Joseph Conrad Archives - Page 3 of 6

Joseph Conrad greatest works

September 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

introductions, with links to tutorials and study guides

Joseph Conrad took hold of the late nineteenth century ‘action novel’ – the Imperialist Boy’s Own adventure story – and invested it with moral subtlety, aesthetic density, and a powerful sense of ideological seriousness. His writing can be demanding: be prepared for long sentences, complex syntax, abstract vocabulary, philosophic speculations, and an all-male environment. The rewards are profound insights into the human condition, superbly orchestrated moments of drama, and writing which explores issues of deep moral complexity.

He also pushed the complexities of story-telling further than they had ever been before. Keep in mind that Conrad, considered a master of English prose style, was Polish. He was writing in his second language. In this sense he is not unlike the Russian novelist, Vladimir Nabokov.

Almayer’s Folly (1895) was Conrad’s first published novel. It is set towards the end of the nineteenth century in the Malay archipelago and deals with the conflicts between European colonialism and the native population. Dreams of easy wealth drive the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer into grandiose schemes which come to nothing. His mixed-race wife despises him and is having an affair with a local native war lord. He completely misjudges the turmoil of events in which he becomes enmeshed and eventually descends into opium addiction and self-destruction. The novel contains many stereotypes of nineteenth century imperialist ideology, but its events are related in a manner which would lead to the development of literary modernism in the twentieth.
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An Outcast of the Islands (1896) was Conrad’s second novel, and acts as a ‘prequel’ to the first, Almayer’s Folly. English sea captain Tom Lingard rescues the corrupt Peter Willems and gives him a second chance by setting him up with a business in a commercial outpost. However, Willems lacks the moral fibre to profit from this act of generosity. He becomes obsessed with a beautiful native girl, deserts his wife and is overwhelmed by local political factions. All this takes place in southern Indonesia against a background of British and Dutch imperialist squabbling for supremacy in the region. Willems is eventually abandoned by his protector, feels desolate and isolated, then has to face the wrath of his wife who comes in search of him.
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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 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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Oxford World Classics offers the best editions of Conrad’s work. They are largely based on the most accurate versions of the texts; and they feature introductory essays, a biography, explanatory notes, textual variants, a bibliography of further reading, and in some cases missing or deleted chapters. They are also terrifically good value.

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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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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Victory (1915) is set in the legendary port of Surabaya and in an outpost of the Malayan archipelago. It is the story of Swedish recluse Axel Heyst, who rescues Lena, a young woman from a touring orchestra and runs off to live in remote seclusion, influenced by the pessimistic philosophy of his father. But he is pursued by two lying and scheming English gamblers, who believe he is concealing ill-gotten wealth. They corner him in his retreat, and despite the efforts of Lena to shield Heyst from their plans, there is a tragic confrontation which brings destruction into their island paradise.
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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.

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
More on Joseph Conrad tales

Joseph Conrad prose style

March 18, 2014 by Roy Johnson

how to start analysing prose style

Joseph Conrad was famous for his prose style – yet English was his third language, the first two being Polish and French. He was not unlike the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who began writing in his native Russian, then switched to French, and finally started writing in English when he emigrated to America in 1940. Both of these authors are widely regarded as great prose stylists and masters of the English language.

Nevertheless, it is not unusual for some readers to complain about the difficulties they feel in grappling with Conrad’s style when encountering his writing for the first time. It’s true that his writing is not the clearest and easiest to understand: in fact a liking for his style is something of an acquired taste. But it is possible to come to terms with the difficulties he presents (the long, complex sentences and abstract language) with concentration, thoughtful reflection, and practice.

The tutorial notes that follow are one way of diffusing these problems by analysing some technical aspects of Conrad’s prose style. They are in no way rigorous or systematic: there are other types of close reading and analysis which can throw light on aspects of a writer’s prose style (see the examples listed below).

The extract which follows is from the opening pages of Conrad’s early story An Outpost of Progress, first published in 1897. It deals with two European characters who have recently arrived at a trading station somewhere in central Africa. If you wish to read the complete story in conjunction with these tutorial notes, it is available free at Project Gutenberg.

An Outpost of Progress

First edition – J.M.Dent & Sons 1912

Sample text

The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in arm the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained. They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s sensations—to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.

Joseph Conrad prose style – analysis

Sentence length
Some of the sentences here are quite long – particularly the last. This is because he is expressing quite complex ideas or generating a very charged atmosphere. But they are not all long: the first, which deals with an action by characters, is much shorter.

Narrative mode
Conrad adopts the common third person omniscient narrative mode. That is, he tells us what his characters do, how they feel, and what they think. But you might notice that statements such as the one begriming ‘Few men realise’ is of a different kind than, say, ‘The two men watched’. Conrad stops telling the story for a moment and is offering us his opinion. In fact everything else up to the end of the paragraph is Conrad’s own general view of the world. He suddenly becomes what is called an ‘intrusive narrator’ at this point. He intervenes in his own narrative to comment on the story and offer his philosophic reflections on life in general.

It’s easy to overlook this distinction when engaged with the drama of the narrative, but it has an important bearing on our interpretation of the story. That’s because these intrusions into the story help him to project a particular view of the world – which add up to an ideology.

