JOSEPH CONRAD

NOSTROMO:

THE CONCEPT OF THm

 JOSEPH CONRAD

NOSTROMO: THE CONCEPT OF TU1E

BY

M. A. O'BRIEN, B.A.

A Thesis

Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies

in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for the Degree

Haster of Arts

NcMaster University

(September) 1972
MASTER OF ARTS (1972) McMASTER UNIVERSITY
Hamilton, Ontario

TITLE: Joseph Conrad's Nostr.£!!l..?~: The Concept of Time

AUTHOR: M. A. O'Brien, B.A. (Hc.}j,aster University)

SUPERVISOR: Professor Alan Bishop

NUMBER OF PAGES: 72

(ii)
 It is my view that an understanding of the concept of time is

central to a reading of Nostromo. For Joseph Conrad, the community of

mankind was held together by the illusion of civilization. Behind this

illusion exists a hostile, malignant universe that reveals itself, at

will, to certain individuals. Conrad's major fiction was directed to

exposing this underlying reality and shattering the illusion. Thus the

radical time shifts within the form of Nostromo effectively destroy

what is essential to preserving that illusion ~- an unquestioning

belief in sequential, coherent time. The individual for whom this

seIlse of time no longer exists penetrates the illusion to discover the

destructive element in reality. The destruction of chronological time

and the discovery of reality are, in Conrad's fiction, achieved

through a perfect union of theme and technique. This thesis will not

attempt to separate these aspects of Nos~r~5 but rather it assumes

that theme and technique are one.

(iii)
 TEXTUAL NOTE

Works not listed in the bibliography are given full reference

in the footnotes. Those footnotes that appear in shortened form

(for example, Hillis Miller, Poets of Reality) are listed fully in the

bibliography.

(iv)
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I: Introduction 1

Chapter II 16

Chapter III 37

Chapter IV 53

Epilogue: Conrad and the Tradition 63

List of Works Consulted 71

(v)
 Hy sincere thanks to Dr. Alan Bishop for his kind and patient

assistance; and my appreciation to my husband Michael, for his comments

and suggestions ,.,hl.ch constantly inspired me to new ideas and directions

of thought.

(vi)
 If Bitterness is the very condition of human existence . •

Intelligence itself [is] a thing of no great account except for

us to torment ourselves ~vith. For directly you begin to use it

the questions of right and vlrong arise and these are things of

the air with no connection whatever vlith the fundamental realities

of life."

(Joseph Conrad, Letter to Edward Garnett,

16 Hay 1918).

(vii)
 I

INTRODUCTION

"The real signiificance of crime is in its being a

breach of faith lvith the community of mankind • , • II
(Lord Jim, 121)

lIThe time is out of joint, 0 cursed spitel That ever I \Vas born

to set it right!!! (Hamlet,I, v,). After Hamlet's encounter \>lith his

father's ghost, he becomes an outsider to the human community, alienated

from his society. In a moment of insight Hamlet perceives the falseness

of the world to which he once belonged and recognizes the reality that

underlies it. liThe time is out of joint" because Hamlet is trapped ,,,ith-

in the moment of contact with his father's ghost; all subsequent thought

and action on his part will be determined by this particular moment. His

consciousness becomes obsessed entirely by the charge of his father's

spirit to avenge his death. Only this moment of experience has meaning

and relevance in his mind. He must now live in that timeless world where

he is committed to his destiny. Everything in Hamlet's experience that

preceded or follmvS his meeting with the ghost can no longer be meaningful

to him. liThe deepest experience of truth is a moment which is neither

past~ present, nor future, but out of time altogether, like death itself. rrl
When a character has experienced this moment of Iltruthrr, he subsequently

lives in the tragic vision.

1. Hillis Miller, Poet~_of R~ality, p. 31,

1
 2

Those 'vho possess the tragic vision are completely dominated

by a subjective perspective that obeys its own morality; such a perspective

no longer acknowledges the existence of a macrocosmic unity and order,

The individual consciousness transfers the centre and source of value to

himself. Thus everything outside the individual acquires arbitrary value

as it is assimilated into his consciousness. When this happens, the man

becomes a nihilist; in J. Hillis Miller's definition of the term, nihilism

is "the nothingness of consciousness, when consciousness becomes the

2
foundation of everything."

Part of the purpose of this thesis is to show that Conrad's

fiction represents a culmination of a nihilistic tendency in post-

Renaissance and t more especially, in post-ROTIlantic literature.

The special place of Joseph Conrad in English literature

lies in the fact that in him the nihilism covertly
dominant in modern culture is brought to the surface and
shown for what it is • • • Conrad is part of European
literature and takes his place with Dostoevsky, Harm,
Gide, Proust, and Camus as an explorer of modern
perspectivism and nihilism • • • It remained for Conrad
to explore nihilism to its depths • • • • 3

A niM.listic ,.,orld is essentially a timeless world. The concept

of chronologj_cal ti.me is a means by which man attempts to give his life

order and meaning. Through it, he patterns.his consciousness in spatial

terms; that is, he can order and separate his thoughts and emotions

in the same way as physical objects are ordered and separated in space.

Thus, a lUan feels that his perceptions and emotions are comprehensible

and not a chaotic fluidity of interpenetrating states of consciousness.

------_.-
2. Ib:i,d., p. 3.

3. Ibid., pp. 5-6.

 3

A conception of past, present and future allows for an illusory sense

of freedom in that an individual believes he can transcend his past to

find change and renewal in the future. When the illusion of time is

shattered, the human consciousness experiences psychological disorientation

from a moral order once believed to underlie human existence. Then one

is forced to confront an alien amoral universe. Conrad's characters

experience this kind of psychological process. After the shocking moment

of cosmic revelation, these characters are caught within the tragic

vision and become victims of their o\o1n subjectivity. Kurtz, Lord Jim

and Hinnie Verloe are three such characters. So are Giorgio Viola,

Dr. Monygham, Nostromo and Decoud in Nostromo, ,"hlch will be the main

subject of: th:f.s thesis. However it is desirable to consider the forme}:

characters in the novels in which they appear before beginning a study

of Nostromo. A brief analysis of Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and The

Secret A.gent will serve as a suitable context in "lhich to place NostrOl~t

because these novels strikingly manifest the basic themes and techniques

that Conrad "laS to develop more fully and completely in Nost~.

Heart of Darkness is primarily about two characters, Marlow and

Kurtz, "lho are forced to confront the moral implications of nihilism.

Kurtz makes himself the absolute moral centre of the universe, behaving

according to the demands of his own subjectivity. He is like Lord Jim

in his devotion to a romantic conception of himself through which he

becomes his o\yu standard of conduct. Kurtz's dedication to the ideal

of civilizing the African savages betrays him; instead of serving the

ideal he personally identifies with it. He becomes the absolute master

and deity of the savage tribes, the price of which is his full participat-
 4

ion in their way of life. Kurtz's cry "Exterminate all the brutes ll4

thus expresses not only a desire for self-annihilation but also a desire

to annihilate the primordial darkness, the source from t~hich he came.

His tragic vision is the knowledge that civilization exists by momentarily

annihilating the darkness upon "lhich it is built: IIHe live in the

flicker ", as Marlmv puts it (7). The IIhorror II in which Kurtz finds

himself is that 1I0riginal chaos ll , the "secret substance of all things ll5

to ,,,hich all things inevitably ret.urn. Attempts to preserve civilization.

that lIstmny arrangement of small conveniences 11,6 are almost impossible

when not in direct contact with it. Kurtz perceives the truth of existence

lI stripped of its cloak of time ll (60).

Unlike Kurtz, ,"1ho totally immerses himself in "the destructive

element ll , Marlow makes a deliberate commitment to civilization in his

symbolic lie to "the Intended". Marlow's obsession for rivets is symbolic

of his need to keep things together, to keep the illusion intact. The

II miracle" chief accountant evokes his respect and admiration because of

his ability to preserve the illusion of civilization in the midst of

moral darkness.

", • • I respected the fellow. Yes, I respected his

collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His
appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's

--.-.-----------------~.

4. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, (ed. Franklin
Walker New York: Bantam, i969) , p.' 84. All subseque-nt" quotations from
Heart of Darkness Hill be taken from this edition, referred to only
by page numb~

5. Hillis Miller, p. 28.

6. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), p. 236.

All subsequent quotations will be taken from this edition of Lord Jim
and indicated by page numbers.
 5

durmny; but in the great demoralization of the land,

he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His
starched collars and got up shirt-fronts were
achievements of character. 1I (28)

Marlow"s w'ay of maintaining contact with civilization is merely

by keeping busy -- "l-lhen you have to attend to things of that sort, to

the mere incidents of the surface, the reality -- the reality, I tell

you fades. The inner truth is hidden _.- luckily, luckily" (56) •

Although Kurtz occupies a central place in the novella, the real

centre is Marlow, and indeed it is his story. The main concern of Heart

of l!.arkn~~ is with Marlow' s gro~1ing self-awareness and the way in ~vhich

he deals vlith it. Although he has glimpsed the horror which Kurtz

embraces, he draws back his flhesitating foot,tI He deliberately affirms

his allegiance to the human community in his lie to "the Intended tt , The

horror of this act appears to Marlow as he becomes increasingly aware of

the metaphoric identification of lithe Intended" with Kurtz, He 'vent to

the Congo for ivory so that he could marry her. She is the symhol of

all his desires and future reward, the ideal which caused him to act.

The identities of Kurtz and his IIIntended" merge in the image of the

ivory which is used to describe both characters. Marlow perceives Kurtz's

physical appearance in terms of ivory: III could see the cage of his ribs

all astir ..• It was as though an animated image of death carved out of

old ivory had been shaking its hand •• ," and "I saw on that ivory face

the expression of sombre pride • , • II (101; 118). He emphasizes the

whiteness of the Intended's forehead: "But ~vith every ~vord spoken the

room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained

111ull1i!led by the unextinguishable light of belief and love '.' (127) , Ti-ley

are further associated through thel,r comnlon relationship to darkness, The

 6

"Intended r S" link ,dth the darkness becomes most intense when Harlml

sees in her the African woman.

She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure,

stretching them back and \olith clasped pale hands across
the fading and narrow sheen of the windo\o] • • • a
tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture
another one~ tragic also, and bedecked with powerless
charms, stretching bare bro\vu arms over the glitter of
the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. (130)

liThe Intended" represents what Kurtz 'vas before he had to face

himself, and thus her name and relation to Kurtz are extremely ironical.

