Joseph Conrad Archives - Page 6 of 6

Victory

September 28, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, further reading, and web links

Victory (1915) was first conceived by Conrad as a short story to be called The Dollars. But like many of his planned fictions it expanded as soon as he started writing, and went on to become one of his longest novels. The original manuscript was much longer than the final work, which was first published in serial form in Munsey’s Magazine (New York).

Joseph Conrad

Victory – critical commentary

Narrative

Part I of the novel is introduced by an un-named outer narrator who recounts events largely passed on to him by Captain Davidson from his travels and knowledge of the region in which the novel is set. This type of indirect narrative strategy will be familiar to anyone who has read Conrad’s other works, such as Lord Jim (1900), Falk: A Reminiscence (1903), and Under Western Eyes (1911). It supplies what might be called the ‘back story’ to the events which will follow in Parts II-IV.

Readers are forced to conceptualise the portrait of Axel Heyst through the double filter of Davidson’s and the narrator’s point of view – whilst keeping in mind that both of these are fictional constructs created by Conrad himself.

But from Part II onwards, the outer-narrator disappears, and events are presented in a third person omniscient narrative mode. It is as if Conrad has forgotten his own original narrative structure and has reverted to the more traditional and flexible mode of story-telling. Davidson makes a credulity-straining re-appearance like some deus-ex-machina in the final pages of the novel – but the outer-narrator never re-appears.

In fact the last few pages of the novel are an account written in third-person omniscient mode of Davidson’s interview with a government official – so in logical terms Conrad does not supply any credible means by which this information is reaching the reader.

Even if the reader accepts this blurring of distinctions between a first and third-person narrator, there remain problems with the narrative logic. In Part I of the story Davidson is puzzled and curious regarding Lena, and a great deal is made of the fact that he doesn’t know what she looks like.

But either a third-person omniscient narrator must know what she looks like, or the disappearance of the un-named outer narrator needs to be explained.

More seriously, there is no plausible route (other than via a third person omniscient narrator) for information regarding Heyst’s and Lena’s feelings about each other, and their anxieties during the dramatic finale – since they are both dead at of the end of the novel.

This is a problem of narrative logic which affects many of Conrad’s major novels. Similar issues affect Chance, Lord Jim, and Under Western Eyes. Readers and serious critics of his work seem to accept these compositional flaws in exchange for the dramatic intensity of his stories.

Doubles

The central drama of the novel is provided by the battle of wills and war of nerves as Mr Jones and Ricardo invade Heyst’s secure retreat and corner him in an attempt to steal his ‘treasure’. Jones wants Heyst’s money (which doesn’t really exist), and Ricardo wants to steal Lena from him.

Yet Jones and Heyst are curiously similar. Both of them have been restless wanderers, detatched from society, and both have adopted a negative attitude to the world. Heyst wishes to escape into solitude, and Jones spends most of his time alone, nursing his febrile state of being. Jones has murdered Antonio, Pedro’s brother, and Heyst is (falsely) accused of ‘murdering’ his business partner Morrison when he sends him back to England.

In another sense they are the opposite of each other. Heyst is a robust, masculine figure whose physical presence is repeatedly emphasised. Jones on the other hand is thin, etiolated and feminised. He has ‘long, feminine eyelashes’, ‘beautifully pencilled eyebrows’, and he last appears ‘tightly enfolded in an old but gorgeous blue silk dressing gown’.

Victory – study resources

Victory – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Victory – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Victory – Kindle eBook

Victory – DVD film adaptation at Amazon [Region 1]

Victory – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle £1.92

Victory – film details at International Movie Database

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Victory – plot summary

Part I

As a sudden gesture of generosity, the Swedish recluse Axel Heyst pays the shipping fine incurred by Morrison, an Englishman he has only just met. They then go into a business partnership trading in coal for the newly developed steamships. Morrison returns to England but dies there. Heyst is appointed general manager of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, and at first prospers. But the company goes into liquidation, and disillusioned with life in general Heyst becomes almost a hermit on the remote island of Samburan.

