Conrad – Tales

Tutorials and critical commentary on the tales of Joseph Conrad

Tutorials and critical commentary on the tales of Joseph Conrad

The Planter of Malata

August 24, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Planter of Malata was written in 1914, and first appeared as part of the collection Within the Tides published by J.M. Dent and Sons in 1915. The other stories in the volume were The Partner, The Inn of the Two Witches, and Because of the Dollars.

The Planter of Malata – critical commentary

Mystery and suspense

Most first-time readers will have little difficulty working out the mystery of the assistant’s identity. That’s largely because all the communication links between the island, the imperial city, and the correspondent in England are spelled out in a way that draws attention to them. It’s also because the very existence of the assistant acts as a form of what is known as ‘Chekhov’s gun’. This is a dramatic principle established by the Russian dramatist and short story writer that everything in a narrative should be necessary and anything unnecessary should be removed.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.

After all, Renouard wants to live alone; he does not need an assistant; and he rather uncharacteristically takes him on without knowing anything about him. If the assistant did not have any significance for the narrative, there would be no requirement for his existence in it.

Vigilant readers will suspect this plot development in advance, but Conrad adds a very dramatic twist with the news that the assistant is in fact dead. This is cheating slightly in the compact between author and reader, because we have no way of knowing or even suspecting this in advance. Renouard knows that his assistant is dead, but in the early part of the tale he does not necessarily know that this is the man the Moorsom’s are looking for – because of the confusion in names. They are searching for ‘Arthur’: he only knows that his assistant was called ‘A.Walter’.

Theme

If there is a submerged theme it is that of ‘disappearance’. Renouard wishes to disappear from society in general – which is why he has established himself on the remote island of Malata in the first place. He is drawn back into the gravitational field of society by the powerful sexual attraction he feels for Felicia when he meets her. It might even be argued that this leads to his downfall,

‘Master Arthur’ wishes to disappear because of the financial disgrace in which he has been (falsely) implicated. He escapes to a remote island at the other side of the world and disappears into a life of drugs which leads to his death.

And Renouard too finally disappears. Conrad uses the age-old device of his clothes left on the sea shore. He may have commited a suicide of sorts, or he may have simply removed all traces of his existence and moved on somewhere else. Either way – he has disappeared from the narrative.

The Planter of Malata – study resources

The Planter of Malata – CreateSpace – Amazon UK

The Planter of Malata – CreateSpace – Amazon US

The Planter of Malata – Kindle eBook

The Planter of Malata – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Planter of Malata – plot summary

Part I. After five years of exploration and adventure Jeffrey Renouard has settled in seclusion on the island of Malata with an assistant, and has recently been granted the silk farming concession. In conversation with his friend a newspaper editor in the colonial city (Singapore?) Renouard reports having been invited to a dinner party, where he met Felicia Moorsom and was very struck by her attractiveness and her interest in his own background. Renouard lives in isolation and is not used to socialising.

Part II. The editor reveals to Renouard that the Moorsoms are staying in the city incognito. He advises him to let Professor Moorsom into the profitable silk farming business. The Moorsoms have come in search of a man who was engaged to Felicia for a year, but who became involved in a financial scandal and pulled out of the engagement. A subsequent but separate scandal has however revealed his innocence. Felicia wishes to reclaim him, but he cannot be found anywhere. The editor has been asked to join in the search. Renouard goes back to his ship and realises that he has been powerfully affected by the girl.

Part III. Next day the editor reports to Renouard that he has met the Moorsoms at dinner, and that the search for the missing fiancé ‘Master Arthur’ has begun in earnest. That afternoon Renouard visits the Moorsoms and once again is stongly affected by Felicia. He hopes the search for Arthur will last a long time.

Part IV. That night Renouard has a vivid dream of searching in palaces and finding a marble bust which turns out to be Felicia’s head. He then interprets his own dream, after which he becomes a regular visitor to the Moorsoms. He admits to himself that he is desperately in love with a woman who is searching for another man. He has to exercise great self-control to conceal his passionate feelings for her.

Part V. Professor Moorsom reveals to Renouard his strong reservations about Arthur, and his wish to move on to pursue his business engagements. He even doubts his own daughter and her judgements. He asks Renouard to help him by pouring cold water on her plans, and he invites him back to dinner that night.

Part VI. Although he contemplates running away, Renouard attends the dinner. Professor Moorsom again asks him to discourage Felicia in her quest. Renouard makes a very feeble attempt, but she proves immovable in her resolve. She also confirms that no messages have arrived in England from the colonial city.

Part VII. Suddenly the editor arrives with the news that Arthur has been found. A message from England reveals that all correspondence has been with a Mr Walter: he is Renouard’s assistant Walter on the island. Renouard rushes back to his ship and destroys a letter addressed to Mr A Walter he has had in his possession. It is then revealed that the assistant is in fact dead on the island. Renouard knows that the Moorsoms will leave if he tells them, and he feels that he can now somehow replace Arthur.

Part VIII. The whole party sail for Malata, where Renouard stays outside the reef overnight, before embarkation. During the night he swims ashore and instructs his servants to say that Arthur has gone off on a trip round the islands.

Part IX. The party wait for Arthur to return. Renouard is nervous: he discusses ghosts with Professor Moorsom’s elderly siister Emma, and his servant Luiz is asked when Arthur is returning.

Part X. Professor Moorsom hears that some plantation workers have seen ghosts: he wants to investigate the phenomenon further. Renouard goes on a walk onto the headland with Felicia. There she reveals her suspicions and challenges him directly about Arthur. He reveals that Arthur was a drug addict for whom he felt sorry, and who died by falling into a ravine. Felicia claims it was her ambition or her destiny to redeem him. Renouard makes a speech which is part homage, part criticism of her – then makes a feeble lunge at her, before declaring his abject love for her.

Part XI. Renouard realises he has gone as far as possible. The party leave the island next day – the Professor grateful to Renouard, and Felicia critical of him. Renouard threatens to ‘haunt’ her ever afterwards. He then pays off his workers and sends them home.

Part XII. A month later the editor is not satisfied with the explanatory stories that reach his office about Malata, so he takes a ship to visit the island in person. He discovers Renouard’s clothes on a beach, but no body is ever found.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

The Planter of Malata – main characters

Geoffry Renouard	the reclusive planter of Malata
—	his friend, the newspaper editor
Professor Moorsom	a physicist and philosopher
Felicia Moorsom	his attractive daughter
Emma Moorsom	his elderly sister
Master Arthur	Felicia’s fiancé
Luiz	Renouard’s half-caste manservant

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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Buy the book from Amazon US

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

The Return

October 4, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, critical commentary, web links, and study resources

The Return: was completed in early 1897, while Conrad was writing the story Karain: A Memory. It was never published in magazine form; but was collected in Tales of Unrest, which appeared in 1898. The other stories in the collection were Karain: A Memory, The Idiots, An Outpost of Progress, and The Lagoon.