Language
You will probably notice that he uses a number of terms which will cause most people to think ‘Now what exactly does he mean by that?’ These are expressions such as ‘irresistible force’, ‘unmitigated savagery’, ‘negation of the habitual’, and ‘discomposing intrusion’. What make these difficult to grasp at first is that he is switching from the very concrete and specific descriptions of the two men and the trading station to an abstract and very general consideration of their moral condition.

This is almost the language of philosophy. The terms ‘force’, ‘savagery’, ‘habitual’, and ‘intrusion’ are all abstract nouns. We are not necessarily conscious of this whilst reading the text, but they take us away from the ‘story’ and force us to consider rather large scale social reflections.

In fact the combination of rather unusual and powerful adjective qualifying an abstract noun – ‘unmitigated savagery, ‘profound trouble’ – is a ‘trade mark’ of Conrad’s prose style. You will see many other examples in almost all his stories and novels.

Prose rhythm
In prose writing, rhythm is easier to feel than to define. You do not need to go into all the technical detail of stress analysis as you might with poetry, but it should be possible to sense that Conrad puts a lot of rhythmic emphasis into what he writes, using a number of literary devices more commonly found in poetry:

alliteration
repetition
balanced clauses

Alliteration
‘The courage, the composure, the confidence’ is a fairly obvious example of alliteration, with an insistent stress falling on the initial letter c in each of these words. Notice too that they are all abstract nouns.

Repetition
The expression ‘with primitive nature and primitive man’ combines both alliteration (in the initial letter p) with repetition of the word ‘primitive’ itself. You might also note that his use of the second ‘primitive’ here throws the emphasis onto the word that follows it – ‘man’. There are plenty of other examples of the same thing in this paragraph: ‘more strange, more incomprehensible’ and ‘every great and every insignificant’ are just two.

Repetition is just one of the rhetorical devices at work here: and rhetoric is ‘the art of speakers or writers to persuade, inform, or motivate their audience’.

Balanced clauses
The rather long sentences in this passage also contain a different kind of repetition – that is, clauses which are similar to each other in grammatical construction. These are sometimes called ‘balanced clauses’. The final sentence begins with the phrase ‘To the sentiment of being alone’, and in order to ‘tug’ us through the fairly lengthy reflection that follows Conrad repeats the initial ‘to’ and the construction of the clause of which it is a part. So we have, ‘To the sentiment of being … to the clear perception … to the negation of the habitual’.

Finally, look at the construction of the sentence that begins ‘Few men realise that their life’. Conrad wants to explain what he has in mind by using the term ‘life’, so he inserts two clauses which expand the notion. But in doing so, and whilst we are so to speak ‘waiting’ for the end of the sentence, his terms of expansion are nicely balanced: ‘the very essence of their character’ (with its emphasis falling on ‘essence’ and ‘character’, is paralleled by the following clause ‘their capabilities and their audacities’ with the emphasis falling again on two abstract nouns.

The abstraction forces readers into a quasi-philosophical mode of thinking about ‘life’. What exactly does he mean by people’s ‘capabilities’ and ‘audacities’? His answers will come from the events of the narrative itself – which show his two characters to be lazy, stupid, and moral cowards. This appears to ‘prove’ or at least justify his judgements about human beings and society in general – which is part of any writer’s conscious or unconscious objective.

Studying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and the language you will need for studying prose fiction. It explains the elements of literary analysis one at a time, then shows you how to apply them. The guidance is carefully graded, starting from simple issues of language then progressing to more complex issues. The single volume contains stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Charles Dickens. All of them are excellent tales in their own right. The guidance notes on this page were written by the same author.
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Close reading exercises

Sample close reading of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House

Sample close reading of Katherine Mansfield’s The Voyage

Sample close reading of Virginia Woolf’s Monday or Tuesday

Other novels 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

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
More on Joseph Conrad tales

Joseph Conrad web links

December 10, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Joseph Conrad web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions. The university-based web sites tend to be rather old in terms of graphic design, but have the advantage of depth in terms of content.

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.

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.

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

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

critical survey and literary essays

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness book looks at the famous novella in detail from the perspective of the early twenty-first century and offers a series of critical essays which plot its reception and the establishment of its reputation. It begins with a long essay by the editor exploring its political, social, and literary background, offering a defence of Conrad. This is a counter to the criticisms made by Edward Said and Chinua Achebe which claim that Conrad, for all his liberalism, cannot conceal a submerged racism and imperialism from his critical gaze.

Heart of Darkness was written in 1899, and was based loosely on Conrad’s own experience as a seaman with a commission to sail up the Congo river in 1890. During the twentieth century it has become a central text in the discussion of European imperialism , and possibly the best known of Conrad’s works – even though his first commercial success did not come until much later with the publication of Chance in 1913.

D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke even puts in a spirited defence of Conrad as an even-handed writer in gender terms. I’m afraid he’s on something of a hopeless quest here, as anyone who has read widely in Conrad will know – particularly some of his deservedly less well-known short stories.

There’s a chapter which traces the critical debate on Heart of Darkness from its publication to the present day. This allows readers the opportunity to witness how succeeding generations have interpreted the text, and it’s a refreshing reminder that literary criticism has fads and fashions which change and even disappear.

