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3. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Life
Conrad was born in Poland in 1857, when the country was still occupied by
Russian at that time. His parents were wealthy and cultured people who
actively involved in the Polish revolution against Russians. When he was
only a seven-year-boy, his mother died of tuberculosis. His father exerted
great influence on his values of life and career and lived in exile until
1869. But his father died when they were allowed to move back and Conrad was
just eleven years old. After the death of his parents, his uncle adopted him
and brought him up. He received his education at schools in Cracow from 1868
to 1873. He was longing to go to sea from an early age and started his sea
travel to Marseilles, France as a sailor at a very young age. His numerous
sea voyages to West India, France provided him with rich writing materials
and inspirations. In 1886 he became a British citizen. After his retirement
he devoted himself wholly to writing. His first novel was published at the
age of 38. He got married in 1895. By the time of his death, he had
established his fame as one of the leading Modernists.
Conrad was a fascinating and transitional literary
figure in English literature. He was highly regarded as a novelist whose
work displayed a deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique.
He wrote both novels and short stories. Most of his novels were based on his
overseas experiences as a seaman. Based on his own experiences, his novels
are often autobiographical. As a young sailor traveling in exotic lands, he
had been cut off from family, friends, and country. Many of his works
revealed his attitude towards colonialism. He took a more
post-colonialism
attitude, for he did not believe that Western culture should have an
authoritative voice over the colonial countries. Freeing from restraints of
an organized society, man became the only master of his moral principles.
Though born as a foreigner, he wrote novels in English
as his third language and had established himself as the master of the art
of English novel. He did develop his own writing style that set the tone of
his novels. His first novel is Almayer’s Folly (1895) with a Malay
setting. As a novelist, what Conrad concerned most was the exploration of
human behavior under extreme circumstances. It was important for Conrad to
maintain personal dignity or honor in those adverse conditions. The
Nigger of the Narcissus (1897) came from his real experience as second
mate on a sailing vessel. It was a tragic story of a dying nigger and a
moral trial of men. His major novels included An Outcast of the Island
(1896), Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), Nostromo
(1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911),
Chance (1913) and Victory (1915). Of his short stories, the best
well-known was Heart of Darkness (1902). In some of his novels,
Conrad employed “Marlow” as his narrator and at same time allowed the reader
to approach the characters from different or multi
point of view. Moreover,
he tried to keep readers at a distance from the characters in order to
present them objectively.
Lord Jim
It is the story of a narrator named Marlow's struggle to tell
and to understand the life story of a man named Jim. Jim is a promising
young man who rises quickly through the ranks and soon becomes chief mate on
a vessel called Patna. Raised on popular sea literature, Jim constantly
daydreams about becoming a hero. But when the ship strikes an underwater
object and begins to leak, he involuntarily abandons the ship and the
passengers to their fate as the rest of the crew. The Patna does not sink,
however, and Jim remains along to face an official inquiry. It is at this
inquiry, where Jim is stripped of his officer's certification, that he first
meets Marlow. Jim tells Marlow his story, and Marlow helps him obtain a
series of jobs. Yet the Patna incident haunts Jim and he tries to atone for
this act of cowardice. Finally, Marlow helps to find a job as trading post
manager for Jim in the remote territory of Patusan. There Jim helps the
natives defeat a local bandit and wins great respect from the inhabitants.
People rely on Jim to enforce justice and he becomes Lord Jim. He falls in
love with Jewel, the beautiful, half-native stepdaughter of the previous
trading post manager, Cornelius. Soon some other white people, headed by
Gentleman Brown, show up in Patusan to plunder the village. A conflict
ensues but Jim begs the chiefs not to kill the invaders and guarantees with
his own life that they will leave. But Cornelius, annoyed by Jim's success
and his own failures, is secretly in collusion with Brown. The treacherous
Brown kills the son of Chief Doramin. Jim goes to Doramin and chooses to die
at the grieving father’s gun.
Lord Jim is remarkable for its elaborately woven
scheme of narration. The writer approaches his characters from different
angles. Much of the novel is concerned with Marlow's attempts to piece
together Jim's story from a variety of sources. The novel fragments time and
Marlow juxtaposes different, non-chronological pieces of Jim's story, all
the while seeking to discover the source of his own fascination with Jim and
the meaning behind the story. Lord Lim is described as an almost hopelessly
romantic
idealist. To Conrad integrity is the highest trait of personal
honor or heroism. So only Jim’s moral courage in taking an honorable death
can restore him to dignity.
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