Hans Henny Jahnn’s modernist trilogy «River without banks», an outstanding phenomenon of the world literature in the 20th century, is about formation and decay of an individual, memory and creative fantasy, about the voices that dwell inside of us. In the first part of the trilogy, «The Ship», an ancient metaphor of human life as a sailing is developed. Through the outer plot of the novel shows the inner one which could be reconstructed with the help of the recurring motifs and hidden allusions to Kafka’s «The Trial», Marlowe’s «Faust» and Ibsen’s «Peer Gynt», that is to the story of a man struggling with his inner enemy, the worst part of himself.