The latter half of the book is given over to five extended critical readings of the text. These represent what are currently perceived as major schools of literary criticism – neo-Marxist, historicist, feminist, deconstructionist, and narratological. These will allow the serious students of literature at whom the book is aimed to sense the academic climate and see what to aim at in their own work.

The feminist critique takes up the conventional objection that Conrad’s works don’t include many female characters, and even includes a bizarre recipe for those who cannot accept that a writer might not share contemporary values.

Nina Pelikan Straus concluded that while women readers may find some way to appreciate the text (she offers a number of reading strategies), in the end the best that women readers can do is remain detached from Heart of Darkness and refuse to grant the status of high art to the work.

There’s also an interesting bonus – an appendix in which two film adaptations of the text are analysed. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now! (1979) and Nicholas Roeg’s Heart of Darkness (1994) are compared with the original text in a way which casts interesting light on both, though no mention is made of the ‘deleted’ scenes on the old French rubber plantation in Coppola’s film which would reinforce the fact that his work was about imperialism and not just war.

It’s a pity even more divergent views are not represented, but maybe there’s just not enough room in one volume. As Douglas Hewitt, one of the many critics cited in this very scholarly survey observes: “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has had more critical attention per word than any other modern prose work”.

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D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, pp.160, ISBN 0415357764

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

Karain: A Memory

October 4, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, characters, and study resources

Karain: A Memory was written in February-April 1897 and published in the November 1897 issue of Blackwood’s Magazine. Its first appearance in book form was as part of Tales of Unrest published by in 1898, which was Conrad’s first collection of stories. The other stories in the book were The Idiots, An Outpost of Progress, The Return, and The Lagoon.

Karain: A Memory – plot summary

Part I. An un-named narrator describes the first visit of his schooner to the small fiefdom of Karain in an isolated part of the Malayan archipelago. Karain is a colourful and confident leader who the narrator likens to an actor. He is surrounded by loyal followers, and he buys illegally-traded guns and ammunition from the narrator.

Part II. At night Karain visits the schooner, always with an armed attendant at his back. He asks the narrator questions about Queen Victoria and tells him about his own mother who was a local ruler: he is her son from a second marriage. Once he was attacked by natives from beyond the nearby mountains but he killed most of the attackers and the rest never came back. He dispenses justice amongst his `people’, is much revered, and enjoys huge banquets.

Part III. The narrator visits him for two years, perceives him to be planning a war, and tries to warn him about forces beyond his own domain; but he fails to understand such concepts. On the occasion of his last visit the chief’s old henchman has died and Karain himself is ill. The trade in munitions takes place, then there is a tropical storm.

Karain suddenly appears on the schooner, having swum to the ship after escaping from his stockade. He fears that some invisible spirit is pursuing him, and he wants the crew to take him away.

Part IV. Karain relates how a Dutchman set up home in the locality of his friend Pata Malara. Then Malara`s sister joins the Dutchman, bringing dishonour onto her family. When the Dutchman leaves with the sister, Malara decides to follow and strike vengeance. Karain decides to go with him out of loyalty to his friend. They sail to Java and go on an extended and fruitless search which lasts for two years or more.

Karain falls in love with the image of Malara`s sister who they are hunting down. Eventually they find them both, whereupon Malara wants to kill his sister to avenge the family`s honour. He gives Karain a gun to shoot the Dutchman, but instead Karain shoots his friend Malara.

Part V. Karain runs away and survives in a forest, but he is visited by the ghost of Malara. He moves on and meets an old man who becomes his henchman, protecting him from `the dead’. But now that old man has died Karain has become vulnerable again to spirits. He thinks he will be safe amongst people who do not believe in the spirit world. He wants them to provide him with a weapon or charm against his demon.

Part VI. Hollis produces a box containing a sixpence which bears Queen Victoria`s head. He makes it into a charm, then they present it to Karain and convince him it will keep the spirit at bay. Karain goes back to his people.

The story ends with the narrator meeting Jackson in London some years later, and they recall Karain amidst the bustle of the capital city.

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

Karain: A Memory – principal characters

—	an un-named narrator
Karain	a war lord of three coastal villages, originally from Les Celebes
Pata Malara	Karain’s friend
Hollis	a young mate
Jackson	an old guitar-playing sailor

Joseph Conrad’s writing

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.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

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

Lord Jim – a study guide

November 8, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Lord Jim (1900) explores the tensions of European colonialism and its role in the East Indies in the late nineteenth century. Although the principal characters are English, the presence of Dutch, French, and German characters spreads the responsibility of ideological and cultural dominance during the highpoint of imperialism, and it does so over a geographic area which stretches from Aden in the Arabian Sea to Manila in the Philippines. It’s also a very dramatic story that explores one of Conrad’s favourite themes – moral redemption via suffering and renunciation.

Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim – critical commentary

Narrative method

Lord Jim was the first of Conrad’s full length novels to feature as principal narrator Charles Marlow, the former sea captain. Marlow assembles the facts of the story from a number of different sources – from people he knows, and from information passed on to him from others. The details are then relayed to a group of people Marlow is addressing – and hence to the reader. However, they are not relayed in chronological order but re-arranged to create maximum dramatic effect.