L’ennui – Walter Sickert (1860-1942)

Conrad’s own comment on the story is that “[A]ny kind word about The Return (and there have been such words said at different times) awakens in me the liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in temper, and in disillusion.” He also once remarked, acknowledging that he suffered while writing this psychological chef-d’oeuvre of introspection – “I hate it.”

The Return – commentary

The most striking feature of this story is its similarity in subject and psychological intensity to the scene in The Secret Agent (written almost a decade later) when Adolf Verloc’s wife Winnie realises that he husband is responsible for the death of her mentally-retarded brother Stevie. Verloc is so consumed by his own egotism that he fails to recognise the devastating effect this revelation has on her, and he pleads solipsistically that she should try to see things from his point of view.

Alvan Hervey the protagonist of The Return is a similar monster of smug, self-regarding egoism, and this unrelenting narrative is a superb study in the psychological ravages of jealousy. It explores with relentless force the kaleidoscopic intellectual and psychic responses to emotional shock – particularly the realignment of a sense of identity that is required .

Conrad’s introductory notes to Tales of Unrest discuss the genesis of this tale in a curious mixture of metaphors:

The Return is a left-handed production. Looking through that story lately I had the material impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud drumming of a heavy rain-shower. … Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for the remainder of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of dismal wonder … notwithstanding all its apparatus of analysis the story consists for the most part of physical impressions; impressions of sound and sight, railway station, streets, a trotting horse, reflections in mirrors and so on

It is almost as if Conrad is too embarrassed to discuss the real issue of the tale which is the shock of experiencing jealousy for the first time. His comments are also another reminder (if we need one) not to take what authors say about their own work too seriously – or as anything other than one opinion or interpretation.

It’s also interesting to note that Conrad does not include the searing psychological pain of physical, sexual jealousy in Hervey’s catalogue of distress – though at the end of the nineteenth century it is unlikely that explicit reference to such matters would have been acceptable by publishers.

Footnote

A curious feature of this tale is that it includes three expressions which are the titles of other literary works:

‘another turn of the screw’
‘a handful of dust’
‘watch and ward’

Henry James’s story The Turn of the Screw appeared in 1898, a year later than Conrad’s tale. The term ‘a handful of dust’ crops up in T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land which appeared in 1922, and was also used as the title for Evelyn Waugh’s novel of the same name in 1934. The term ‘watch and ward’ is a traditional expression which means a ‘continuous watch or vigil’. It was used by Henry James for the title of his first short novel published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1871, then in book form in 1878.

The Return – study resources

Tales of Unrest – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

Tales of Unrest – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Tales of Unrest – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Return – principal characters

Alvan Hervey	a worker in the City of London
—	his wife

The Return – plot summary

Alvan Hervey is a very conventional person who works in the city of London and commutes from the suburbs. He marries a woman with very little personality and sponsors a literary-political magazine whose editor he regards as an ‘ass’. The couple cultivate writers and establish a weekly causerie in French style. Their house is filled with comfortable furnishings and works of art.

On arriving home early from work one day, he finds a letter from his wife to say that she has left him and gone off with the editor. Hervey is overwhelmed by shock and outrage, and thinks it would have been preferable if she had died. He feels besmirched and humiliated by the passion that the experience raises in him.

He does not know how to understand or deal with the situation, and races through a cascade of different notions in his mind. He moves rapidly from feelings of injured pride, fear, and desolation, to anger, existential anguish, and despair.

Whilst he is in the middle of this powerful shock to his entire system of feeling and belief, his wife comes back to the house. She sits before him without speaking, whilst he asks her banal questions which do not reflect his true feelings. He is trapped in an attitude of false pride and bad faith.

She tells him her letter was a mistake. He criticises the editor, but then it transpires that she has intended going off with him but has changed her mind. He then gradually assumes a self-congratulatory and completely bogus attitude of magnanimity towards her. He thinks back to the occasion of his proposing to her and, lost in self-pity, fails to recognise a gesture of reconciliation she makes towards him.

When she offers to leave he stops her but, it is clear that she realises his protestations are no more than shallow self-obsession, and she regrets coming back to the house.

He starts to lecture her pompously on morality and duty – an appeal which gradually turns into self pity and hectoring condescension. Oppressed by his behaviour, she again tries to leave but he prevents her and accuses her of being mentally unhinged.

He rants on about public duty and his own merciful forgiveness until she begins to laugh hysterically. He throws a glass of water in her face and demands that she think of his feelings. Then he insists that they go down to dinner and argues that everything will be normal again.

When they go to dinner he is obsessed with concealing everything from the servants, and he realises that he does not know what is going on in his wife’s mind. He thinks the same of the two servant girls, and sees all women as ‘unknowable’.

He claims to love his wife, but she explains to him why he doesn’t. At the end of the evening he works himself into a terminal frenzy, convincing himself that there is something deficient in his wife. So he challenges her oppressively, asking her if she is prepared to live with unanswered questions and lack of trust hanging over them. She is willing to do that, but he is not, so he leaves the house – never to return.

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

The Secret Sharer

October 26, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Secret Sharer (1910) is a popular and much-anthologized work by Conrad. It’s quite short, yet it presents an enigmatic narrative and the story has been interpreted in a number of different ways. Like many of Conrad’s other stories, it combines elements of his own experience as a seaman with events recorded as part of naval history. The story is set in the Malayan Archipelago (The Gulf of Siam or Thailand to be exact) which features in a similar work, The Shadow-Line, written a few years later.

Joseph Conrad

The Secret Sharer – critical commentary

The double

There is a literary tradition of stories which deal with a theme known as ‘the double’. These are narratives featuring a character who feels the presence of, thinks he percieves, or sometimes even sees another character who has the same appearance or name as himself. The second character might succeed in society where the first character fails, or the second might perform some anti-social act for which the first character is blamed. Examples include Edgar Alan Poe’s Wiliam Wilson, Fyodor Dostoyevski’s The Double, and Vladimir Nabokov’s The Eye. For a further explanation this, see our tutorial on The Double.