She embodies the pure idealism that can comfortably exist ~l7ithin the

context of the illusory world of man; Kurtz is the tragic result of the

confrontation between the idealism born out of illusion and the horrific

reality of the cosmos.

l1ar10\.; is left to grapple vlith his knmvledge of both worlds.

The only meaningful activity left to him is in telling his story. In

doing this, he creates a delicate connection between the Appollonian

world of man and the Dionysian abyss w~ic~ contains it. Only through

language can Marlow reveal, though momentarily, the reality of the

universe. Though not able to capture the essence of the darkness, language

can convey its image, so that man knows the value of preserving the

illusion. If everyone acknowledges the lie of the human world, then it

can be sustained against the abyss. This act of acknowledgement constitutes

the only meaningful bond bet\"een men. In abandoning himself to the other

world, Kurtz breaks his allegiance to the human community.

Marlow sees in both Kurtz and Lord Jim an experience which is

potentially his own. Captain Bri.erly has the same attitude to Jim, but

escapes the burden of this knowledge through suicide. The narrator of

 7

Heart of Darkness suggests that Marlow is changed by his experience

and is not a typical seaman. He describes Marlmv in passive terms 9

having an ascetic aspect, resembling an "idol", "indistinct and s1-lene l

like a "meditating Buddha. 1I Hhenever Marlow appears in Conrad's novels

he is a passive observer of life, never directly involved. It can be

assumed that because of his knmvledge he can no longer directly involve

himself in human affairs. His need to tell his story shows that he is

caught ~"ithin his past; every time he repeats his story, he must re-enact

the past and grapple ~.,ith that darker aspect of the human soul which

destroyed Kurtz and Jim. Although Marlmv is not totally beyond time like

Jim and Kurtz, he is caught in a kind of limbo between two unacceptable

and incompatible worlds; one of time and illusion, the other of time-

lessness and horror.

Although similar themes are worked out in ~-!im., Conrad

experiments much more with time and perspective in this novel. Like

Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, Jim is betrayed by a romantic

imagination. His attempts to transcend the limits of ordinary human

experience plunge him into the cosmic void. He is caught ~"ithin the

moment of deserting the "Patna" and his existence is shaped by the memory

of that act and the desire to eradicate it. Jim is committed to a

double-edged destiny: he must satisfy the demands of a romantic imagination

while repeating his act of betrayal against the community of mankind.

Jumping from the "Patna" resulted in his alienation from human society

because he committed a crime against mankind. Yet his connection w1.th

Patusan and Jewel prevents his tota.1 isolation, at least temporarily. In

al1mving Brown to escape he again betrays humanity; .in refusing to defend

 8

himself against Doramin, he betrays Jewel. Thus his romantic obsession

leads to a three-fold betrayal '"hich ends for Jim in the total isolation

of death.

Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he

have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary
success! For it may very well be that in that short
moment of his last proud and unflinching glance, he
had beheld the face of that opportunity '"hich like an
Eastern bride, had come veiled to his side. (313)

Jim faithfully answers the call of his "exalted egoism", abandoning "a

living woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadm"y ideal of

conduct" (313). Unlike Kurtz, Jim is never fully conscious of his

situation. He continues to believe in his mvn capacity for heroic action,

and believes that he can expiate his guilt. It is Marlow Hho sees

through Jim's delusion: "'A clean slate, did he say? As if the initial

,,,ord of each our destiny w'ere not graven in imperishable characters upon

the face of a rock' (143). HarloH is interested in Jim mainly because

he sees him as a version of everyman; as he says, Jim "Has too much like

one of us not to be dangerous " (85).

The structure of Lord Jim reinforces the novel's themes, In

technique, Lord Jim is near to The Secret Agent_ and Nostromo because of

its use of the multiple perspective and dislocation of temporal sequence.

The novel is a kaleidescope of histories of secondary characters who put

Jim's situation in a communal context. Although each character's reaction

to Jim's conduct intensifies its significance, his action still evades

total understanding. By the end of the novel, Jim remains !Iunder a cloud,

inscrutable at heart" (313).

Stein is probably the one character in the novel who is notably

like Jim in temperment and understands him best. " ' I understand very
 9

well. He is romantic'·'" (162). He also hints at a similarity between

his m-ln past and Jim's. "'And do you know how many opportunities I let

escape, hm., many dreams I had lost that had come my way? I " (166). Jim

tries to eradicate his guilt and transcend his situation, whereas Stein

immerses himself in lithe destructive element" (164). Yet Stein does

believe in the existence of an orderly, harmonious cosmos "'hich manifests

itself to him in the image of the butterfly. 11 'This is Nature -- the

balance of colossal forces. Every star is so -- and every blade of

grass stands so -- and the mighty kosmos in perfect equilibrium produces

-- this. This "lOnder; this masterpiece of Nature -- the great artist' "

(158).

Isolated from the rest of mankind, Jim experiences a very

different cosmos than does Stein; one without sense and order, The

dislocation of the time sequence in the novel conveys the sense of timeless-

ness and confus'ion that Jim experiences. Because of this technique the

reader also feels something of the psychological disorientation that Jim

feels. Yet, because of the frequent time shifts and use of multiple

perspective, Jim is so distanced from the reader that he remains an

impenetrable mystery. The reader also senses a disequilibrium ,.,hich

prevents him from penetrating Jim's situation. To keep Jim a mystery

seems to have been Conrad's intention. In a letter to Hil1iam Blackwood

concerning Lord Jim, Conrad wrote that I'in the '-lorking out of the

catastrophe, psychologic disquisition should have no place.,,7 Jim's

character is never extensively developed because Jim is not the real

subject of the novel; it is Marlow's reaction to Jim, and what he learns

-----------------.~~. ----
7. Wright, ~oseph Conrad on Fictior~., p. 24.
 10

through him, that is the theme of Lord Jim.

As I maintained earlier, language can only momentarily capture

the image of the true nature of the universe. The only means of

developing this image is to vievl i t from a multiplicity of perspectives,

drawing it out gradually. The general narrator of Hear~~f Da!kn~

expresses this kind of method in referring to Marlow's way of telling a

story:

• • to him the meaning of an episode was not inside

like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which
brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in
the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of
moonshine. II (7)

J. Hillis Miller also realizes the great difficulty of sustain-

ing the kind of theme that Conrad creates in his fiction. He explains

it thus:

Writing can only oscillate perpetually between truth

and falsehood, and endure endlessly its failure to
bring ~V'hat is real, the darkness, permanently into
what is human, the light. Every story is necessarily
a failure. In the moment that the darkness is
caressed into appearing by the ,.,ords of the story,
it disappears. Though \Yriting is the only action
,.,hlch (-!scapes the imposture of the merely human, at
the same time all literature is necessarily a sham.
It captur~s in its subtle pages n06 the reality of
the darkness but its verbal image.

The novel can only hope to sustain the effect it is trying to produce by

examining it from all po:i.nts of view. The illusion of spatialized,

mechanical time must be destroyed if the reader is to grasp any insight

into the nature of reality that Conrad is trying to reveal. Conrad does

---------.---- ----
8. Hillis Miller. p. 38,
 11

not write about the definite and the concrete, but about the indefinite

and insubstantial. The world of human civilization is posed like a

"house of cards" 9 over a vast and black abyss. It is the function of

language to maintain this house while recognizing what is just below it.

The importance of time is one of the major themes of ~ Sec.E..et

Ag~. Vladimir knows the only "[Ilay to frighten society is to attack the

Greenwich Observatory, Such action threatens destruction to the basis

of human existence; it is in the Greemvich Observatory that the source

of human time lies. As R. W. Stallman has pointed out in his essay,

"Time and The s~cret_AgentJ',IO time and space are measured from Greenwich.

Verloc's mission is to destroy time and space, the ordering, harmonizing

principles of human existence. To attack religion or government \VDuld

not be so effective because they no longer represent the presence of an

absolute, moral order. liThe fetish of today is neither royalty nor

11
religion. Therefore the palace and the church should be left alone,"

Since mankind has made his subjective consciousness the "foundation

of everything,1I the basis of his faith must lie with his own fabrications.

Science replaces reli,gion and government to become the standard by which

man orients himself to the empirical world. Science creates the objective

world in that it allows man to believe he has penetrated the mysteries

of the universe. liThe demonstration must be against learning -- science.

----------~.

9• .llli. t p. 6.

10. Stallman, ed., The Art of Joseph Conrad, pp. 234-253.

11, Joseph Conr.ad, The Secret Agent, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963),

p. 3t.. All sub'sequent quotations will be taken from this edition
and indicated by page numbers.
 12

The attack must have all the senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy • • •

it would be really telling if one could thrm<7 a bomb into pure mathematics"

(36) •

Greenwich, as the centre of human psychological orientation to

the physical ,,,orId, establishes an illusory relationship between man and

nature. Verloc's mission is to perform the supreme act of treachery

against humanity. Instead, he murders Stevie and betrays the trust of

both Winnie and Stevie.

Until Winnie learns of Stevie's death f he is the only character,

along with the professor, '<7ho exists beyond the limits of ordinary

mechanical time. Stevie is the Itunconscious genius ll , the mad artist

trying to make sense out of a chaotic senseless universe. He lives

~V'ithin the tragic vision, instinctually aware of the true nature of the

universe. His circles suggest a "rendering of cosmic chaos" (46) while

also symbolic of the innate isolation of the characters from each

other. They also represent the timelessness of the universe; as Ossipon

says, "eternity is a damned hole"~ (245) and Stevie's circles are the

holes in time that symbolize his contact with eternity. When Mrs. Verloc

learns of Stevie's death, she inherits the Ilmadness ll and Iidespairll of

the tragic vision in which he lived. With his death the "supreme illusion

of her life" (198) is destroyed and she loses herself in the void. From

that moment on she is committed to her destiny, that is an obsession to

rid herself of Stevie's murderer. The fulfillment of her destiny must

result in her own death; 'Vinnie's crime against Verloc breaks her connection

with the human community. In a moment of profound insight, \-1innie Verloc

perceives the t"orld to be a sham. Her nevI awareness is conveyed by her

 13

attitude tm<lard time.

Nothing moved in the parlour till Mrs, Verioc raised

her head slowly and looked at the clock Nith inquiring
mistrust. She had become aware of a ticking sound
in the room. It grell' upon her ear, lIlhile she remembered
clearly that the clock on the wall was silent, had no
audible tick. Hhat did i t mean by beginning to tick
so loudly all of a sudden. Its face indicated ten
minutes to nine. Mrs. Ver10c cared nothing for time,
and the ticking went on. She concluded it could not
be the clock, and her sullen gaze moved along the
walls, wavered and became vague, while she strained
her hearing to locate the sound. (213-214)

Mrs. Verioc can no longer comprehend time, nor believe in its

existence, because she is beyond it. The ticki~g-of the clock fades into

the trickling sound of her husband's blood. Through her act of murder

she is totally isolated, caught in the void. Like Jim and Kurtz, she

can never go back and her attempt to save herself from the inevitable

through Ossipon is doomed.