Marlow knows the outcome of the whole story from the outset, and from times to time he offers tantalising glimpses into what is to come. But for the main part he withholds crucial items of information, which creates both dramatic tension and a sense of grim expectancy.

The narrative comprises a radically dislocated series of events. A conventional opening relates Jim’s career as chief mate of the Patna up to the very point of its accident in the Arabian Sea. But instead of describing the dramatic events of the Patna’s fate and the scandalous behaviour of its crew, the story suddenly jumps forward to the judicial inquest, and is then taken over by Marlow who reminisces about Jim from a point in time long after the events of the novel have concluded.

Marlow intersperses the narrative with sketches of other characters and accounts of other events, and it is only very gradually revealed that Jim has abandoned the Patna along with the other crew members. Thus the narrative expands and contracts in terms of the psychological interest with which Conrad imbues his characters. For instance the few moments that comprise Jim’s fears and misgivings as the ship is abandoned are stretched out over more than twenty pages, and the evening dinner at which Jim recounts these events to Marlow lasts more than fifty pages.

In common with his other novels narrated by Marlow (Heart of Darkness, Chance, and Youth) Conrad uses a literary sleight of hand to produce a narrative delivered by Marlow almost as if he were an eye-witness to events, even though he has only heard about them from the accounts of others. In the episode of the Patna‘s collision the narrative is actually passed back and forth between Jim (who tells Marlow what happened) and Marlow (who is relaying the story to his audience at a much later date).

“How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every moment to feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long – two minutes perhaps.

Here is literary magic at work close to hand. Conrad simultaneously acknowledges uncertainty in the account of events (‘I cannot say …perhaps’) whilst giving the impression of honest accuracy (‘two minutes’).

The novel is as much about Marlow himself as the people whose story he tells. He is empathetic to Jim with very little reason to be so – except that he describes him in distinctly homo-erotic terms:

I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been on the point of bursting into tears.

To an inattentive reader, Marlow appears to be describing Jim’s actions in the story (which he only knows about from Jim) but a great deal of the time he is imagining how Jim might have felt. He is appealing to his audience to empathise with Jim’s predicament in the drama he is reconstructing.

This is not unlike Marlow’s attitude to Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, where he is predisposed to Kurtz before he even meets him. He imagines the sort of person he must be and invests his actions with some sort of grandeur. We have no independent evidence by which to judge – only what Marlow tells us.

The narrative chain

The first part of the novel starts out with the story reaching readers in what appears to be a conventional third person omniscient narrative mode. We are given Jim’s background history and taken through his participation in the lead up to the Patna incident. But then an unnamed narrator reveals himself as a colleague of Marlow’s – to whom he hands over the narrative.

The story then purports to be Marlow relating events to a group of people who sit smoking in semi-darkness – a device Conrad was to use again in Heart of Darkness written two years later. The next three-quarters of the book is Marlow’s account of events. Jim tells him what happened on the Patna and then passes on the news of his subsequent life on future occasions when Marlow visits him a his outpost in Patusan.

But then the latter part of the novel is narrated in a manner which puts a great strain on any reader’s credulity. Marlow leaves Jim for the last time with a quarter of the novel still to go, never to see him again. So how does the story reach us?

The unnamed outer narrator (one of Marlow’s audience) tells us that just one of the listening group (described at the ‘privileged reader’) has the remainder of the story revealed to him. The information comes in the form of documents and an explanatory letter sent to him by Marlow. The principal document is a report written by Marlow of an account offeredto him by a dying man – Gentleman Brown.

There are all sorts of logical gaps, inconsistencies, and problems of credibility attached to this ending, and it must be said that this is not the only novel of Conrad’s that gave him difficulties in shaping a satisfactory conclusion to his story.

For instance, the concluding document details the conflict between Jim and Gentleman Brown as the warring groups battle against each other for dominance in Patusan. Brown survives the conflict and escapes, only to encounter illness and near death in the Indian Ocean. Marlow is providentially on hand as he dies, and so hears Brown’s account of the final conflict – which he of course relays as if he were a first-hand witness to the events.

But Brown escapes before the final scenes of Jim’s moral collapse and suicide, so Conrad rather implausibly suggests that these events were relayed to Marlow by Tamb’ Itam – Jim’s loyal bodyguard and servant. This is a man who earlier in the novel could barely speak English.

More importantly, even if we assume that the outer narrator, the ‘privileged reader’ of the documents and Marlow are all present at the two hundred and fifty page meeting which delivers the first three quarters of the narrative – we are not told how the ‘privileged reader’ passes on the story to the outer narrator.

It seems to me that Conrad simply creates problems for himself which could have been avoided. A simple third person omniscient narrative mode would have been a lot easier for delivering the story – or even a narrative recounted by Marlow with fewer contortions of plot and coincidence.

It is often claimed that this complex narrative mode allowed Conrad to show events and characters from multiple perspectives. But the fact is that almost everything we know – characters, setting, and events – are filtered through Marlow’s consciousness. He describes characters – and tells us what to think about them through both conventional description and layer upon layer of philosophising about the moral nature of man (rarely woman) in society.