Very often these stories are first person narratives in which it becomes clear to the reader that the second character does not actually exist, but is a projection of the narrator’s imagination – an ‘alternative’ personality, or ‘another self’ representing a fear or a wish-fulfilment.

The Secret Sharer is explicitly packed with the features of this theme. The unnamed narrator and Leggatt are of similar age. Both of them went to the elite sailor’s training school on the Conway. They are both bare footed when they meet. The captain gives Leggatt his own sleeping suit to wear, so that they look the same, and he puts him into his own bed. The captain immediately (and throughout the tale) refers to Leggatt as his ‘double’ and ‘secret self’. Leggatt was chief mate on the Sephora – and presumably the captain had previously been a mate before promotion to captain.

The two men echo each other’s gestures. The captain feels that they are both ‘strangers on board’. Leggatt is a stranger because he comes from another ship, the captain because he has so recently taken up his command. The captain refers to Leggatt as if he is looking in a mirror.

The story therefore seems to be variation on the double theme – and it is often discussed in such terms, particularly because none of the rest of the crew actually see Leggatt, and all information about him comes from the narrator, the captain.

This is a seductive interpretation, but it contains one major flaw. The fact is that other people in the story know that Leggatt exists. The captain of the Sephora, Archbold, comes looking for his chief mate who has escaped from the ship. So Leggatt is not a projection of the captain’s imagination, or an id to his ego. He actually exists.

There must therefore be some other means of interpreting the story, or providing an explanation for the events of the narrative.

There but for the grace of God …

Conrad often creates stories in which someone is presented with a moral dilemma or an existential crisis. This experience might also involve confronting ethically complex situations or other characters who have dared to cross the line between good and evil.

In Heart of Darkness for instance the narrator Marlowe is given the task of tracking down Kurtz, a man who has gone beyond acceptable limits in establishing his imperialist empire. Yet Marlowe, before he even meets Kurtz, is pre-disposed to admire his audacity. He asks his readers to empathise and imagine what courage it takes to break the rules of civilized society. Similar situations occur in Lord Jim and The Shadow-Line.

In The Secret Sharer we therefore have a situation where the young captain is confronted by another man of a similar age and provenance who has become embroiled in an ethically complex situation. Leggatt acts with the very best motive of saving the Sephora during a storm, and he is confronted by a weak captain and a malicious crew mate. He saves the ship, but kills his crew mate in doing so. In terms of maritime law he is guilty of a capital crime. This is an example of a good motive with a bad outcome.

But the young sea captain is entirely tolerant of Leggatt and his situation. He makes no criticism and acts instinctively to protect him from detection and capture. It’s as if he realises that he himself might have acted in a similar manner if he had been confronted by the same situation.

One can argue that the young captain acts out of class loyalty. Both he and Leggatt have come from the same training college, and the captain feels an instinct to protect his own kind. This is an interpretation which will not be popular with Conrad devotees, because it is an elitist position. And it is made even worse by the fact that at the end of the story the young captain does not appear to have learned anything.

The captain puts his own ship and the entire crew in great peril just for the sake of saving one individual from justice – something his maritime code of ethics would never condone. And yet the spirit of the narrative and Conrad’s attitude to the captain suggests a positive outcome to the story. The captain succeeds in steering clear of Koh-ring, and he feels that he has a closer relationship with the vessel he commands. This is a bad motive with a good outcome.

Interestingly, Leggatt saves the crew of the Sephora by his act of ‘setting’ a reefed foresail, but kills an individual in doing so. The young captain on the other hand does the opposite. He saves an individual (Leggatt) but puts his own crew in great danger by sailing so close to the Koh-ring island.

The Secret Sharer – study resources

The Secret Sharer – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Secret Sharer – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Secret Sharer – Kindle eBook

The Secret Sharer – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Secret Sharer – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Secret Sharer – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

The Secret Sharer – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

The Secret Sharer – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg [FREE]

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Secret Sharer – plot summary

Part I. A young seaman has his first command to take a sailing ship from the Gulf of Siam (Thailand) back to England. Whilst becalmed during the night at the start of the voyage he takes on board Leggatt, another senior seaman who has escaped from a nearby ship. the Sephora, after killing a malicious fellow seaman during a storm. The young captain sympathises with Leggatt’s plight and conceals him in his cabin. Leggatt gives a reasonable explanation for his actions (which saved his ship) and the young captain continues to give him refuge.

Part II. When the captain of the Sephora comes searching for his escaped prisoner, he gives his own account of events. The crew of the young captain’s ship find his behaviour increasingly strange, but he continues to protect Leggatt. Both of them are graduates of the same training school, and the captain regards Leggatt as his ‘double’ or ‘alternative self’. After a number of number of near scrapes in being detected, Leggatt asks to be put off the ship when it nears some islands. He is willing to take his chance to make an escape. The captain takes a grave risk by sailing perilously close to an island, but in the end Leggatt slips away undetected and the captain sails on, feeling that he now has complete control of his ship.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Principal characters

I	the narrator, an unnamed young mariner
–	the chief mate with ‘terrible whiskers’
–	the young second mate
Leggatt	the chief mate of the Sephora
Archbold	the captain of the Sephora

The Secret Sharer – first book edition

First edition – J.M.Dent & Sons 1912

Critical studies

Ted Billy, A Wilderness of Words: Closure and Disclosure in Conrad’s Short Fiction, Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1997.

Gary Geddes, Conrad’s Later Novels, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980.

Stephen K. Land, Conrad and the Paradox of Plot, London: Macmillan Press, 1984.

F.R.Leavis, ‘The Shadow-Line’, in Anna Karenina and Other Essays, London: Chatto and Windus, 1967.

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other novels by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales

The Shadow Line

October 18, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Shadow Line: A Confession (1917) is one of a number of Conrad’s works which draw upon his own experiences as a seaman during his third visit to the far East in 1887-1888. He signed up as mate on the Vidar, which traded in the islands of Malaysia, but just like the young man in this story he signed off and was then given his first (and only) command of his own ship. He travelled from Singapore to Bangkok to take over as captain of the Otago, then took the ship to Sydney, calling in en route at Singapore to pick up medical supplies.

Joseph Conrad

The fact that these elements are reflected in the story should not lead readers to suppose that the finished work is merely a biographical record. The relationship between biography and fiction is a complex issue, and it should be remembered that not only do writers transform personal experience to give it artistic shape and force, but there is no direct and simple relationship between a personal experience and its depiction in fictional form.