She was alone in London: and the ll1hole town of marvels

and mud, with -its maze of streets and its mass of lights,
was sunk in a hopeless night, rested at the bottom of
a black abyss from which no unaided woman could hope to
scramble out. (218)

As a result of his betrayal of Winnie, Ossipon inherits the

"madness and despair" of the tragic vision. The phrase '\lith which the

ne'\\lspapers describe l-Jinnie' s suicide, "this act of madness or despair"

(248) captures Ossipon's mind, threatening to destroy him by insanity

wh1.ch 'vould effectively isolate him from the lIlOrld,

The effects of timelessness and isolation are strongly reinforced

by the structure of The ~ecret Agent. Many scenes overlap and correspond

with each other in this novel, producing the effect of suspended time.

The murder scene of Verloc in Chap'ter XI occurs simultaneously lI1ith the

confrontation between the Assistant Commissioner and Vladimir at the

 14

end of Chapter X. The explosion which causes Stevie's death is revealed

early in the novel, after t"hich it backtracks to portray scenes in ~7hich

Stevie is still alive. The reader learns after Stevie's death that his

mother leaves the family to ensure Stevie's 'welfare and, that Mrs, Verloc

regards her husband and brother to be as father and son. The effect of

this technique is heavily ironic and in itself exposes the illusions of

the characters.

Like Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent contains

little direct action, Most of the "action" in these novels is eonveyed

through verbal encounters between characters. These novels continually

circle back on themselves; Heart of Darkness ends where it begins, in

the same setting vTith Marlow' telling the story. The narrative structure

of ~yd Jim always refers back -to the "Patna" episode because that

moment conditions all that occurs in the novel. In The Secret Agent

scenes echo each other; the scene bet,,,een Vladimir and Verloc is echoed

in the confrontation betvleen Vladimir and the Assistant Commissioner at

the end of Chapter X, t"hich is further reflected in the scene between

Winnie and Verloc, as he attempts to justify Stevie's death, Stevie's

death in the attempt to destroy the first meridian is portrayed in exactly

the same manner as Winnie's suicide through Ossipon's reading of them in

a net'lspaper in the Silenus restaurant. This kind of structure creates

the effect of time standing still, not progressing into the future.

Nostromo bears strong similarity to these three ,.,orks in both

structure and theme. In this novel, the illusion of chronological time

is totally destroyed, and Conrad reveals the interior time of human

consciousness which imprisons his characters. In Nostromo, the past

 15

determines the future; the memory of the past fosters the desires for

the future~ and thus consumes the present. This concept of time means

essentially that humanity can never escape its primitive origins, and

its belief that it can transcend that past through the movement of

time is completely undercut in Nostromo.

 II

"There is no getting moray from a treasure

that once fastens upon your mind."
(Nostromo, 379)

The concept of time, as it is worked out in Nostromo t is central

to an understanding of that novel. By the IIconcept of time ll , I do not

mean the description of the time sequence of the novel, nor do I feel

it is necessary to rearrange its time shifts in order to find a chronological,

linear pattern. This has been attempted by vari~us critics, but the

novel still remains obscure. Rather, I refer to a kind of philosophical

idea of time and its relation to human existence, the meaning of \V'hich

is conveyed partly through the novel's time shifts. I believe that the

sequence of !iostromo should not be rearranged to form a chronological

time scheme; all that emerges from this process is a different novel.

Conrad destroys the convention of linear time for a valid purpose and it

is the obligation of the critic to try to discover what this purpose is.

Major criticism of Nostromo has inadequately dealt with the theme of

time, i f at all. Even major studies on attitudes tmvard time in the

modern novel fail to include Conrad. Criticism of Nostrom~ usually consists

of analysis of events and characters, and often includes biographical

references to the author's personal experience. In The Great Tradition,

F. R. Leavis does not even refer to the novel's time shifts, preferring

to comment on it as IIConrad's supreme triumph in the evocation of exotic

life and colour. 11 1

16
 17

Dr. Leavis prefers to concentrate upon the vivid representation of

life that the novel achieves. Arnold Kettle defines Nostromo as "a
2
political novel in the widest sense." His most interesting comment is

that:

Conrad's purpose is to establish a solid background

because this is a solid novel. a novel about the
real ""orld, about a particular republic in a
particular ~art of the 'tvorld at a particular epoch
in history.

Nostromo is indeed about the II real w'orld ll but not the empirical 't07orld.

Also, while the novel creates the illusion of portraying a lI part icular

republic" in a II part icular epochll in time, it is only an illusion, In

fact, ~ostromo creates this illusion in order to discover the reality which

underlies it. This thesis ~li1l attempt to go beyond Professor Kettle IS

statement and show that Conrad's world of Sulaco is not so much a

particular world as a symbolic 'tvor.ld.

Albert Guerard, a major critic of Conrad's fiction, has attempted

to deal with the theme of time in Nostromo. But Guerard is unable to

penetrate beneath the novel's technique and is, in fact, baffled by it.

His objections to Nostromo could very well represent those of most

readers when first encountering the novel:

We have • , • a combat bet">1een author, material and

reader • • • The first part of Nostromo invites and
then frustrates the normal objectivesof readers to
an astonishing degree. A reader's first objective
may be to identify with one figure and then use him

----_.------_.
2. Kettle, An Intr~duct~on to the English Novel, lIt 65.

3. Ibid., pp. 62-63.

 18

as a post of observation. But each opportunity --

Captain Mitchell, Giorgio Viola, Nostromo, Sir John,
Mrs. Gould, Charles Gould -- is ~"ithdrat-m almost as
soon as offered. So too it is a normal if unconscious
ambition of the reader to live vicariously through
an imagj.ned experience; to live through scenes. But
every promised scene is here broken off, at most
after a feH pages • • • the reader incorrigibly
longs to locate himself in time and space, and
incorrigibly wants to appre.hend experience in its
order and degree of importance. But this longing
is frustrated from beginning to end of the first part.
The common reader's notorious general aim -- to enter
into the book and become one of its characters -- is
carefully and austerely baffled. The novelist (shifting
sc.ene J time, emphasis, focus, post of observation)
maliciously chops at his hands. Nostromo is, surely,
one of the most uneven of the great English novels •
it exposes more clearly (or fails to conceal through
rhetoric and narrative device) ,.;hat Conrad could not
yet do well: above all, the handling of dramatic
action and the rendering of intense emot!on imagined
as occuring in a present place and time.

Guerard's main obj ectio~ is that Conrad's technique in Nostr'?.~..'?_

causes the reader unnecessary confusion. He implies that the primary

obligation of the novelist is to allm-l the reader to orient himself in

time and space, so that he may "apprehend experience in its order and

degree of importance." Guerard seems to suggest that there is an

absolute order and degree of importance in human experience that is

universally known and agreed upon. 'fuat Guerard has done in criti.ci zing

J:'T0l'!..~_~ is tb judge the novel from the standpoint of a preconceived

notion of ~olhat a novel should be. Because Nostromo does not conform to

this preconceptipn, Guerard assumes the novel to be defective. In fact,

it is Guerard's critical method that has prevented him from understanding

~--~-----~ -----~--.----

4. Guerard, Conrad: T!l~. Novelis~:I p. 215-216.

 19

the novel's technique. As Northrop Frye has said in Anatomy of Cr~ticism:

"The axioms and postulates of criticism • • • have to grow out of the

art it deals vlith. ,,5 According to Frye, the critic. must discover his

critical method through his experience of the literature and find the

"conceptual framey70rk l1 within ~.rhich it is ~.rritten. Nos..~.~ must be

treat.ed in this ,.ray. The time shifts are an essential part of the novel t s

structure. If the reader is to be aware of a meaningless, random universe,

he must be forced to experience it. The frequent time shifts and

disruption of narrative sequence successfully achieve this effect. But

although the form of Nostromo imitates and reflects chaos and meaningless-

ness, it is not itself chaotic and meaningless. The reader is made to

perceive reality in a way different from that to which he is accustomed.

By the end of the novel, his vision must correspond to that of the

narrator. The reader, ""ho is not allowed to share any particular character t s

perspective for too long, must look to another dimension in the novel

beyond that of the characters. The reality of the situation lies beyond

the human, empirical realm in NostE£!!1.£) the particular events and the

lives of the characters provide a medium through which Conrad explores a

more profound, philosophical conception of human existence. The basis

of his method lies in his treatment of time.

There are two kinds of time in Nostromo: mythological time and

chronological, or historical time. Mythological time, which is associated

with the geographical landscape in ~ostr2~0, is static and unchanging.

-------- -------'---
5, Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, (New York: Atheneum,
1970), pp. 5-6 : -.. ---.-~---~.-------
 20

As such it creates a timeless, symbolic ~.;'orld. Chronological,

historical time, \l1hich is part of the psychological landscape of the

novel, exists \vithin this mythic framework. The frequent description of

the time sequence has the effect of dissolving the historical aspect of

the novel into its mythological frame\vork. In fact, the mythical, time-

less aspect of Nostro~<2. constantly impinges upon the t.ime-oriented lives

of the characters. The histories of the characters lose their individuality

and are absorbed by the mythological history of Sulaco.

The opening chapter is of crucial importance to the entire

structure of Nostr~. It contains in legendary and undramatic form

what is to be dramatized throughout the novel on an individual, historical

basis. The characters have, essentially, no present and no future

because they can never break free of the past of Sulaeo.