His colleague Captain Davidson passes on news of Heyst, then brings him in person to Schomberg’s hotel in Surabaya. When he returns to pick him up again, he learns from Mrs Schomberg that Heyst has run off with a young girl from a visiting all-female orchestra. When Davidson next visits Samburan, Heyst asks him to return Mrs Schomberg’s shawl with which she has aided their escape. Davidson returns the shawl but fails to learn anything further about the girl.

Part II

Heyst meets Lena playing in the orchestra at Schomberg’s hotel in Surabaya where she is being bullied by the leader’s wife and pursued by hotelier Schomberg. Heyst and Lena rendezvous in the garden at night where she pleads for his assistance and offers herself to him sexually. Schomberg is eaten up with jealousy regarding this liaison.

The two desperados Jones and Ricardo arrive at the hotel with their servant Pedro. They bully Schomberg into accepting their scheme for gambling on the premises. Ricardo eventually recounts their history to Schomberg – an account which involves deception, theft, and murder as the backdrop to their joint life as wandering gamblers. In order to get them out of his hotel, Schomberg tells them that Heyst has killed his business partner Morrison, stolen all his money, and is now a rich man living in vulnerable isolation on Samburan.

Part III

On Samburan Heyst recounts to Lena how he first set himself up on the island with his Chinese servant Wang. He also explains the powerful influence of his father, a writer-philosopher who has inculcated him with a defensive and rather negative attitude to life. When he also reveals to her his past business with Morrison, Lena tells him of the malicious lies Schomberg has been spreading amongst hotel guests. They discuss his pessimistic views and his inability to express the protective love he feels towards her.

Then Jones, Ricardo, and Pedro arrive at the island. Heyst gives them shelter, but immediately becomes apprehensive regarding their intrusion into his relationship with Lena. When his revolver disappears, he immediately suspects his servant Wang (which proves to be correct). Jones and Ricardo discuss the prospects for success in their venture to steal Heyst’s ‘treasure’.

Part IV

Ricardo sneaks around looking for Lena, then attacks her in the bungalow. She fights him off, then helps him to escape in order to protect Heyst. Meanwhile Wang, having witnessed the attack, announces to Heyst that he is leaving. Heyst holds inconclusive talks with Jones, who insists that Pedro become his servant. Heyst decides to look for Wang, whilst Jones plans to gamble with Heyst to secure all his money.

Heyst seeks Wang’s help, but it is refused. Heyst realises that he is powerless and is trapped. Ricardo arrives to invite Heyst to see Jones, who is feigning illness. Heyst urges Lena to escape to the other side of the island, then visits Jones, where he reveals the truth of their situation, including the presence of Lena. Since Jones is a profound misogynist, this turns him against Ricardo. When they return to Heyst’s bungalow, Jones shoots at Ricardo, but kills Lena who has remained to protect Heyst. At this very moment Davidson suddenly arrives. Jones tracks down Ricardo and kills him, then apparently commits suicide. Heyst creates a funeral pyre for himself and Lena by setting the bungalow on fire.

Principal characters

I	the un-named outer narrator
Axel Heyst	a Swedish former manager of the Tropical Belt Coal company
Morrison	the English owner of trading ship Capricorn
Wilhelm Schomberg	a German hotel proprietor in Surabaya (45)
Mrs Schomberg	his ugly, wooden-like wife
Captain Davidson	captain of the merchant vessel, the Sissie
Julius Tesman	trading agent in Surabaya
Lena	a beautiful violin player (20) (also called Alma and Magdalena)
Sgr Zangiacomo	leader of the all-female orchestra
Sgra Zangiacomo	his obnoxious and bullying wife
Mr Jones	a gambler and murderer
Martin Ricardo	his ‘secretary’ – a desperado
Pedro	a Colombian alligator hunter, their servant
Antonio	Pedro’s brother, who is shot by Jones
Wang	Heyst’s Chinese servant

Biography

Setting

The first part of the novel is set in Surabaya, a provincial capital in East Java. The remainder and majority of the events take place on the ficticious island of Samburan, which is located somewhere in the Malaysian archipelago.

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Other works 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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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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Joseph Conrad links

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

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, further reading, and web links

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

Works by Joseph Conrad
HTML texts, digital scans, and eTexts 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

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

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

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