploration of Rockall, starting with legends of
St. Brendan and
Atlantis and continuing with visits by
Martin Frobisher (1578),
Basil Hall (1810), the Helen (1824),
HMS Porcupine (1862), the
Royal Irish Academy (1896),
Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1921), and
Michael Bizony (1948). He mentions the British annexation of Rockall (1955) and says it may have been precipitated by the events of The Master (rather than the novel being inspired by the annexation).[2]