The" geographical landscape of Sulaco is described in the opening

chapter as without palpable, concrete form. The description is conveyed

as a series of impressions \l1ithout interpretation. The rocky Azuera

penninsula is not easily distinguished, but llseems to be an isolated patch

of blue mist [that] floats lightly on the glare of the horizon,"6 From

a closer perspective, it resembles a "\l1ild chaos of sharp rocks" (17),

never appearing to have a definite form. The very description of the

landscape undercuts its particularity; moreover, the names given to the

various parts of the landscape give Sulaco an allegorical status, The

6. Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 17. All

subsequent quotations-~ill be taken from this edition of ~o~~~om~
and indicated by page number,
 21

name Golfo Placido", meaning a "peaceful, calm gulf,,7 becomes ironic

~vithin the whole context of the novel. Its insubstantiality is implicit

in the description of it as: "an inviolable sanctuary", a "solemn semi-

circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its ~valls of lofty

mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud" (17). As the

description of the landscape progresses, it becomes increasingly sinister,

as the above quotation shmv8. Cape Punta Mala, (the name means "evil

point") appears as no more than "a shadow on the sky" (17). In the

first chapter, the narrator is creating a nightmare world where geographi-

cal phenomena appear to have no concrete form or substance. This kind

of descriptive technique is reminiscent of Tennyson's "The Lotus-Eaters"

,.,here a stream is described as "a. dmvml1ard smoke" (11. 8) and a pine tree

as lithe shadovry pine ll (It. 18). In both the novel, and the poem, nature

is deprived of its physica.l force; this consequent insubstantiality

lends an ominous overtone to the description. Moreover, thr.ough its

portrayal of the landscape, the opening chapter seems to suggest the

existence of an independent, malevolent pOlver. What is a suggestion in

the opening chapter becomes an articulated fact by the end of the novel.

As the narrative account of the geography continues, it becomes

apparent that the reader is being dra,m into the heart of a frightening

darkness. The land is sterile, not because of scientific reasons, but

lias i f [it were] bli.ghted by a curse" (17). The narrator is not describ-

ing a "particular place ll in a "particular time"; he is setting forth a

vis:I.on of a Id.nd of undenvorld. That the clouds are lImourning draperies"

7. Reynolds, !he I~'llim~'_~~~.~"£.:i.:.~~Y-!S.tion.a.rY.., I, (Cambridge: The

University Press, 1962).
 22

and that the defining qualities of the landscape are darkness and

formlessness. should indicate the underlying presence of death in this

created cosmos. The legendary gringos ~vho inhabit this landscape -are

the living dead, in that their spirits cannot leave the treasure of the

Azuera. So far, Conrad has created a setting \,;rhich ,.,ould seem incompatible

with human existence. When civilization (represented by the commercial

ships) intrudes across lithe imaginary line draw-n from Punta Hala to

Azuera ll (19) into the Golfo Placido, the strong ocean wind disappears.

The thick clouds that roll out onto the Gulf at sunset cause the visible

landscape to disappear. It would seem as if the geography itself tried

to resist the intrusion of the outside world.

The Cordillera is gone from you as i f it had dissolved

itself into great piles of grey and black vapours that
travel out slowly to seaward and vanish into thin air •
At night the body of clouds advancing higher up the
sky smothers the ~.,hole quiet gulf below' with an
impenetrable darkness, • • • sky, land and sea disappear
together out of the world when the Placido -- as the
saying is goes to sleep under its black poncho.
(19-20)

The closing image of this paragraph, "'ith the Placido going to

sleep under its poncho, personifies the landscape giving it a status

almost: human, yet indifferent to humanity. The narrator is not so much

describing a particular physical landscape as he is creating a symbolic

world, representative of the cosmos. This dimension of the geography

is further reinforced by several casual details interspersed throughout

Nostromo. Sharks never enter the Golfo Placido IIthough on the other

s:i.de of the Punta l1ala the coastline swarms with them ll (404). Sea-

birds, Ilfor some good and valid reasons beyond mere human comprehension ll

(408) avoid the Isabels. Tm.,ard the end of Nostromo the narrator mentions
 23

the spirits of good and evil \"ho inhabit the landscape as guardians

over the silver. Sulaco is not an ordinary place; as I asserted

earlier, it is a symbolic landscape, with cosmic dimensions. In fact,

it represents the kind of universe in which humanity must live. Asa

context for human existence, it is indifferent, a characteristic embodied

in the silent, \vhite, Higuerota Ilwhose cool purity seemed to hold itself

aloof from a hot earthl! (35). The darkness of the Gulf is a kind of

metaphysical darkness which is the foundation of human existence; it

becomes associated with death and destruction especially ,,,hen Decoud and

Nostromo have to make their \"ay through it when they cross the gulf. This

darkness is also amoral in nature.

The eye of God Himself • • • could not find out what

\'lork a man I s hand is doing in there; and you \Vould
be free to call the devil to your aid with impunity
if even his malice \"ere not defeated by such a blind
darkness (20)

Conrad, then, constructs through Sulaco and its physical descript-

ion a cosmos which is indifferent, amoral and permeated by death. He

carefully creates this kind of world as a setting for his characters and

it is not surprising that the characters will reflect the traits of

this cosmos in their activity. The sterility of the universe \vill

i.nevitably manifest itself in the human realm. This is a theme that

Conrad explores repeatedly in his fiction. During the novel the major

characters will reveal the degree to which they are aware of their cosmic

predicament, while the activity of others ,·lill manifest the essential

nature of human morality.

Sulaco as the background for human existence implies a contrast

between reality and illusion; that is, the human \OlOrld is an illusory
 24

fabrication made in order to obliterate from human consciousness the

reality beneath it. As such, it is a time-oriented world of history

that exists within a timeless world that transcends the historical realm.

There are no temporal distinctions as there are in the historical world.

The mythological names of the O.S.N. company's steam ships are one of the

symbolic ways in ~qhich Conrad blurs distinctions between past and present

because in the timeless world of Sulaco, myth is not distinguished from

ordinary, empirical fact.

Their names [that is, the names of the ships], the names
of all mythology, became the household \-lOrds of a coast
that had never been ruled by the Gods of Olympus. The
"Juno" ,,,as knov1l1 only for her comfortable cabins amidships,
the IlS a turn" for the geniality of her captain and the
painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas
the IIGanymede" was fitted out mainly for cattle transport,
and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The humblest
Indian in the obscurist village on the coast 'l7as familiar
with the Cerberus, a little black puffer without charm
or living accommodation to speak of . . • (21-22)

Foreign mythology, as well as the indigenous mythology of the

gringos, is immediately absorbed into the consciousness of the inhabitants,

becoming not only part of their own history, but also of their IIpresent."

By incorporating the names of Greek mythology into their daily

vocabulary and in believing that the spectral gringos still inhabit the

Azuera _.- "the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be

dwelling to this day amongst the rocks ll (18) -- they make of the past a

living, present reality. Already the novel hints that the present, as

far as it is understood to be dissociated from the past, does not exist

in Sulaco. As ,,'e shall see, the inhabitants have neither psychologically

progressed in a linear time scheme nor have they transcended the1.r past;

rather, the mythic past has become their present. All the characters are
 25

included in this psychological pattern, as will be shmvn later. The

relationship bet~-Teen Sulaco and the characters \\lho live there is

symbolic of a wider relationship betVJeen man and the cosmos. Essentially}

the created cosmos of Nostromo is alien to human existence. Objective

standards of morality cannot exist in this world. Religion, the most

universal manifestation o·f man's belief in the existence of an absolute

ground of morality beyond himself, cannot endure in Sulaco. The residence

of an ecclesiastical official becomes a social club for aristocrats;

the religious icon '-Thich stands before the building is itself in a state

of ruin and decay. Spiritual matters are of secondary concern to material

interests in Sulaco; Father Corbelin, the most powerful representative

of the Church in Sulaco, is obsessed with the return of confiscated

church lands. That desire provides the motivation for his activity in.

the revolution.

A further defining quality of the '-Torld of ~ostromo is its

inherent isolation, a factor encouraged not only by the nature of the

geography but also by the inhabitants.

But in Sulaco -- the Occidental Province for whose very

development the raihvay lims intended -- there had been
trouble. It had been lying for ages ensconced behind
its natural barriers, repelling modern enterprises by
the precipices of its mountain range, by its shallow
harbour opening into the e.verlasting calms of a gulf
full of clouds, by the benighted state of mind of the
m,rners of its fertile territory -- all these aristocratic
Spanish families, all these Don Ambrosios this and Don
Fernandos that, \vho seemed actually to dislike and
distrust the coming of the raih-Tay over their land.
(43)

This paragraph shmvs an interesting compatibility between the

inherent qualities of the landscape and the consciousness of its in-

habitants, who seem to protect its interests. This aspect of ~ostr~mo,

 26

hinted at in such paragraphs as the one just quoted, has extremely

important thematic implications in the context of the entire novel,

The characters embody essentially those same qualities inherent in the

surrounding geographical landscape; as the novel ,.,ill eventually show,

the characters' lives and desires are manipulated by supernatural forces

within the landscape. These forces are mythologized in the gringo

legend, The individual lives of the characters become absorbed into the

mythology of the landscape; all human activity and desire in Sulaco serves

to fulfill the demands of the ·myth. The pivot of the myth and the actions

of the characters is material treasure; through their relationship to

the silver of San Tome, the characters re-enact the gringo legend, It

was Conrad's intention to make the silver the centre of his novel, as he

wrote in a letter to Ernst Bendz. March 7. 1923: IlSilver is the pivot

of the moral and material events, affecting the lives of everybody in the
8
tale,1I The silver is the common object of human desire in the novel,

while also providing the common basis of isolation which divides the

characters from each other, Paradoxically the characters are united in

a common purpose, yet totally separated from each other, The silver

provides the link between the landscape and the characters; it is the

bridge bet\veen myth and human history, It is the means by which the

themes of death, isolation and timelessness are transmuted to permeate

human existence. Through the silver, the supernatural forces of the

geographical landscape ar~ able to actively participate in the psychological

8. Jean-Aubry~ Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters, II, (Garden City:

Doubleday, Page and Co" 1927), p. 296.
 27

landscape. A brief analysis of the novel's main characters will

demonstrate their psychological entrapment by the supernatural will of

the landscape and the way in which they relive the myth.

Charles Gould's obsession with the San Tome mine is inherited

from his father before he even sees the Gould Concession, His past is

not entirely his own, but is inextricably bound with his father's: 11 By

the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his turn, fallen under the

spell of the San Tome mine • • Mines had acquired for him a dramatic

interest" (60-61). His devotion to the mine and its treasure is motivated

by an obsessive need to vindicate the failure of his father's past and

avenge his death: II 'It has killed him! I, he repeated. 'He ought to

have had many years yet. We are a long-lived family'" (63), Both

Gould and Lord .Jim have in comm.on a past disgrace; both centre their

lives around the failure of the past and are determined to transform it

into a success. The narrator comments that Gould's "imagination had

been permanently affected by the one great fact of a silver mine" (75).