The Shadow Line – critical commentary

Narrative structure

The main elements of the narrative are arranged in a very simple pattern. The story begins in Singapore as the young captain secures his first command. He travels to Bangkok to join his ship, and sails back to where he came from, in Singapore. This structure echoes the main thematic development of the novella – his change from a state of youth and immaturity to that of an older and wiser man who has been hardened by the grim experiences of his journey.

Conrad is renowned for the complexity of his novels and stories – particularly the radically fractured time schemes of his narratives. But the structure and the sequence of events in The Shadow-Line are relatively straightforward. Events are related by a single first-person narrator, the young sea captain, and he delivers them in the same sequence that they occur, with no flashes forward or backward.

The only element of ‘back story’ is provided by the chief mate’s account of his conflict with the previous captain, and the only part of the text which is not either dialogue or first person narrative is two brief extracts from the young captain’s diary. In fact it’s difficult to understand why Conrad bothered including these two short passages, because they continue to recount events in the same sequence and in a similar manner.

Steam and Sail

At the start of the tale, the young sailor’s position as mate on the steam ship is comfortable and he is successful in it – carrying the approval of his captain (Kent). Yet he leaves the ship, for reasons he cannot explain. The experienced seamen with whom he discusses the issue put it down to his youthful impetuosity.

Yet when he takes up his command of the sailing ship he is in raptures with the ship itself which he thinks of as ‘she’ and himself as a lover. He also conceives of himself as the latest in a long honourable tradition of previous captains. (This is powerfully ironic in the light of the previous captain and his actions.)

But there are immediate problems connected with the type of vessel. The sailing ship requires a great number of men on deck, co-operating with each other to manage the sails and navigation. These are exactly what the captain does not have, because the crew are down with malaria. He is therefore forced to manage the ship himself, assisted by two crew who are both ill.

In the end he succeeds – so in one sense it is the older traditions of the sea and the earlier form of maritime technology which provide him with the gruelling experience that forms his character. He learns the value of co-operative working methods.

Youth and experience

At the start of the narrative, the young seaman is competent, but he displays the impetuosity and naivety of youth. He gives up his job without any good reason, and has no alternative career prospects. He fails to recognise that Captain Giles has recommended him to the Harbour Master, and his mood switches rapidly from despair to elation on learning of his new appointment. He also disregards the medical advice he is given, and sets sail without the services of a chief mate.

In his favour is the fact that his essential soundness is recognised by Captain Kent, his previous commander, the experienced Captain Giles, and the Harbour Master who gives him his position. He survives under the pressure of the ship’s misfortunes, and he has the good luck not to contract malaria like the rest of his crew.

Once back in Singapore, he realises that he has learned a severe lesson, he feels older (though only two or three weeks have passed) and at the end of the story he is intending to start out to complete his journey the very next day.

Novel, novella, story?

The narrative is one hundred pages – approximately 30,000 words – which means it could be considered a short novel or a long short story. But it has the classic characteristics of the novella. It is concerned essentially with a single experience in the life of one character, but the event it deals with is of a magnitude that makes it more than a passing episode. That is, it deals with a universal issue, not a particular event (no matter how revealing).

The captain’s experiences test his courage to the limit; he learns a very severe lesson; and he ultimately triumphs against adversity in a way which takes him from youth to manhood. These are large-scale issues, much bigger than the smaller (though revealing) incidents which would characterize the short story.

All the drama is concentrated into one topic and one location – the captain’s command and his problems on board the ship. Even his interactions with others are reduced essentially to just the saintly cook and the deranged chief mate. This sharpness of dramatic focus reinforces the especially compacted nature of the novella as a literary genre.

The title

Readers might be forgiven for thinking that the title refers to a shipping company – but Conrad uses the term ‘shadow-line’ two or three times throught the novella in a mataphoric sense.

time, too, goes on – till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind

The line is therefore a zone of transition between two states of being – youthfulness and maturity – which is the pricipal issue of the novella as a whole. When the young captain’s morale is at its lowest point he communes with himself in a diary, reflecting on the difference between his current despair and the youthful enthusiasm with which he began his voyage fifteen days earlier:

It seems to me that all my life before that momentous day is infinitely remote, a fading memory of light-hearted youth, something on the other side of a shadow

The Shadow Line – study resources

The Shadow-Line – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Shadow-Line – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Shadow-Line – Kindle eBook (annotated)

The Shadow-Line – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Shadow-Line – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Shadow-Line – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Shadow-Line – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Shadow Line – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Shadow-Line – plot summary

A young, inexperienced, but competent seaman suddenly gives up his successful position as mate on a steamship. Whilst he is on shore in Singapore an older and experienced sea captain recommends him to the harbour master, as a result of which he is given command of a sailing ship whose captain has died at sea. He travels to Bangkok to take charge of the ship and feels that he is joining an illustrious brotherhood of distinguished former commanders. However, he learns from the chief mate that the previous captain was dissolute and neglected his duties, The chief mate was forced to take charge of the ship, and the captain cursed the ship and all its crew before dying.

The new young captain is delayed in Bangkok by a combination of official procedures and the chief mate’s illness. He seeks medical advice, but impatient to be underway with his new commission, he disregards the warnings and sets sail in unfavourable conditions. The journey progresses very slowly because of a lack of wind, and the ship becomes becalmed in the Gulf of Siam. Meanwhile all the crew are infected with malaria, and the chief mate appears to be dying. The mate believes that an evil influence from the previous captain is casting a jinx on the ship.

The young captain then suddenly discovers that the supplies of quinine he has been using to treat his crew have been stolen and sold by the previous captain, who has re-filled the bottles with useless stuff. The captain is supported in all his attempts to keep going by the ship’s cook, who has a bad heart.

The chief mate recovers slightly, but the ship makes no progress. The captain in despair decides to abandon the voyage and return to Singapore. En route the ship encounters a tropical thunderstorm, and the captain has to maintain the safety of the ship with the help of only two or three sick crew members. The chief mate goes through a phase of near madness in which he believes that they are battling against evil forces of the former captain, who he personally buried at sea in the same part of the Gulf.

Finally, the ship reaches Singapore, the crew are taken off to hospital, and the cook requests to be discharged from his duties. The captain recruits a replacement crew and is planning to resume his voyage the very next day, feeling older and wiser.