It also has to be said that Conrad makes very little effort to put any distance between himself as autheor and Marlow as his fictional narrator. Readers have every reason to feel that Marlow is a mouthpiece for Conrad. His opinions are almost indistinguishable from those that Conrad records in his prefaces and notebooks. And Marlow slips repeatedly between the role of first person and third person omniscient narrator. It’s as if Conrad gets carried away with his own (admittedly gripping) story, and forgets the logic of the narrative structures he has built for himself.

The imperialist legacy

It should be noted that despite all of the high-minded sermonising and quasi-philosophic reflections that Conrad puts into Marlow’s words, the novel also contains many of the clichés of English Imperialism, handed to us straight from King Solomon’s Mines. The protagonist Jim is a young, handsome, blue-eyed, curly haired Billy Budd figure who dresses all in white. The natives eventually worship him as a figure of unimpeachable correctness. A mixed-race girl falls in love with him, and he even has a native guard who is so selflessly loyal to Jim that he even pretends to sleep so that he will not worry his master.

Lord Jim – study resources

Lord Jim – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – York Notes – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Lord Jim – AudioBook MP3 unabridged – Amazon UK

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

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Lord Jim – plot summary

Jim is a young English sailor fired with romantic dreams of heroism in the face of danger. On a sea voyage transporting pilgrims from Singapore to Jeddah in the Red Sea, his ship the Patna is involved in a collision. Thinking that the vessel is sinking, the crew (including Jim) abandon ship. However, the ship does not sink, but is rescued by a French boat and towed to safety. There is an official inquest into the incident in Bombay, before which the German captain absconds and at which Jim is stripped of his seaman’s certificate in dishonour.

Marlow meets Jim at the inquest and sympathises with his situation. Understanding Jim’s wish to remove himself from the disgrace, Marlow finds him work in a remote location. Jim is successful, but when a reminder of the Patna affair resurfaces, Jim walks away from his position. This pattern of events is repeated, with Jim retreating further and further from civilization.

He eventually is given a job as trading post chief by Stein, a friend of Marlow’s, and Jim finds himself in Patusan, a remote location in the East Indies. At first he is regarded suspiciously by the natives, but he makes himself popular by overthrowing a local war lord. He takes a common-law wife, and after two or three years feels that he has successfully reclaimed his self-respect and thrown off the shame of the Patna incident.

However, ‘Gentleman’ Brown a criminal marauding Englishman who has stolen a ship and run short of supplies, sails into Patusan and decides to plunder the natives at whatever the cost. He attacks the natives and sets up a temporary camp. Jim negotiates with him and persuades him to leave peacefully, so as to avoid further conflict. But he double-crosses Jim and attacks the natives again, killing the local chief’s son. Jim realises that he has betrayed the trust of the people who looked up to him, and he commits a form of suicide by allowing the local chief to shoot him.

Lord Jim – film version

FILM – Lord Jim (1965) – starring Peter O’Toole

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Principal characters

I	an unnamed outer narrator who relays Marlow’s story
Charles Marlow	a former sea captain, the principal narrator of events
Jim (James)	a young English sailor, fired with notions of heroism (his surname is never revealed)
Fat German	the cowardly captain of the Patna
Archie Ruthvel	principal shipping master in Bombay
Captain Elliot	master attendant in Bombay
Montague Brierly	head of the Patna enquiry, a haughty naval assessor, captain of the Ossa, who commits suicide
Mr Jones	chief officer of the Ossa
French Lieutenant	gun boat officer who boards the stricken Patna
Chester	seaman cum trader in Bombay with guano island scheme
Captain Robinson	former pirate, his business partner
Denver	rice mill owner in Rangoon to whom Marlow recommends Jim
Stein	German trader and entomologist
Cornelius	old cringing man, Jim’s predecessor in Patusan
Doramin	Stein’s overweight ‘war comrade’ in Patusan – chief of the second regional power
Dain Waris	Doramin’s brave son
Tunku Allang	Rajah in Patusan
Sherif Ali	robber baron war lord in Patusan
Jewel	Jim’s mixed-race common-law wife, step-daughter of Cornelius
Tamb’ Itam	Jim’s loyal native guard and servant
‘privileged reader’	an unnamed character to whom Marlow sends documents
‘Gentleman’ Brown	‘son of a baronet’ pirate and buccaneer

Biography

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

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

Nostromo – a review

October 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

revolution and capital accumulation in Latin America

Nostromo is generally regarded by most Conrad commentators as his greatest novel. It embraces wide ranging themes of political struggle, international capitalism, the expansion of Europe and the United States into Latin America, various forms of personal heroism and sacrifice, and the dreams and obsessions which can lead people to self-destruction. The location of the novel is Costaguana, a fictional country on the western seaboard of South America, and the focus of events is in its capital Sulaco, where a silver mine has been inherited by English-born Charles Gould but is controlled by American capitalists in San Francisco.

Competing military factions plunge the country in a state of civil war, and Gould tries desperately to keep the mine working. Amidst political chaos, he dispatches a huge consignment of silver, putting it into the hands of the eponymous hero, the incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores, Nostromo. However, things do not go according to plan. It is almost impossible to provide an account of the plot without giving away what are called in movie criticism ‘plot spoilers’. But the silver does not reach its intended destination, and the remainder of the novel is concerned with both the civil conflict and the attitudes of the people who know that the silver exists, and their vainglorious attempts to acquire it.