His need to tr.ansform the lIabsurd moral disaster" of his father into a

"serious and moral success II (66) deludes Gould into believing that he is

motivated by humanitarian impulses. He idealizes his actions as a moral

crusade which will bring about social-political stability in a country

that has almost totally dissolved itself in chaos. But his supreme

delusion is that the \olealth of the San Tome mine will invest the country

w~th a strong moral fibre, that the success of material interests will be

the political, economic and moral salvation of Sulaco.

What is wanted here is law, good faith, order, security.

Anyone can declaim about these things, but I pin my
faith to material interests. Only let the material
interests once get a firm footing, and they are bound
 28

to impose the conditions on which alone they can

cont:tnue to exist. That's how your money-making
is justified here in the face of lmo11essness and
disorder. It is justified because the security
which it demands must be shared with an oppressed
people. A better justice will come afterwards.
That's your ray of hope. (81)

This speech by Charles Gould is ironic because of its absurd

notion that a new ,.,orid can be rea.lized through material wealth. But

the irony becomes more intense ,.,hen one considers the great care taken

by the narrator to establish the demoniacal aspect of this world that

is the moral context in which the characters live. Gould becomes the

most devoted servant to the god of Hammon; it is his only existence. He

annihilates his spirit, like the legendary gringos! to live as pr~tector

aud servant of the silver.

The Gould Concession had to fight for life with such

weapons as could be found at once in the mire and
corruption that was so universal as to almost lose
its si.gnificance. He "laS prepared to stoop for his
w:eapons • • • There was no gain!!" back. (82)

Gould shows himself willing to abandon his moral integrity to immerse

himself in the universal immorality that characterizes the world in which

he lives.

Gould is not the only character trapped in the frustrated desires

of an unfulfilled past. Don Jose Avellanos and his daughter Antonia

who at first seem more sympathetic characters than Gould, are also incapable

of transcending the past. Having lived through the former tyranny of

Guzman Bento, Don Jose allies himself with the Gould Concession. He too

"pins his faith" in the ability of material interests to free his nation

from the oppression and suffering which characterized its chaotic past.

For Don Jose, as for the other aristocrats of Sulaco, the Ribierist
 29

government is the means by w-hieh the San Tome mine will be protected

and developed; it is not a government formed directly for the benefit

of the people but for the mine. And the government considers its-first

duty to the mine and the foreign developers \-lho come to lay the railway.

Sir John, thinking to himself about the opposition to the rail~'7ay is

comforted by the knmvledge that the government lvill help him at any

cost to the public,

The Government was bound to carry out its part of the

c.ontract t-lith the board of the new railway company,
even if it had to use force for the purpose • • • and
so he imagined to get the President-Dictator over
there on a tour . culminating in a great function
at the turning of the first sod by the harbour shore.
After all he \.,as their mm creature -- that Don Vincente.
(43·-44)

Don Jose Avellanos ~ desiring peace and prosperity for his country p

supports an essentially imnloral government. It is impossible for such

a government to withstand the forces of chaos and social unrest which work

against it. Don Jose deludes himself that the Ribierist government will

establish a new world, a new era of peace. The realization that there

is no change and progression from the past' through the "new" government

confronts him in the Monterist uprising. This knowledge results in

destroying him; when he is forced to compromise his political beliefs to

save Sulaco the shock kills him. In the past, Don Jose always believed

in Federation; it is impossible for him to transcend the ideals of his past

and accommodate himself to the changing needs of the country. One must

finally perceive the gulf bet'veen Don Jose's desires and ideals, and the

actual needs of his country.

Antonia Avellanos inherits her father's desire for political

 30

Federation and is determined to see his hopes realized even after a

social order has finally been formed.

'How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those

~"hohave been our countrymen only a few years ago,
who are our countrymen now?' Hiss Avellanos was
saying 'How can \Ve remain blind, and deaf without
pity to the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers?
There is a remedy.
'Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and
prosperity of Sulaco,' snapped the doctor. 'There
is no other remedy.'
'I am convinced. Senor Doc tor,' Antonia said,
with an earnest calm of invincible resolution, 'that
this was from the first poor Martin's intention.'
(418)

This speech by Antonia has startling implications. A witness to the

horror of revolution on more than one occasion, Antonia Avellanos shows

herself quite willing to incite another for the realization of a past

ideal. Her last sentence, '"hich imputes intentions to Decoud that he

did not have, TIlanifests the quality that all the characters of Nostromo

share. It is the Ilsentimentalism" in '"hich they dress every impulse

and motivation that is articulated, ironically, by Martin Decoud. He

perceives Il 'the sentimentalism of the people that will never do anything

for the sake of their passionate desire, unless it comes to them clothed

in the fair robes of an idea' " (203). Antonia Avellanos, \olho in

relation to the rest of the characters in Nostromo is presented as one

of the more morally upright, shows herself to share in the inherently

amoral, nihilistic nature of the world in which she lives. Sulaco is

devoid of morality; any attempt to introduce morality or justice or order

results in the establishment of the opposite. Charles Gould comments on

this when he says: "'The ,,,ords one knm"s so well have a nightmarish

meaning in this country. Liberty -- democracy ~- patriotism == government.

 31

All of them have the flavour and folly of murder'" (337). This

speech can be extended to comment on the earlier one by Antonia, ~vher.e

she speaks of more murder and chaos through the fasade of alleviating

social oppression. No price is too high to fulfill her private obsession

The phys:lcal appearance of the Ave11anos house "grey, marked wi.th

decay, and with iron bars like a prison" (156) acquires metaphoric
, . significance toward the end of Nost_~. Like her father, Antonia i.s

locked ,.,ithin a psychological stasis that Hill not a11m., her to transcend

her past. The objective 'velfare of her country becomes confused Hith the

private desires of the past. It is the fulfillment of these desires that

matter ultimately.

Giorgio Viola, who should represent a moral contrast to the other

characters because of his disdain for material interests, also shares

in the psychological atmosphere of Nostromo. Even his passionate devotion

to a humanitarian ideal cannot redeem him. The ideal to which he

devotes his life is an anachronism that bears no relevance to life after

Daribaldi. Spiritually, he is a dead man because he tries to regulate

his existence on exactly the same principles which determined his behaviour

under Garibaldi. His inability to transcend his past isolates him from

his family and the rest of society. The fanaticism born in the past

reduces his every response to absurdity. Impr.ecations of hatred once

d1.rected against an "accursed Piedmontese race of kings and m:Lnisters "

are nOH incited by domestic mishap.

\fuen sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate

operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was
seen backing out of the doorway, swearing and coughing
violently in an acrid cloud of smoke, the name of Cavour
 32

-- the arch intriguer sold to kings and tyrants --

could be heard involved in imprecations against
the China girls, cooking in general and the brute
of a country ~.,here he vYas reduced to live for the
love of liberty that traitor had strangled.
(32--33)

The only relic surviving that past time besides Viola's memory

is a faded lithograph of Garibaldi that his devoted follower cherishes

as his wife does her rosary. Giorgio Viola values a memory of a past

time that no longer exists, more than his family or any human being.

From this devotion to a past id~al, Giorgio Viola derives an absurd

notion of honour that leads him to murder, mist~kenly, the man he values

as his own son. The narrator's reference to Viola after Nostromo's murder

as "the immaculate republican, the hero lo7ithout a stain ll (458) is savagely

ironic, especially since the reader has known all along that his role

in the struggle for liberty was that of Garibaldi's personal cook. Giorgio

Viola, whose life principle was a kind of Il puritanism of conduct ll (39)

is trapped within the past.

Pedrito Montero is caught within his personal past also, but

unlike Giorgio Viola, his past is consumed by the greater mythic past of

Sulaco. The psychology of his actions consists of the most simple synthesis

of the pressures of the indigenous legend and those of his Owll past. His

lust for material ~lealth is motivated in part by desires born out of an

imagination lvhich nourished itself on reading "the lighter sort of

historical vlOrks in the French language" (321). What Pedrito Montero

finds in his reading is an ideal self that he wishes to become.

But Pedrito Montero had been struck by the splendour

of a brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of
au existence for himself where, like the Duc de
 33

Horny, he would associate the command of every

pleasure with the conduct of politi.cal affairs
and enjoy power supremely in every way • • •
And yet this was one of the immediate causes._,
of the Monterist Revolution. (321)

Pedrito Montero uses the revolution as an opportunity to fulfill

personal grandiose ambitions. In his need to become another Duc de

MornYt he makes the history of a foreign country the ideal goal of his

"future", But ~edrito Montero has no future; he is devoted to reliving

the past. In doing so, he helps Sulaco's history to repeat itself.

Dr. Monygham. whom some critics mistakenly refer to as "redeemed"

in the nove~is caught in a similar psychological trap. He is like Lord

Jim in that his consciousness is dominated by the memory of a past dis-

grace. He too made a breach of faith with the human community when he

betrayed his friends. His subsequent ,yay of life is determined by that

moment w'hich imposed upon him a reserve toward his fellow men. Dr.

Monygham makes "an ideal conception of his disgrace" (311) in attributing

to all men the innate weaknesses and failures of his own life. His

conception of himself that the narrator refers to as "the imaginative

exaggeration of a correct feeling'! (312) determines his response to

other human bei~gs~ the moment of failure in his past causes him to make

himself the absolute moral standard by which to measure all humanity.

Dr. Monygham's inability to value other men arises from his inability to

value himself. This is the cause of his essential isolation from the

rest of mankind. His lack of faith in humanity is based upon "the

particular instance in which his own manhood had failed" (357); mankind

is merely an extension of himself. _ In every individual he sees the moral

reflection of himself, refusing to recognize the objective moral value

 34

of another person. Dr. Monygham's feeling of disgrace has led him to

embrace a perverted egotism, In fact, all the characters mentioned

are perversely egotistical in the sense that they invest the ,qorld

around them with their mlln values. They fashion a self-created world

which reflects their personalities; each character creates the external

world in his own image. The common centre, however, of their worlds

is the silver. In the world of ~_os~.E0mo, nothing has value in itself

but the silver. It is the only objective reality the characters recognize

and as such, it dominates their lives. Dr. Monygham's loyalty to Mrs.

Gould is not a thing in itself, but is so enmeshed ~vith his loyalty to the

mine that the narrator speaks of his feeling ·in terms of the silver. 1I

• • • Dr. Honygham had grovID older 7 'vith his head steel-grey and the UIl-

changed expression of his face, living on the inexhaustible treasure of

his devotion drmm upon in the secret of his heart like a store of unlmq-

ful wealth" (414). This paragraph obviously anticipates Nostromo's

devotion to the store of unlmvful wealth of the hidden silver. It also

hearkens back to the gringos' secret vigil over the gold of Azuera:

11. • • the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be dwelling

to this day amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their success.