Biography

Principal characters

I	the narrator, an unnamed young mariner
Hamilton	a non-paying loafer and snob
Captain Giles	an experienced retired navigator
Chief Steward	custodian of the Officers’ Sailors’ Home
Captain Kent	commander of the narrator’s previous ship
Captain Ellis	harbour master in Singapore
R	gay shipping master in harbour office
Burns	chief mate
Doctor	medical chief in Bangkok
Ransome	the cook with a bad heart
Gambril	a grizzled sailor
Frenchy	sailor with a Mr Punch face

The Shadow Line – publication

first edition, J.M.Dent 1917

Critical studies

Ted Billy, A Wilderness of Words: Closure and Disclosure in Conrad’s Short Fiction, Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1997.

Gary Geddes, Conrad’s Later Novels, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980.

Stephen K. Land, Conrad and the Paradox of Plot, London: Macmillan Press, 1984.

F.R.Leavis, ‘The Shadow-Line’, in Anna Karenina and Other Essays, London: Chatto and Windus, 1967.

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other novels by Joseph Conrad

Under Western Eyes (1911) is the story of Razumov, a reluctant ‘revolutionary’. He is in fact a coward who is mistaken for a radical hero and cannot escape from the existential trap into which this puts him. This is Conrad’s searing critique of Russian ‘revolutionaries’ who put his own Polish family into exile and jeopardy. The ‘Western Eyes’ are those of an Englishman who reads and comments on Razumov’s journal – thereby creating another chance for Conrad to recount the events from a very complex perspective. Razumov achieves partial redemption as a result of his relationship with a good woman, but the ending, with faint echoes of Dostoyevski, is tragic for all concerned.
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Chance is the first of Conrad’s novels to achieve a wide commercial success, and one of the few to have a happy ending. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, the abandoned daughter of a bankrupt tycoon, and her long struggle to find happiness and dignity. He takes his techniques of weaving complex narratives to a challenging level here. His narrator Marlow is piecing together the story from a mixture of personal experience and conversations with other characters in the novel. At times it is difficult to remember who is saying what to whom. This is a work for advanced Conrad fans only. Make sure you have read some of the earlier works first, before tackling this one.
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Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas

Joseph Conrad – a collection of web links

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, further reading, and web links.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of his work for the cinema and television – in various languages.

Works by Joseph Conrad
HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in context

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales

The Tale

September 15, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Tale was written 1916 and first published 1917 in The Strand Magazine. It was posthumously collected in Tales of Hearsay, published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1925. The other tales in the volume were The Warrior’s Soul, Prince Roman. and The Black Mate. This is the only story Conrad wrote about the first world war.

The Tale – critical commentary

Narrative

As was common in tales he was writing at this time, Conrad blends two narrative modes in one story here. The tale begins in third person omniscient narrative mode, with events related largely from the commander’s point of view. When asked to recount a story by the woman, his dramatisation of the incident of the two ships (although related by him in first person narrative mode) is cast as a third person narrative. He refers to the commander of the warship as ‘he’ – though it is fairly clear from the outset that he is talking about himself. Conrad’s tinkering with narrative modes is perfectly justified here – because the commander is giving an account of something he has himself experienced

The moral

Without a specialist knowledge of the rules of maritime engagement during a period of war, it’s hard to know what the commander’s other options were. Conrad is surely expecting his readers to be sympathetic to the commander, and yet his action of sending the crew of the other ship to their more-or-less certain death would be inexcusable, even if they were supplying the enemy with materials. The commander was in a position to seize the other vessel – though it could be argued that in times of war, subtle distinctions are frequently ignored or ‘lost’.

The Tale – study resources

Tales of Hearsay – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

Tales of Hearsay – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

The Tale – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Tale – plot summary

A naval officer, on leave from the First World War, tells a woman a story at her request. It’s of an English naval commander who claims that the war at sea is not as distinct and definite as the war on land. Whilst on patrol somewhere in the North Sea his ship spots some wreckage late at night. It’s thought this could be some neutral country supplying replenishments to enemy submarines. The commander’s ship is then engulfed by fog, so they pull into a nearby cove, where they discover another ship. It is from a neutral country and has had engine trouble. However, the commander is suspicious, and decides to board the ship himself, to inspect.

The captain of the neutral ship is a ‘Northman’ who claims he has been becalmed by fog and his engines have failed, but have now been repaired. His story is plausible, and it tallies with the ship’s log book. He claims the cargo is being taken to a British port. Everything he says corresponds with what can be seen, and yet something in his manner makes the English commander doubt him.

The commander is suspicious because the other ship did not make itself known, and had the power to sail away. The other ship’s captain (who appears to have been drinking) claims that he does not know where he is. The commander increasingly feels he is being confronted by a huge lie, and yet he has no proof of anything amiss. The captain pleads that he is only engaged on the journey because he owns the ship and needs the money.

The English commander orders the Northman to take his ship out of the cove, and gives him false directions which take him onto rocks, where the ship sinks, with the loss of all on board. The commander – who has been talking about himself – does not know if he has condemned innocent or guilty men to death

Joseph Conrad – video biography

The Tale – principal characters

—	an English naval commander
—	the woman he is comforting
—	the ‘Northman’

first edition, Fisher Unwin 1925

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

The Warrior’s Soul

August 26, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Warrior’s Soul was written in late 1915–early 1916. It was first published in Land and Water, March 1917. It was posthumously collected in Tales of Hearsay, published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1925. The other tales in the volume were The Tale, Prince Roman, and The Black Mate.

The Retreat from Moscow

Illarion Pryanishnikov 1840-1894

The Warrior’s Soul – critical commentary

Internationalism

The issues here are very typical Conrad subjects. There is a strong sense of internationalist friendship between the Russian Tomassov and his French colleague De Castell. They are also united in their admiration for the French lady in whose salon they have met. De Castell gives Tomassov classified information which is advantageous to the Russians.

But then Tomassov is confronted by his patriotic duty in circumstances of a tragic coincidence. As a Russian he ought to be remorseless towards the Frenchman who has invaded his own country. Even worse: De Castell is so devastated by the grim conditions and the slim chances of surviving the French retreat from Moscow (in which 380,000 men died and 100,000 were captured) that he begs Tomassov to shoot him. At first he refuses, but then does so – with what seem like devastating consequences to his own conscience.

Conrad is being unusually even-handed here. Russians do not usually fare well in his work – with the good biographical reason that Conrad’s family suffered under the political control of Poland by Russia in the nineteenth century. His father and family were exiled to the Ukraine because of his father’s political agitation as a democrat and a patriot.

Of course at the time of this tale’s composition, England , Russia, and France were allies during the first part of the first world war in the conflict with Germany. So it might be argued that Conrad was contributing a little propaganda to the war effort with this tale. Conrad had an unusual and complex relationship with nationality. He was born a Russian citizen – since Russia ruled Poland at that time. He imbibed a strong sense of Polish patriotism from his father. And after serving in the British merchant navy, he took out English citizenship in 1886. Following that, it took him a further three years to renounce his Russian citizenship in 1889.