The novel has a curious but on the whole impressive structure. The first part of the book is an extraordinarily slow-moving – almost static – account of Costaguana and the back-history of the main characters in the story. Then the central section – more than half the novel – is taken up with the dramatic events of just two or three days and nights in which rebel forces attack the town, the silver is smuggled out, and the scene is set for disaster.

This central section of the novel which covers the scenes of military insurgency and high drama conveys very convincingly the uncertainty of civil war, the powerlessness of individuals, and the force of large scale events. Bandits suddenly become generals, all normal communications are cut off, and nobody can be sure where to turn to for law and order. Amazingly, around two hundred pages of narrative cover only two or three days of action – much of it at night.

The main point of Conrad’s story is that the silver of the mine corrupts almost all who come into contact with it. The inheritance and running of the mine estrange Charles Gould from his wife; once Nostromo has concealed the silver, his knowledge of its location eventually corrupts him; and the rebel leader Sotillo is driven almost made with desire to possess it. Only the saintly Emilia Gould has the strength to resist it, refusing to know where it is buried, even when the information is offered by the last person to know, on his death bed.

A great deal of the narrative tension in this long novel turns on who knows what about whom, and many of the key scenes are drenched in dramatic irony built on coincidences which have all the improbability of the nineteenth century novel hanging about them. At one point a completely new character suddenly appears as a stowaway on a boat, and then improbably survives a collision with another ship in the dark by hanging onto the other boat’s anchor. And this is merely a plot device allowing him to transmit misleading information to his captors – and incidentally allows Conrad to indulge in a rather unpleasant bout of anti-Semitism.

In common with many other novels from Conrad’s late phase, the narrative is conveyed to us in a very complex manner. It passes from third person omniscient narrator to first person accounts of events by fictional characters. Authorial point of view and the chronology of events both change alarmingly; the narrative is sometimes taken over temporarily by a fictional character, or is recounted via an improbably long letter which we are meant to believe is being written (in pencil) in the heat of gunfire and other tumultuous events.

There’s also a great deal of geographic uncertainty. As reports come in from one end of the country to the other, and the loyalty of one province and its leaders is mentioned in relation to another – as well as its strategic position on the seaboard – I began to wish for a map to conceptualise events.

Once a heroic solution has been found for the plight of the beleaguered loyalists (an epic Paul Revere type ride on horseback by Nostromo) the story suddenly flashes forward to the successful years of recovery and the aftermath. Nostromo seeks to consolidate his successful position by a judicious marriage, but is distracted by his passionate love for his intended’s younger sister. Even this detail is linked to the silver of the mine, and it brings about the truly tragic finale.

Despite all Conrad’s stylistic peculiarities (and even some lapses in grammar) this is a magnificent novel which amply repays the undoubtedly demanding efforts required to read it. But that is true of many modern classics – from Mrs Dalloway to Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Joseph Conrad, Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.524, ISBN: 0199555915

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

Nostromo – a tutorial

January 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Nostromo (1904) is Joseph 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, and 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.

Joseph Conrad

Nostromo – critical commentary

Political theme

This is generally regarded by most Conrad commentators as his greatest novel. It embraces wide ranging themes of political struggle, international capitalism, the expansion of Europe and the United States into Latin America, various forms of personal heroism and sacrifice, and the dreams and obsessions which can lead people to self-destruction.

The location of the novel is Costaguana, a fictional country on the western seaboard of South America, and the focus of events is in its capital Sulaco, where a silver mine has been inherited by English-born Charles Gould but is controlled by American capitalists in San Francisco. Competing military factions plunge the country in a state of civil war, and Gould tries desperately to keep the mine working. Amidst political chaos, he dispatches a huge consignment of silver, putting it into the hands of the eponymous hero, the incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores, Nostromo.

However, things do not go according to plan. It is almost impossible to provide an account of the plot without giving away what are called in movie criticism ‘plot spoilers’. But the silver does not reach its intended destination, and the remainder of the novel is concerned with both the civil conflict and the attitudes of the people who know that the silver exists, and their vainglorious attempts to acquire it.

Structure

The silver of the mine

Narrative mode(s)

Nostromo – study resources

Nostromo – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Nostromo – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Nostromo – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Nostromo – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Nostromo – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Nostromo – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Nostromo – Everyman’s Library – Amazon UK

Nostromo – Everyman’s Library – Amazon US

Nostromo – York Notes – Amazon UK

Nostromo – 1996 BBC adaptation on VHS – Amazon UK

Nostromo – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook editions

Conrad: Nostromo – Landmarks of World Literature – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

Nostromo – audioBook version at Project Gutenberg

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

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Nostromo – plot summary

Charles Gould is a native Costaguanero of English descent who owns the silver-mining concession in Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and puts his weight behind the Ribierist project, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators. Instead, the silver mine and the wealth it has generated become a bone for the local warlords to fight over, plunging Costaguana into a new round of chaos. Among others, the revolutionary Montero invades Sulaco; Señor Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, entrusts it to Nostromo, the trusted ‘capataz de los cargadores’ (head longshoreman).