Their souls cannot tear themselves away from their bodies mounting guard
ll
over the discovered treasure (18). In the light of such passages,

Dr. Monygham's devotion to Hrs. Gould takes on a sinister aspect. The

narrator deliberately puts the doctor on the same moral plane as the

gringos and Nostromo; in fact. all the characters inhabit the same level

of morality. No one can escape th~ moral corruption which permeates the

metaphysical and psychological atmosphere of the novel. The basis of

 35

every action and every desire is the silver. Sotil10 comes to recognize

in his meeting with Dr. Monygham the essential moral nature of all men.

"He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare,

which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black

depth of an abyss" (291).

Dr. Monygham's nightmares almost disappear after the revolution

because he believes that his behaviour during the Monterist political

crisis has vindicated the disgrace of his past. But he 'tvill never

transcend his past, nor the pressures of the legendary past of Sulaco,

since his actions were determined by both. Like Charles Gould, Dr.

Monygham must transform the failures of the past into moral success. This

moral success could only come about through unsvlerving devotion to the

mine. The degree of moral success that both characters achieve is

determined by the degree to which both subjugated themselves to the

demands of the silver.

Besides devotion to the silver of San Tome, what the characters

of Nostromo also have in common is an inability to live beyond the past.

Time has no meaning for these characters because the past ever consumes

the present and determlnes the IIfuture!l. When a group of such characters

form a society, the history of that society will inevitably repeat it-

self. In Nos~romo each individual, while trapped within his mvn past

is, in the collective society, rooted in the mythic past of the country.

Each character perpetually re-enacts his o\Yn past in terms of the general

consciousness of Sulaco.

The psychological landscape of the novel is an extension of the

 36

geographical landscape in that the lives and actions of the characters

manifest the essential qualities of the cosmos in which they exist.

The isolation and timelessness which characterize the physical l'1Orld

pervade into the realm of human existence.

The next chapter will attempt to show how the novel!s two main

characters, Decoud and Nostromo, together with Mrs. Gould, are most

completely and effectively manipulated by the supernatural will of the

landscape. It is through these two characters that the mythological

and historical dimensions of Nostromo fuse most completely together.

 III

"As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods;

They kill us for their sport." (King Lear, IV,
i,36-7).

Martin Decoud, Nostromo, and Mrs. Gould will be considered

separately from the other characters. They, of all the main characters,

are the only ones who come to share the narrator's tragic vision of

human existence. Decoud and Nostromo are characters whose identity is

self-created, rather than imposed upon them by the past. Both characters

create artificial identities for themselves which disintegrate when they

confront the cosmic vacuum embodied in the physical landscape. This

confrontation occurs as a result of their devotion to the silver; after

the dissolution of identity, Decoud and Nostromo emerge as spiri.tually

dead men, totally enslaved to the will of the treasure. They discover,

as dld the gringos, that the silver is the only reality. Decoud commits

suicide because he cannot live with this knowledge, but Nostromo goes

on, like the living spectres of the gringos and most fully and completely

relives the myth.

The pressures of the Sulacan mythology are most effective on

Decoud and Nostromo because they possess no subjective resources with

which to resist them. The defining quality of Decoud's existence is his

scepticism which he refines and nourishes to the extent that it forms

the basis of his whole consciousness. His entire being is nothing more

than an artificial mask, an acquired pose that he has adopted for

37
 38

himself. Thus Decoud is like Kurtz, a hollmol man with no substance

beneath the mask.

He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his

fingers. But far from being that he '.Jas in danger
of remaining a sort of nondescript d11letante all
his life. He had pushed the habit of universal
raillery to a point where it blinded him to the
genuine impulses of his own nature. (135)

On the other hand, it is this same scepticism which makes Decoud

one of the most important characters in the novel. His sceptical

a ttitude toward life allm.Js him to have very valuable insights into the

characters and the nature of the situation aroun-d him. Decoud exercises

this power most effectively in liThe Isabels" ,,,here he attains temporarily

the status of omniscient narrator in his letter to his sister. It is

Decoud w'ho notices Nostromo I s peculiar attraction for silver, a fact

to which the narrator has alluded from time to time in the novel: II t his

man seems to disdain the use of any metal less precious than silver"

(192). Decoud adds particular force to this very important fact, in

mentioning it to his sister. He also understands that the defining

quality of Nostromo's existence is II Ito be well spoken of l II (208).

These two factors are vital to understanding "lhat happens to Nostromo

later on in the novel. Decoud also perceives the essential immorality

of all the characters in Nostromo Hho idealize the motivations for their

activities vdth lithe fair robes of an ideall (203) . Decoud know's what

the novel has been constantly suggesting: no character is committed

to an absolute standard of morality or the actualization of a beneficent

idea. That scepticism which allm.Js Martin Decoud sufficient detachment

from the society around hira to penetrate beneath its idealism and

sentimentality is the very scepticism which eventually destroys hls

 39

identity. The narrator, who has from the outset been critical of

Don Martin's scepticism, has been preparing the reader for his eventual

destruction.

As a matter of fact, he was an idle boulevardier • • •

This life. whose dreary superficiality is covered by
the glitter of universal blague, like the stupid
clmming of a harlequin by the spangles of a notely
costume, induced in him a Frenchified -- but most
un-French -- cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren
indifferentism posing as intellectual superiority.
(134)

It is due to passages like this that the reader must always

view Decoud '-lith some detachment and disbelief •. When he rails at the

hypocrisy of the other characters w'ho do not acknowledge their real

desires, one must be some'olhat scep.tical tm'1ard Decoud himself when he

says: 11 'And I'm not so much of an unbeliever as not to have faith

in my o-wnideas, in my own remedies, in my own desires I "(183). One

inevitably wonders i f Decoud sentimentalizes his role in the revolution

with his love for Antonia. The narrator, even while allowing Decoud

to share the omniscient perspective, continually undercuts his character

in breaking up the flow of the letter with his o,m interjections.

Although Decoud offers valuable insights into the situation around him

and reveals a more sympathetic side of his character, it is difficult

for him to maintain complete credibility when the narrator refers to

him 'olith such phrases as I1 t he exotic dandy of the Parisian boulevard

the man with no faith in anything except the truth of his own sensations"

(195). In emphasizing the total subjectivity of Decoud's impressions

and responses to the world around him, the narrator has carefully prepared

for the complete destruction of his personality.

 40

The disintegration of character begins before Decoud embarks

upon his journey across the Golfo Placido. The most interesting aspect

of his letter is that he manifests a growing awareness of the "silence"

and "solitude" that surrounds him. 11 'I have the feeling of a great

solitude around me . • the solitude is • very real. The silence

about me is ominous'" (196-97), Decoud is beginning to adopt the

metaphors and adjectives that the narrator used in the opening chapter

to describe the landscape. He gradually comes to share the vision of

the narrator when he perceives the vague intangibility of the landscape,

descr1.bing the Azueras as lIa faint blue cloud on the horizorl' (207).

His sense of a concrete material world is dissolving at this point in

the novel. Yet while he is losing his sense of the physical world he

is beginning to discover the true nature of himself.

Looking out of the 'vindow, Decoud ,,,as met by a

darkness so impenetrable that he could see neither
the mountains nor the town, nor yet the buildings
near the harbour; and there was not a sound, as
if the tremendous obscurity of the Placid Gulf,
spreading from the waters over the land, had made
it dumb as well as blind. (195)

In this symbolic passage Decoud gazes not only into the dark

silence of the universe, but also into the dark emptiness of himself.

This paragraph marks the beginning of an im<lard voyage, analogous to that

interior journey undertaken by Marlow in ~~E..t;.~~f. Darkness. From this

point on in ~ostromo, Decoud perceives reality in terms of blackness and

silence and uses their adjectives more frequently. At the same time,

he is becoming more aware of the unreality of his mm existence; he

refers to himself as II 'a man '<lith a passion, but without a mission I II

(207). He ends his letter unsure of who he is:

 41

'And I • . • don I t really know 'vhether to count

myself with the living or with the dead • • •
the whole thing, the house, the dark night, the
silent children in this dim room, my very presence
here ~- all this is life, must be life, since it
is so much like a dream. I (210)

The journey of Decoud and Nostromo across the Golfo Placido is

both a physlcal and psychological one; as they advance farther into the

darkness they descend farther into the depths of themselves to find

nothing there. Symbolically, their journey is a descent into the under-

~vorld, and both characters undergo a ritual death from vlhich they can

never emerge renewed. The later suicide of Decoud and murder of Nostromo

only physically manifest an established metaphysical fact; both men

"die" in the Gulf. When Nostromo pushes the boat away from the shore,

he and Decoud cross the invisible barrier between the fragile, illusory

vlorld of man and cosmic chaos. They are plunged into a blackness which

obliterates the familiar world and their own individuality, On a

metaphysical level, the Golfo Placido is a place of non-being in the

sense that being is negated; the geographical surroundings, IIsea, sky,

the mountains~ and the rocks were as i f they had not been ll - (220).

Decoud perceives Nostromo lias if he were not" - (220). Conrad I s use of

the negative form of the verb "to belt indicates that Decoud and Nostromo

have entered a state of "non-being" on both an individual and cosmic

level. In fact, what they experience is a cosmic negation that destroys

the validity of human existence and the world that man has created for

himself lyithin that cosmos. Familiar modes of perception are useless in

the midst of the Gulf's darkness; Decoud's senses~ except the tactile sense,

cannot help to orient him in space. He can only tell that the boat is
 42

u[oving when he feels the water slip through his fingers. Both men

lose hold of their former identity in the timeless chasm of the Placid

Gulf. Decoud, from whose point of vie,,, the journey is mostly related t

is aware of this fact: before Nostromo. He perceives himself !lin the

toils of an imaginative existence" (223) in \yhich his former life

appears to him as lithe maddest of dreams!!: "Even his passionate devotion

to Antonia into which he had ,wrked himself up out of the depths of his

scepticism had lost all appearance of reality" (224). In the midst of

this total cosmic negation where the illusions of life have no reality

and where man experiences most intensely the unreality of his own

existence, Decoud discovers that the resources he previously relied upon

have no meaning. "Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from being

deprived of the only weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence

could penetrate the darkness of the Placid Gulf" (231).

The '>lay in which Decoud and Nostromo defined themselves in the

human community has no effect in this situation. Isolated from humanity,

left totally alone to their Ovlll subj ectivity, they find that they have

no existence. As the narrator later comments: !lIn our activity alone

do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against

the "7hole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part" (409).

