America is evoked as a destination in this essay which pictures a Neapolitan version of the popular perception of big steamships, as it is represented in the play "Scalo marittimo" by Raffaele Viviani. In this comedy, Viviani deals for the first time with a social, economic, and political problem: emigration.
By describing the life of the Neapolitan harbour, Viviani can limit himself to a photography of it, letting this world explain and partly condemn itself. Beside the theme of emigration, on which the play is focused, the conflict between social classes is also foregrounded: on the one side, there are wealthy people going on a cruise in first class, on the other, there is the working class, forced to leave its country in order to produce riches in America. Moreover, Naples lives through another image, that of tourists who see places described to them in marvellous stories, who fall in love with the enchanted setting, rather than with the reality they are directly experiencing.
What emerges is finally a clear judgement on a reality characterised by misery, on parasitic wealth, and on pernicious forms of speculation.