Nostromo is an Italian expatriate who has risen to that position through his daring exploits. (‘Nostromo’ is Italian for mate or boatswain, as well as a contraction of nostro uomo – ‘our man’.) He is so named by his employer, Captain Mitchell. Nostromo’s real name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza – Fidanza meaning ‘trust’ in archaic Italian. Nostromo is what would today be called a shameless self-publicist. He is believed by Señor Gould to be incorruptible, and for this reason is entrusted with hiding the silver from the revolutionaries. He accepts the mission not out of loyalty to Señor Gould, but rather because he sees an opportunity to increase his own fame.

A pivotal episode in the novel takes place at night, when Nostromo, together with an escaping French journalist Decoud, sets out at sea to save the silver – not realising he has a stowaway on board. His boat is in collision with a ship bringing the rebels, and he is forced to scuttle his boat and bury the silver on an island.

In the end it is Nostromo, together with a ruined cynic of a doctor and a journalist (all acting for self-serving reasons), who are able to restore some kind of order to Sulaco. It is they who are able to persuade two of the warlords to aid Sulaco’s secession from Costaguana and protect it from other armies. Nostromo, the incorruptible one, is the key figure in setting the wheels in motion.

In Conrad’s universe, however, almost no one is incorruptible. The exploit does not bring Nostromo the fame he had hoped for, and he feels slighted and used. Feeling that he has risked his life for nothing, he is consumed by resentment, which leads to his corruption and ultimate destruction, for he had kept secret the true fate of the silver after all others believed it lost at sea, rather than hidden on an offshore island. In recovering the silver for himself, he is shot and killed, mistaken for a trespasser, by the father of his fiancée, the keeper of the lighthouse on the island of Great Isabel.

Joseph Conrad – biography

Principal characters

Charles Gould	Owner of the San Tome silver mine
Emilia Gould	His principled and attractive wife
Dr Monygham	An English expatriate doctor, survivor of torture
Martin Decoud	Radical French journalist
Giorgio Viola	Ex-Garibaldian inn-keeper
Teresa Viola	Viola’s elder daughter – Nostromo’s ‘intended’
Giselle Viola	Viola’s younger daughter
Captain Mitchell	English harbour chief
Colonel Sotillo	Savage insurrectionary leader
Pedro Montero	Costaguanan war lord
Antonia Avellanos	a patriot
Sulaco	mining town on the coast of Costaguana
Costaguana	Imaginary country on the western seaboard of South America

Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

The Complete Critical Guide to Joseph Conrad is a good introduction to Conrad criticism. It includes a potted biography, an outline of the stories and novels, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the early comments by his contemporaries to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Conrad journals. These guides are very popular. Recommended.

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

Prince Roman

September 7, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Prince Roman was written by Joseph Conrad in 1910 and first published in 1911 in The Oxford and Cambridge Review. It was posthumously collected in Tales of Hearsay, which was first published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1925. The tale is based on the real life story of Prince Roman Sanguszko of Poland (1800–81). The other tales in the collection are The Black Mate, The Warrior’s Soul, and The Tale

Prince Sanguszko’s coat of arms

Prince Roman – critical commentary

Content

This is an unashamedly patriotic piece of writing on Conrad’s part. Prince Roman is a Pole who gives up his comfortable position in the aristocracy to fight as a (virtually) unknown soldier resisting Russian oppression. When captured, he has every opportunity to escape punishment, but declares himself unequivocally committed to Polish liberation. As a result he suffers a quarter of a century in the nineenth century Tsarist equivalent of the GULAG – the Siberian mines – before returning to live in humble circumstances on what should have been his own estate before devoting his life to helping other people. There is none of the ambiguity and complexity that is normally found in Conrad’s other works, nor any of the light ironic touches in his commentary within the narration.

History

The story is based on the real life history of Prince Roman Stanislaw Sanguszko (1800–1881) who was a Polish aristocrat, patriot, political and social activist. Conrad’s fictional account is remarkably faithful to the historical details of Sanguszko’s life – though in some regards the truth is even more remarkable than the fiction. For instance, part of the punishment for taking part in the insurrection was that he should walk in chains to his place of exile. This was a distance of 3,300 kilometres which took ten months to complete.

Narrative

The main problem with the tale, from a technical point of view, is that it mixes narrative modes in a way that reflects adversely on the overall artistic effect. The story begins in first person narrative mode: the un-named narrator recalls having seen as a child this fabled Polish patriot, when Roman was an old man. That is, the narrative starts at the end of its chronological events.

The narrator then fills in the details of Roman’s background – information of a biographical nature which could be publicly available. But gradually, the narrative slips into third person omniscient mode. We are presented with Roman’s thoughts and feelings whilst he is in the Polish army of resistance – information which would not be available to anyone but Roman himself.

Then at the end of the tale, Conrad returns to a first person narrative mode, with the un-named narrator rounding off the sad but heroic account of Prince Roman’s life story. Conrad makes these transitions quite smoothly, and most readers are unlikely to complain, but in terms of strict narrative credibility and logic they are illegitimate.