Evaluation

This is another of Conrad’s historical narratives which is not so successful as his more mature and contemporary-based works. It smacks of the anecdote and lacks the aesthetic and moral complexities of his more successful writing. The elements of the drama are related in very general terms, with very little concrete detail and almost no personal focalization.

It is interesting that he reaches back into the Napoleonic wars to come up with a topic which might throw some light on the conflict which was tearing Europe apart in 1914-1918. The connection is logical – a major international conflict – but somehow the time gap is too wide, and the work pales beside Under Western Eyes and The Secret Agent

The Warrior’s Soul – study resources

The Warrior’s Soul – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

The Warrior’s Soul – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Tales of Hearsay – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Warrior’s Soul – plot summary

An un-named narrator, an old Russian military campaigner, recounts scenes from the Napoleonic wars, finally focusing on his special relationship with a young soldier called Tomassov who had previously been posted in Paris. In an attack on the demoralised Napoleonic Grand Army in its retreat from Moscow, Tomassov takes pity on the enemy and puts up his sword.

Tomassov had previously fallen in love with a beautiful woman who ran a salon in Paris. One afternoon in early 1812 he visits the salon to find her in conversation with French officer De Castel. The two men sense that they are in competition for her favours. When the y both leave, De Castel reveals to Tomassov that the Russian envoy and his staff are about to be arrested. This disclosure permits the envoy to escape arrest.

Back at the Napoleonic battle, the narrator expresses sympathy for the French troops who have fared so badly in the ill-fated Moscow campaign. Tomassov arrives from his patrol with an utterly bedraggled and despairing French prisoner. The prisoner has begged Tomassov to kill him as an act of mercy – but he has refused. The prisoner turns out to be De Castel. Tomassov is mocked in his regiment for being ‘humane’ – and in the end he is so touched by De Castel’s pleas that he does shoot him.

Afterwards, Tomassov resigns from the army and retreats into provincial obscurity.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

The Warrior’s Soul – principal characters

I	an un-named Russian officer, the narrator
Tomassov	an idealistic young Russian soldier
De Castel	a French army officer

The Warrior’s Soul

first edition, Fisher Unwin 1925

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

To-Morrow

September 21, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

To-Morrow was written in early 1902 and serialized in Pall Mall Magazine, 1902. It was later collected in Typhoon and Other Stories (1903). The other stories in the volume were Amy Foster, Falk: A Reminiscence, and Typhoon. In currently available editions, these are supplemented by the novella The Secret Sharer.

To-Morrow – critical commentary

This is a story of deluded hopes and dramatic irony which might have come from the pages of Thomas Hardy rather than his friend and contemporary Joseph Conrad.

There are two principal ironies in the tale – one real, and the other potential. The first, which is real, is that the apparently doting father Hagberd turns out to be a tyrant and a fraud, whose eagerly awaited son actually wants nothing to do with him. Hagberd has built up a self-enclosed system of belief about his son, and he has prepared a homecoming which is a myth which sustains Hagberd himself.

The second irony, which may only be realised outside the narrative time-frame, is that Harry borrows money from the hapless and moon-struck Bessie, but if Hagberd sticks to his word and disinherits his son, she will be the benefactor.

Even Conrad, in his introductory remarks to the collection Typhoon and Other Stories, has very little to say about the tale:

Of that story I will only say that It struck many people by its adaptability to the stage, and that I was induced to dramatise it under the title of One Day More, up to the present my only effort in that direction. (1919)

To-Morrow – study resources

Typhoon and Other Stories – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Typhoon and Other Stories – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

To-Morrow – Kindle eBook

One Day More – Kindle eBook

Typhoon and Other Stories – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

To-Morrow – plot summary

Retired skipper Hagberd goes from Colchester to Coalbrook in search of his son Harry, who ran away to sea. Failing to find him, Hagberd settles there. He confides his hopes for his son’s return (which he endlessly hopes will be ‘to-morrow’) to Bessie, the daughter of his next door neighbour and tenant.

Hagberd has been a reluctant sailor, rarely out of sight of land. He makes elaborate preparations for Harry`s return, and assumes he will be a suitable husband for Bessie. She looks after her cantankerous father, who mistreats her.

Hagberd advertises in the newspapers for information about his son, and meanwhile furnishes the cottage for his arrival, letting nobody see the results.

One day a man arrives at the cottage claiming to have news of Hagberd’s son – but the old skipper refuses to hear it, claiming that he has all the information he needs, as his son will be returning soon. The man turns out to be his son Harry, and Bessie explains how he has kept up his hopes with the myth of `to-morrow’.

Harry tells Bessie how his father mistreated him as a child. Harry tries to get inside Hagberd’s cottage, but his father will not let anybody in. He goes into Bessie’s cottage instead and recounts scenes from his childhood, including satirical accounts of his father boasting about going on long sea voyages, when it was just short trips up the coast to South Shields for coal.

Harry reveals himself as a sailor adventurer who has been on a drinking spree in London and come to his father’s house in the hope of borrowing some money He tells Bessie romantic tales of prospecting for gold in Mexico and mixing with Gambucinos who live independent carefree lives.

Bessie tells him of Hagberd’s plans and preparations for his son – but Harry rejects them scornfully. He does not want to be pinned down to domestic life. Hagberd meanwhile shouts down from upstairs next door, warning Bessie not to deal with the stranger, but to wait for Harry who will be there the next day. He threatens that if Harry does not marry her when he turns up, he will cut him out of his will and leave Bessie all his money.

This alerts Harry to the full extent of his father’s plans. He borrows money from Bessie, showers her with kisses, and leaves.