Having discovered his own impalpability and lack of substance

and individuality, all that is left to Decoud is to obliterate the physical

shell in suicide. He has discovered the tragic vision that he will

la.ter pass on to Nostromo. He knows that the only reality is that life

is unreal, without meaning. His fnsade of intellectual scepticism betrays

him; it was merely the mask covering a hollow emptiness. "The brilliant
 43

Costaguanero of the boulevards had died from solitude and ,vant of faith

in himself and others" (408) •

Decoud's spiritual and physical death are a result of the con-

frontation between himself and the landscape. Ultimately, it is the

will of the landscape that destroys him. It mercilessly tears at his

acquired facade, exposing to him his lack of individuality and substance.

The confrontation between Decoud and the Golfo ·Placido is similar to

that bet\oleen Marlo\ol and the Congo jungle; in both instances, the physical

world clutches at these characters like a primordial parent, try:Lng to

dravl them into itself. Hith Decoud, it succeeds totally: !lAfter three

days of waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud caught himself

en.tertaining a doubt of his own individuality. It had merged into the

world of cloud and water, of natural forces and forms of nature" (409).

The striking contrast between the description of nature and

Decoud's state of mind·as he goes to kill himself suggests strongly that

a hostile, malevolent universe is manipulating him to his destruction.

This section of the novel carries the appalling implication that some

supernatural force is playing a terrible, grim joke on Decoud. The

narrator describes his preparations to commit suicide thus: "Taking up

the oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great Isabel, that

stood behind him 'varm with sunshine, as if with the heat of life, bathed

in a rich light from head to foot as i f in a radiance of hope and joy"

(411). Decoud's actual shooting of himself takes place at dawn the next

day. The narrator reinforces the discrepancy between Decoud's state of

mind and the natural ,vorld in giving a lyrical de.scription of nature

that immediately precedes the account of his death.

 44

The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam into

his unwinking eyes. After a clear daybreak the sun
appeared splendidly above the peaks of the range.
The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the
boat; and in this glory of merciless solitude the
silence appeared again before him, stretched taut
like a dark, thin string. (411)

One 'vonders at Decoud I s lack of sensitivity to the visible beauty around

him; 'ivhile the landscape appears infused with joy and life, he feels

only Ifprofound indifference" (408). Thus l.t is hard for the reader

to sympathize with Decoud's situation because the description of

nature makes his suicide somewhat unreal and ridiculous. At the same

time, one feels uneasy, as if some monstrous, supernatural force has

tricked Decoud and is enjoying its game. Conrad rejects the literary

convention wherein nature sympathizes with the emotions and predicament

of a character that has the effect of investing him with almost super-

human status. Instead, Decoud I s importance as a character some'l7hat

greater than the others is undercut because nature does not respond

to his situation.

The demands of the landscape absorb the lives of the characters;

the time-oriented histories of individuals are consumed by the timeless

'l7orld of myth in J'lostromo. Like the gringos, Decoud and Nostromo become

totally subjected to the service of the San Tome silver. Decoud has

no existence in Sulaco beyond the limits of its mythology. His life

does not develop or change, but becomes increasingly absorbed into the

general consciousness of the land. Nostromo, however, whose existence

is as much a sham as Decoud's, most literally re-enacts the gringo myth.

Through his obsession with the sil'ler, he becomes transformed, as one

of those living spectres that guard the treasure of Azuera.

 45

References to Nostromo' s fascination ~vith silver occur through-

out the novel and it is through these references that the narrator

primarily develops his character. He rides a silver-grey horse, adorns

himself with silver buttons and ring -- to mention only a fe,v items.

Thus the narrator carefully prepares for Nostromo's vulnerability to

the silver which occurs later in the novel. Nostromo and silver are

associated semantically; both are referred to as "i"ncorruptible" (207 and

251). In fact, the only character development Nostromo has is in terms

of silver. Because of the silver, Nostromo completely re-enactsthe

legend of the gringos by the end of the novel. It ends where it began,

with the focus on the myth; historical action is totally absorbed into

the legend. Nostromo shovlS an awareness of a kind of association between

himself and the gringos ~,yhen he says: liThe things will look \>lell enough

on the next lover she gets, and the man need not be afraid I shall linger

on earth after I am dead, like those gringos that haunt the Azuera"

(217) •

It is absolutely necessary to the completion and balancing of

the novel's structure that it end with the focus on Nostromo. In his

essay on ~ostromo, Albert Guerard objects to this emphasis, however •

• • • the experimentalism and the intense, austere, serious

drama of Parts I and II • • • have surrendered, in Part III,
to a relaxed method and a much more popular story. There
is no reason to believe that Conrad, on reaching page 250
or 300, decided to popularize his novel or attenuate his
theme. '\Ie can refer instead to his own account of his struggle
for the creation and assume a temporary exhaustion. In novel-
writing the surrender to the obvious and the easy is not always
-- even, not usually -- conscious. 1

1. Guerard» Conrad: The Novelist, p. 216.

 This kind of criticism misi.nterprets the artistic demands of

Nostromo. Conrad had to finish his portrayal of Nostromo. especially

after h:is tri.p across the Golfo Placido, if he wanted to make his novel

complete. The end of Nostromo's life completes his character develop-

ment as it was meant to fulfill the legend. The gringo mythology has

been impinging itself upon his life throughout the novel, demanding its

perpetual re-enactment through him. Only in this 'Vlay will the silver

remain protected. The process taking place in ~Estro~_ has been that of

the timeless and the cosmic absorbing w·hat is bound in time and in the

particular. The time-oriented life of Nostromo dissolves into the time-

less world of mythology.

Of all the characters, Nostromo becomes most like the gringos

who linger after death, unable to relinquish the tTeasure. Along '''ith

Decoud s Nostromo undergoes a symbolic death during the journey across

the gulf. The very first thing that he sees on mvakening after his

journey is the ominous bird of prey, the vulture that 'vatches him I'for

the signs of death and corruption" (341). The bird is a prophetic

symbol; it mistakes Nostromo for a physical corpse, ~.,hich he is on a

metaphysical level. The bird symbolizes his destiny. Nostromo emerges

from the darkness of the Gulf a dead man because his former existence

is no longer valid. In taking the silver ingots across the Gulf, he

believed he could crystallize his created self in the most "famous and

desperate affair" (222) of his life. He imagines this event ,.,ill be

IItalked about ,...,hen the little children are grown up and groHn men are

old" (223). This existence is also a fa'jade that covers an essential

emptiness; it has neither meaning nor validity after his encounter with
 I~ 7

the negating powers of the universe. liThe Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores

had lived in spleandour and publicity up to the very moment, as it ,,,ere,

when he took charge of the lighter containing the treasure of the sil~er

ingots (341).

Nostromo's subsequent feeling of betrayal -- tlHe had been betrayed! II

(345) -- is a result of the knowledge that his existence is no longer

valid. He tells Dr. Monygham: "The Capataz is undone, destroyed. There

is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find the Capataz no more:" (359). No

longer able to live in terms of his public reputation, Nostromo discovers

that he has no inner substance to which he can revert. The necessity of

hiding negates his existence and he has no alternative except to totally

devote himself to the treasure.

Nostromo is nm" one of the living dead, and like Decoud, possess

the tragic vision that understands human existence to have no objective

reality \vhen vie\ved from a cosmic perspective. Both characters lose

their identities in serving the silver. ~ut the parallels between them

are even closer; Nostromo becomes a kind of vehicle through which Decoud

continues to live. In fact, the novel strongly suggests that Decoud's

soul enters Nostromo I s body \vhile he sits in the boat used by Decoud

before he died, speculating as to what became of him.

• • • his excitement had depa.rted, as \V'hen the soul

takes flight leaving the body inert upon an earth
it knows no more. Nostromo did not seem to know
the gulf. For a long time even his eyelids did not
flutter once upon the glazed emptiness of his stare.
Then slowly, without a limb having stirred, \oJithout
a twitch of muscle or quiver of an eyelash, an
expression, a living expression came upon the still
features, deep thought crept into the empty stare
-- as if an outcast soul, a quiet, brooding soul,
finding that untenanted body in its way, had come
in stealthily to take possession. (405)
 48

Furthermore it is significant that "Then Nostromo returns to the

Great Isabel, he sits in "the same pose, in the same place" (412) as

Decoud before him. The narrator even uses similar sentence structure and

vocabulary to emphasize the likeness of the t,vo characters. Where

Decoud is "a victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the retribution

meted out to intellectual audacity" (412), Nostromo is a "victim of the

disenchanted vanity which is the reward of audacious actionll (412) --

both sentences begin subsequent paragraphs. Nostromo cannot die because

it is for him (and Decoud through him) to maintain constant vigil over

the treasure. The only reality left is the silver: " • • • the fascination

of all that silver, with its potential pO\qer, survived alone outside of

himself" (410). No longer in possession of an independent will,

Nostromo is chosen by the unseen forces that inhabit the geographical

landscape to fulfill its wili. The novel has been suggesting all along

that the characters have been manipulated by some supernatural, cosmic

force. "And the spirits of good and evil that hover about a forbidden

treasure understood well that the silver of San Tome was provided now

with a faithful and lifelong slave" (412).

Nostromo's very name embodies all that happens to him in the

novel. As I illustrated in Chapter II, the allegorical dimension of

Nostromo partly manifests itself in the use of names. Through analysis

of his name, Nostromo can also be seen as a part of the novel's allegorical

dimension, 'vhich is inevitable since he re-enacts the gringo legend.

His popular name is a corruption of "Nostro Uomo\; meaning "boatswain ll

or "Haster 11 ; as such, his name is emblematic of his public role. Before

crossing the Gulf, he was master of the Cargadores and the COIDnlOn people.
 49

His rea.l name~ "Giovanni Battista Fidanza" suggests faithfulness in a

religious spi.ritual sense since he is named after John the Bapti.st. Hith

this implication in mind, his changing his name to just "Captain Fidanza l l
,
has very sinister connotations; the "Giovanni Battista r. disappears and

"Fidanza" comes to be emblematic of his existence as "Nostromo 11 ~vas

before the crossing of the Gulf. The two most frequent uses of the word

"fidanza J' in Italian imply reliance upon someone (,'fare a fidanza a uno

di una cosall)2 or entrusting something to someone ("dare fidanza a uno

di una cOHa,,).3 Thus Nostromo!s new name acquires deeply meaningful

overtones ~vhen one realizes that all his faith and loyalty is invested in

the silver. His ne,v name also embodies the implication that he has been

singled out by some force beyond himself which has entrusted the keeping

of the silver to him. Conrad reinforces the idea that Nostromo's soul

is controlled by a malignant force when he ceases to use the "Giovanni

Battista" and ·concentrates on "Captain Fidanza.1! Thus, Nostromo's be-

coming part of the allegorical dimension of the novel corresponds ,vith

his being absorbed into the mythological, timeless world of Sulaco.