Prince Roman – study resources

Tales of Hearsay – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

Tales of Hearsay – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Prince Roman – 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

Prince Roman – plot summary

An un-named narrator recalls as a child once meeting Prince Roman, who by that time was a bald and deaf old man. This reminiscence forms the springboard for a potted life history, which is the substance of the narrative. Roman comes from an aristocratic Polish family. His wife dies two years after the birth of their daughter, and Roman is badly affected by the loss. He finds solace by retreating into the countryside, and whilst there hears news of a successful patriotic uprising against the occupying Russians. Roman renounces his position as a military office in the Tsar’s army and announces his intention of joining the nationalist rebels. His father understands Roman’s patriotism, but thinks this is rather rash and impolitic.

Roman summons an old family servant and confides in him his intention of volunteering in the partisan army. He enlists under a false name (Sergeant Peter) and distinguishes himself for courage and valour. However, although unharmed, he is eventually taken prisoner by the Russians. There he is recognised by his captors. News of his arrest is sent to St Petersburg, where his family use their wealth and influence to plead for clemency.

The military commission that tries his case attempts to guide his responses to questioning to bring about an acquittal, but he states quite bluntly that he joined the rebellion from ‘political conviction’. He is condemned to the Siberian mines, which at that time was considered a living death. Because of his disgrace, his daughter inherits his estates, and lives abroad – in the South of France and Austria. Twenty-five years later, on his release, Roman goes to live in a modest house on one of the estates and dedicates himself to doing public good.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
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.

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 Black Mate

September 5, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

The Black Mate was written, according to Conrad’s own reckoning, in 1886. This would make it his earliest tale or short story (though it is not so short). But it was not published until 1908, and was then republished posthumously as part of the collection Tales of Hearsay in 1925. The other stories in the collection were The Warrior’s Soul, Prince Roman, and The Tale.

The Black Mate – critical commentary

Narrative

The tale starts in first person narrative mode. The un-named narrator is a friend of the mate of the Sapphire Winston Bunter, and he is present in the restaurant conversation where the story begins. In fact Conrad rather coyly signals his presence in his own account of events.

There was also a very young shipmaster, with a little fair moustache and serious eyes, who said nothing, and only smiled faintly from time to time.

But on Bunter’s voyage aboard the Sapphire to Calcutta and back, events are presented in third person omniscient narrative mode, with the thoughts and feelings of the secondary and tertiary characters fully expressed.

Then when Bunter nears home and his wife inherits the money, the narrator suddenly reappears to present the conclusion to the story as a first person narrative again.

Conrad offers no explanation of how the information in the central part of the story reaches us, nor any persuasive logical reason why there should be two narrative modes at work in the one tale.

None of this would be terribly important were it not for the fact that Conrad has become celebrated for his inventive use of narrators and the complex structure of his tales and novels. But the fact is that he often makes mistakes in the logic and the narrative paths by which information reaches the reader – and this is an early example of that weakness, which is worth noting.

He also sometimes plays fast and lose with the conventions of tale-telling – as he does here. The narrator knows perfectly well at the outset of the tale why Bunter’s hair is so black, yet he conceals the fact from the reader with teasing hints that Bunter has a secret (without revealing what it is). In fact it is the narrator who advises Bunter to dye his hair in the first place. This device reduces the story to not much more than an elaborate and delayed joke.

The Black Mate – study resources

The Black Mate – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

The Black Mate – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

The Black Mate – 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 Black Mate – plot summary

A number of sea captains meet at a restaurant in the Port of London. They tease Captain Johns, who thinks that only young seamen should be on ships. Then they discuss ghosts and comment on Bunter, the mate of the Sapphire who once lost a ship in the Indian Ocean and who has strikingly black hair.

Bunter complains to the narrator that Captain Johns has been treating him suspiciously, and has been trying to persuade him to share his belief in ghosts and spiritualism. He has also been oppressed by a berthing master who recognises him from somewhere. It seems that Bunter has some sort of secret, as well as the bad luck that has dogged him ever since the loss of his ship. He has been a captain, but is now forced to accept the position of mate.

The Sapphire sets off bound for Calcutta, and encounters rough seas in the Southern Ocean, which results in breakages of some of Bunter’s personal belongings. Captain Johns continues to harass Bunter with his belief in spiritualism and he regards any signs of scepticism as a personal insult. Then one night Bunter suddenly falls down a ladder and injures his head. There is a general mystery regarding the reason for this accident. When he recovers he tells Captain Johns that he was startled by an apparition and fell backwards in terror.

Bunter continues to be ill, and he is converted to a belief in spiritualism. Then he reveals that the fright has turned his hair white.

Meanwhile, back in London Mrs Bunter inherits money from a distant relative but cannot pass the good news on to her husband because the Sapphire is en route back from Calcutta. She goes to meet the ship at Dunkirk, along with the narrator.

In Dunkirk, Bunter reveals to the narrator that he merely slipped on some brass plates at the top of the ladder, and his hair turned white because he ran out of the hair dye he had been using to make himself look younger. The ghostly apparition was an invention to placate Captain Johns. Bunter leaves the Sapphire and goes off with his wife.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

The Black Mate – principal characters

I	the un-named narrator, a friend of Bunter
Winston Bunter	a former captain, now a mate
Mrs Bunter	his wife
Captain Johns	commander of the Sapphire

The Black Mate

first edition 1925 Fisher Unwin

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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The Black Mate

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