To-Morrow – principal characters

Captain Hagberd	a retired coastal skipper and widower
Harry Hagberd	his son, an adventurer (31)
Josiah Carvil	a blind boat-builder, his neighbour
Bessie Carvil	his daughter

Biography

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other work by Joseph Conrad

Nostromo (1904) is Conrad’s ‘big’ political novel – into which he packs all of his major subjects and themes. It is set in the imaginary Latin-American country of Costaguana – and features a stolen hoard of silver, desperate acts of courage, characters trembling on the brink of moral panic. The political background encompasses nationalist revolution and the Imperialism of foreign intervention. Silver is the pivot of the whole story – revealing the courage of some and the corruption and destruction of others. Conrad’s narration is as usual complex and oblique. He begins half way through the events of the revolution, and proceeds by way of flashbacks and glimpses into the future.
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The Secret Agent (1907) is a short novel and a masterpiece of sustained irony. It is based on the real incident of a bomb attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1888 and features a cast of wonderfully grotesque characters: Verloc the lazy double agent, Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard, and the Professor – an anarchist who wanders through the novel with bombs strapped round his waist and the detonator in his hand. The English government and police are subject to sustained criticism, and the novel bristles with some wonderfully orchestrated effects of dramatic irony – all set in the murky atmosphere of Victorian London. Here Conrad prefigures all the ambiguities which surround two-faced international relations, duplicitous State realpolitik, and terrorist outrage which still beset us more than a hundred years later.
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Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

Typhoon

October 27, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Typhoon was written between September 1900 and January 1901. It was serialized in Pall Mall Magazine from January to March 1902, and first published in book form by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in New York in September 1902. Conrad repeatedly revised the text for its various English and American appearances. These revisions are a combination of minor matters of spelling and more important changes to the presentation of his two main characters, Jukes and MacWhirr.

Typhoon – critical commentary

The most obvious quality of this tale is the masterful account of the violent storm at sea. Conrad manages to evoke the ferocity and the terrible impact of the hurricane winds, the torrential rain, and the tempestuous seas with strings upon strings of atmospheric synonyms without repeating himself. The ship is convulsed, attacked, and almost destroyed – yet it survives.

The Nan-Shan was being looted by the storm with a senseless, destructive fury: trysails torn out of the extra gaskets, double-lashed awnings blown away, bridge swept clean, weather-cloths burst, rails twisted, light-screens smashed—and two of the boats had gone already. They had gone unheard and unseen, melting, as it were, in the shock and smother of the wave.

The triumph of practicality

At the outset, MacWhirr’s stuffy and unimaginative conservatism and Jukes’ youthful enterprise and enthusiasm are posited as opposing characteristics. MacWhirr reads the maritime manuals on dealing with storms, but chooses to ignore them. Jukes is meanwhile dashing about the ship making sure everything is ready to survive the hurricane.

But as soon as the typhoon really strikes, Jukes thinks everything is lost and he despairs of surviving the experience; whereas MacWhirr simply sticks stubbornly to the ‘right thing’ and finds practical solutions to immediate problems. He does not allow himself to be deflected from the tasks required to maintain order.

When the fighting breaks out amongst the Chinese passengers, MacWhirr despatches Jukes to stop it. When he is attacked by the panicking second mate, he has no hesitation in slugging him. And when the problem of the coolies’ money could threaten their presence in port, he creates a just and simple solution to the problem by dividing the money equally amongst them.

MacWhirr is even cast in quasi-comic form at the outset of the tale – a short man who wears a brown bowler hat and carries an unfurled umbrella, no matter what the weather. But it is his calmness, his taciturn manner, and his meticulous attention to detail which in the end saves his ship, passengers, and crew.

The narrative

Unusually for Conrad, this is a tale cast in third person omniscient narrative mode. He is able to switch freely from one point of view to another as the principal characters move around the ship during the typhoon.

The most impressive piece of narrative manipulation comes in the penultimate section of the tale where, having reached a calm point in the eye of the hurricane, Conrad has the gruff and taciturn MacWhirr realise that having reached this point in the ‘revolving storm’, there is another period of the typhoon the ship has yet to pass through

Before the renewed wrath of winds swooped on his ship, Captain MacWhirr was moved to declare, in a tone of vexation, as it were: “I wouldn’t like to loose her. [the ship]”

He was spared that annoyance.

This is wonderfully ironic understatement and lofty wit – for Conrad does not actually describe the second half of the storm, but immediately pans forward to its aftermath, with the Nan-Shan safely moored in Fu-chau harbour. And there, by describing the uncomprehending responses of the Captain’s and the engineer’s wives to the letters they receive, the toughness and heroism of the mariners is emphasised – as well as by implication, the gulf of comprehension which exists between those who have lived suburban lives on land and those who have braved extreme situations at sea which their loved ones simply could not comprehend.

The form of the narrative

Some features of this work might seem to suggest that it could be regarded as a novella. After all, it has only a few named characters, the very central figure of captain MacWhirr, the action all takes place on board the Nan-Shan, and the storm itself acts as a strongly unifying feature.

But working against such a claim is the fact that there is no necessary connection between the typhoon itself and the skirmish amongst the Chinese workers who are being transported back to the mainland. They form an important but not an integral part of the story. Interestingly enough, it was the plight of these workers (who are referred to as ‘cargo’) which first aroused Conrad’s interest: the typhoon was a secondary issue.

In addition to this, there is no real development, lesson, or outcome in the events. MacWhirr is the same man when he reaches Fu-chau as he was at the beginning – and so is Jukes. So the narrative, for the purposes of classification, seems to me a tale, which can stand with distinction alongside the many others of its kind in Conrad’s oeuvre.

Meteorological note

A typhoon is a ‘severe tropical cyclone’ characterized by a low-pressure center, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain. When these occur in the Northwest Pacific Ocean they are called a typhoon. The same phenomenon occurring in the north Atlantic Ocean is called a hurricane.

Typhoon – study resources

Typhoon – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Typhoon – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Typhoon – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Typhoon – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Typhoon – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Typhoon – plot summary

Part I. Captain MacWhirr is in charge of a newly built steam ship the Nan Shan, which has been transferred from a British to a Siamese flag, with a mixed cargo of goods and two hundred Chinese workers as passengers. They are sailing in the Formosa Strait in the South China Sea bound for Fu-chau, and the barometer is falling.

Part II. MacWhirr is a practical, undemonstrative man of few words. He prepares for what he thinks of as ‘dirty weather’. As the storm gets worse, there is discord in the engine room. Jukes the realistic first mate suggests changing course to avoid the worst of the storm, but MacWhirr stubbornly rejects all known advice in order to avoid altering course (and the cost of the extra fuel it would consume).

Part III. Jukes does his best to prepare the ship for the worst, but when the full force of the hurricane strikes the ship it is so ferocious that he thinks all is lost. He and MacWhirr cling to each other whilst they are pounded by waves and hail. MacWhirr puts his faith in the sound construction of the ship.

Part IV. The bosun arrives with the news that fighting has broken out amongst the Chinese workers below decks. The storm has smashed some wooden sea chests, and dollar coins are spilling loose. He has also discovered that some of the ship’s crew have panicked and are hiding themselves away. MacWhirr despatches Jukes to investigate, which he does reluctantly. Meanwhile, the second mate loses his nerve and panics, forcing MacWhirr s to knock him out. First engineer Rout works heroically in the engine room, from where Jukes reports to the captain.

Part V. In the engine room Jukes is convinced that the ship cannot survive the storm, and the engineer orders him out as a hindrance to his work. Jukes and the bosun take crew members into the bunker where the coolies are trying to get out. The crew subdue the coolies, then lock them in below decks. There is a lull in the hurricane, but MacWhirr realises that being a ‘revolving storm’, there will be a second part to come which could be even worse than the first. He reassures Jukes that by staying attentive, they might come through it.

Part VI. The tale ends with the ship in port at Fu-chau, having survived the second part of the storm. The principal characters are writing back home. On receiving their letters Mrs MacWhirr hopes her husband will remain at sea, and Mrs Laut and her mother similarly have no concept of her husband’s character or heroism. Jukes explains in a letter to his friend how MacWhirr solved the coolie dispute by dividing the dollars equally between them all – so as to create a minimum of trouble.

Typhoon – principal characters

Captain MacWhirr	a practical man of few words
Jukes	his chief mate
Solomon Rout	the tall chief engineer
—	the ship’s boatswain (not named)

Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
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Youth

August 22, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Youth was written in early 1898 and first published in Blackwood’s Magazine for September 1898. It was later collected in book form as Youth, A Narrative and Two Other Stories published by William Blackwood in 1902. The two other stories were Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether. The first American edition was published by McClure, Phillips in 1903.

Youth – critical commentary

Steam and sail

This is one of a number of stories which features as background the transition from sailing ships to coal fired steam ships. The age of sail is often depicted in Conrad’s work as elegant, stylish, and requiring a ship’s crew with practical skills and a disciplined sense of co-operation. Steam-powered ships on the other hand are often depicted as dangerous and mechanically crude vessels, with no particular glamour attached to them.

It is clear in this story and others that Conrad regards the old sailing ships as a more romantically pure form of sea travel – but that experienced mariners must be able to translate their skills to the newer world of steam-powered vessels. In Youth Marlow survives storms and then the collapse and finally the destruction of the Judea. But he survives these maritime experiences and sees them as a right of passage into adult life.

The narrative

The first point to note is that Conrad created his narrative using a construction which he used several times – as did his friend Henry James. A group of men are gathered round a table in conversation. An outer-narrator sets the scene and introduces the characters – including in this case the inner-narrator Charles Marlow, who takes over the story.

This is sometimes called a ‘framed narrative’ – but it is worth noting that the narrative baton is never handed back to the original outer-narrator. Marlow keeps the story to himself until the end of the tale – merely referring to the others around the table in his final paragraph.

As readers we tend to forget that the entire story is essentially a first-person narrative, and that Marlow may be prejudiced or even wrong about some of his suppositions within the text. This was a literary device with rich potential that Conrad developed in some of his later fiction – and it has to be said that he did not always keep the narrative logic under firm control. Some of his novels feature scenes which the narrator (Marlow and others) could not know about.

Evaluation

The main weakness with the story is that it is not much more than a rather repetitive catalogue of disasters befalling the unfortunate ship, and not much psychological drama between any of the characters and the events which harass them.

The repetition of the storms and re-fits to the Judea spoil any structural unity the story might have had, and they smack very much of being inspired by keeping a documentary record of personal experience, rather than the construction of a work of art. Indeed, in his preface to the collection of tales in which Youth appeared Conrad says of the piece himself “Youth is certainly a piece of autobiography (`emotions remembered [sic] in tranquillity’)”.

Marlow’s concluding encomium on youthful aspirations is measured and ambiguous enough to include a certain amount of self-criticism. He is looking back from the age of forty-two when recounting the story amongst his conversational colleagues, and the implication of the concluding line surely includes a note of scepticism:

“…tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time when we were young at sea, young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks – and sometimes a chance to feel your strength – that only – what you all regret?”
And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined wrinkled, our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone – has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash – together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.

Youth – study resources

Youth – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Youth – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Youth – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Youth – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Youth – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Youth – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Youth – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Youth – plot summary

The inner-narrator Marlow recounts his first voyage in the East as second mate at the age of twenty on the Judea. He has transferred from an Australian clipper to a rusty old ship taking coal from the Tyne to Bangkok. The ship encounters gales in the North Sea and delays in Newcastle when there is a collision with a steamer. They sail into the North Sea where the ship begins to break up in further storms. But Marlow feels invigorated by surviving the ordeal and thinks of it as an ‘adventure’.

The galley and seamen’s quarters are swept away in the storm, and the steward is found completely mad with fear, from which he never recovers. When the storm abates they turn back to Falmouth, where the ship is repaired. When they set off again the crew refuse to continue. Even with a new crew, the same thing happens again. They become ‘residents of Falmouth’. The ship is then completely re-fitted, at which point all the rats on board leave the ship. A new crew is recruited from Liverpool, and the ship sails for Bangkok.

All goes well until they reach the Indian Ocean, when the cargo of coal catches fire. The crew try to put out the fire by pumping water into the hold. Their efforts last for two weeks, at which point they finally celebrate their success. Shortly afterwards the coal gas causes an explosion which rips the ship apart. The captain ignores the damage and keeps going for Bangkok.

They seek assistance from a passing ship which tows them towards a nearby port. But en route the fire breaks out again. The captain opts to stay with the ship until its extinction, saving as much as possible for the underwriters. With the ship on fire and the lifeboats ready to depart, Marlow goes back on board to find the captain asleep and other members of the crew having a meal and drinking beer. When his lifeboat finally cuts loose from the ship, Marlow thinks of this as his first real command.

Marlow eventually reaches a small port on a nearby island, and is shortly afterwards joined by the captain. An English steamer agrees to take them as passengers to safety. Marlow awakes the next day face to face with the East of his dreams and ends the soliloquy with a rhapsodic tribute to youthful optimism.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Youth – principal characters

I	an un-named outer narrator
Charles Marlow	the inner-narrator and protagonist (20)
Mahou	first mate
The Judea	a rusty old steam ship (Motto – ‘Do or Die’)
Jermyn	the pilot with dripping nose
John Beard	a ship’s captain
Jenny Beard	his wife
Abraham	the steward, a mulatto

Blackwood and Sons, 1902

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

Conrad – Tales

Tutorials and critical commentary on the tales of Joseph Conrad

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The Planter of Malata – critical commentary

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The Warrior’s Soul

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