Nostr~mo reveals more than one level of reality in that ,,,hile

each character has his own subjective conception of what reality is, the

novel reveals another level of reality that exists beyond the characters'

perceptions. Only Decoud and Nostromo come to perceive the cosmic reality

in the presence of which subjective existence disappears; the silver is

the symbolic manifestation of that level of reality. Nostromo is aware

of this fact: "His courage s his magnificence, his leisure, his work,

-----.- -------------.-
..

3. Ibid.
 50

everything l·ms as before ~ only everything was a sham. But the treasure

was real. He clung to it 1o1ith a more tenacious, mental grip" (429).

All forms of life in the w'orld of the novel seem to confirm the truth

of Nostromo's discovery that the only reality is the treasure; not even

the sea-birds of Azuera are beyond its powers: liThe rocky head of Azuera

is their haunt, "Those strong levels and chasms resound with their ",lId

and tumultuous clamour as if they ",ere for ever quarrelling over the

legendary treasure" (408).

Even Mrs. Gould, whose intentions are most benevolent and dis-

interested cannot escape the supernatural forces that inhabit the land-

scape. She fulfills their will unconsciously when she refuses to allow

Nostromo to reveal the whereabouts of the silver, In this way Mrs. Gould

rejects the only opportunity, hpHever slight, to defeat the control of

the silver. She condemns Nostromo eternally to its pOHer; even in death

he cannot be released. Nostromo realizes this himself: "'Alas! it holds

me yet!' "(457). The consistently ironic attitude of the novel insists

that Mrs. Gould be dralm into the innate corruption and degradation

generated by a malign universe. The forces of good and evil that dominate

the novel triumph finally over the Hill of the characters. The last

paragraph of Nostromo confirms this victory in the image of the "big

white cloud shining like a mass of solid silver" (463) over the gulf

while Nostromo dies. The emphasis on the silver at the end of Nostromo

is reminiscent of a similar emphasis at the end of Heart of Darkness

where Marlow sees the merging of the ,,,hiteness of the "Intended's" fore-

head with the \vhitelless of the ivory. Both '-lorks reveal a frightening

level of reality, the heart of which is material interest that provides

 51

the only basis and motivation for human action. Nostromo gradually

unfolds a vision which perceives the fragile world of humanity locked

within total cosmic darkness, devoid of morality or meaning. The darkness

without serves only to reflect the darkness within the characters. Nrs.

Gould, at the end of the novel, perceives this vision, already revealed

to Decoud and Nostromo; she is the only character that remains whose

perspective is that of the narrator's. Mrs. Gould is betrayed by her

own benevolence and sincerity, as Decoud was by his scepticism; she

believed too much in the power of material interests to bring about good,

while never considering its capacity to produce a evil. The vision of

horror that lies just under the surface of the novel floods Mrs. Gould's

consciousness all at once. In a moment of insight, she recognizes the

real basis of human motivation: "There was something inherent in the

necessities of successful action \.;rhich carried ~.;rith it the moral degradation

of the idea n'(427) • At this point her perspective merges with that of

Decoud who earlier in the novel talked about man's need to idealize his

passions in the "fair robes of an idea." She also recognizes her own

essential isolation: "Mrs. Gould's face became set and rigid for a

second, as if to receive, without flinching, a great wave of loneliness

that swept over her head. And it came into her mind, too, that no one

would ever ask ,\lith solicitude ,.;rhat she \.;ras thinking of" (427) •

Of all three characters, Mrs. Gould's suffering is the most

poignant; there is no disparity between her public and private self,

She did not have to contd.ve a false mask to hide an empty darkness,

like Decoud and Nostromo. Her belief in material interests arose from

the most unselfish intentions. Nevertheless, she devoted herself no

 52

less than any other character to the silver; while a victim of a

malevolent cosmic will, Mrs. Gould is also a victim of her own nature.

She stands condemned to live with her vision for eternity; her survival

is her tragedy, Decoud and Nostromo at least are able to obliterate

the vision from consciousness through death. Ironically, because her

existence is faithful to the impulses of her own nature, she can resist

the destruction which befalls Decoud and Nostromo. "With a prophetic

vision she saw herself surviving alone the degradation of her young

ideal of life, of love, of ,york -- all alone in the treasure house of

the world" (428).

Decoud, Nostromo and Mrs. Gould are the only characters 'vho

discover the tragic vision in Nostrom?.. Through them Conrad shmvs that

w'hile manipulated by a hostile., evil cosmos. man shares in the responsibility

of his own moral corruption. Decoud, Nostromo and Mrs, Gould are tragic

figures in that they are mvare of this fact. As Conrad wrote in a

letter to R. B. Cunningham-Graham:

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the

victims of nature. it is that they are conscious
of it • • • as soon as you knmv your slavery, the
pain, the anger, the strife, -- the tragedy begins
• • • There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope:
there is only the consciousness of ourselves which
drives us about a world that •• is always but a
vain and floating appearance. 4

4. Jean-Aubry, Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters, I, p. 226.

 IV
"It had come into her mind that for life to be
large and full, it must contain the care of the
past and of the future in every passing moment
of the present. n (Nostromo, 427)

Though mechanical ttme can, in a sense, be speeded up

or run bachvard, like the hands of a clock or the images
of a moving picture, organic time moves in only one
direction -- through the cycle of birth, growth,
development, decay and death and the past that is
already dead remains present in the future that has
still to be born. l

It fs this dispar.ity between organic time and illusory, mechanical time

that Conrad explores in Nostromo. Historical time that can be marked

in periods or "epochs", as Captain IHtchell calls them is at odds, in

the novel, with subjective human experience. As I have sho'\vu in the

previous chapters, the future of the characters in ~ostrom~_ is present

in their past; moreover,·the historical dimension of the novel is absorbed

into its mythical framework. Human history is rendered unintelligible

in the novel by radical time shifts. Captain Mitchell's historical

narrative is broken off at various points in the novel, 'vith the effect

that the events portrayed in Nostrom~ are confused.

The technique of Nostromo attempts to reveal that chronological

time, through \vhich man believes himself to progress and change, is an

illusion. In ~i9strom~, individuals are incapable of transcending the

limitations and failures of their past, while human history dissolves

into the mythology of the landscape. The events of the novel are not

--~-----.-.- --~----.-~--

1. }lumford, Techniques and Civilization, quoted in Harvey, Character and

the Novel-;--p. 104. .-~----~~-

53
 54

given enough detail to distinguish them as having various degrees of

importance. The narrator seems to deliberately blur the differences

between the Monterist and Bento revolutions, so that the reader often

confuses them. The events of both revolutions are interspersed with

each other. The spatial organization of Nostromo does not allow

continuous narration of a particular event or experience of a character,

thus depriving these aspects of the novel of the necessary cohesiveness

that lvould realize their potential importance. Conrad relies chiefly

on fragmentation of sequence to achieve such an effect. Decoud's suicide

is not dramatized until after the reader knows of his death through

Captain Mitchell's tour speech. The fact of. his death comes as a casual

reference in Mitchell's generally pompous and monotonous oration; the

potential impact of this knowledge is already deflated. Before the

reader is aware of Decoud's death, he also knows of the redemption of

the Great Isabel from the total isolation that Decoud experiences. Decoud's

sense of isolation on the island is not as credible for the reader as it

might have been i f the presence of the lighthouse had been mentioned

earlier. Because Decoud's suicide is dramatized so late in the novel,

it is deliberately emptied of its climactic potential.

The battle betlveen General Barrios and Pedrito Montero is never

dramatized, but also related through the over-inflated rhetoric of

Captain Mitchell; it, too, never realizes its climactic potential. The

Barrios victory comes as no surprise to the reader by the time Captain

Mitchell mentions it, because he already knows that political lISeparation"

is an established fact. The Monte:rist revolution, mentioned as early as

 55

Chapter II of liThe Silver of the Mine"t is never allowed to build up

the necessary momentum to render it a forceful event. There are no

climactic moments in Nostromo because of this technique ~Yhich continuously

fragments the narrative sequence.

This kind of technique also has a highly ironic effect. The

tvorld Conrad envisions in Nost.Eomo is one devoid of morality or heroism.

The Ribierist government, that Don Jose Avellanos believes ,-li11 establish

a nC1,y age in Sulaco~ is exposed as a corrupt institution. It is a

puppet government set up by foreign developers like Charles Gould and

Sir John -- the "man of raihvays" -- to represent and protect their

material interests. Again, i t is Captain Hitchell who mentions this

government's defeat as early as the second chapter in the novel, before

the narration of events that should logically lead up to it. The

inauguration of the railway and the celebrations for President Ribiera

are treated wlth extreme irony because they occur after the reader knows

of the president-dictator's defeat. The last chapter of "The Silver of

the Mine H returns to the account of his dmmfall: "Next time ~vhen the

'Hope of honest men' was to come that way, a year and a half later, it

was unofficially, over the mountain tracks, fleeing after a defeat on a

lame mule, to be only just saved by Nostromo from an ignominious death

at the hands of a mob" (118). The tone of this passage is not only

ironic -- it is ridiculing; coming at the end of the first section of

the novel, it undercuts the events which preceded it. Ribiera's defeat

frames the celebrations of the new government and the optimism of the

characters for a ne~v 'vorld, thus totally undercutting these aspects of

the noveL The failure of the government and the denial of the characters'
 56

expectations are established first through technique, and then, through

the theme.

Conrad takes war~ love and death, themes of archetypal importance

to the human consciousness, showing them to possess neither nobility nor

meaning. In the universe envisioned in the nove1 t these concepts are

divorced from their traditional associations ~o7ith heroism and moral

seriousness. The Monterist revolution, is portrayed as no more than an

incredible, pathetic farce; its slogan -- "Viva la libertad! Down with

Feudalism! Dmm with the goths and Paralytics" (19 l .) -- is emblematic

of its essential character. A mutual love relationship is impossible

in the world of J'iostromo; Mrs. Gould experiences her deepest suffering

in her relationship with her husband, who can love nothing but the San

T.ome Mine. Love becomes an excuse for Decoud's action in the revolution,

and a mask to cover Antonia's private ambltions to annex Costaguana.

The structure of the novel, with its constant time shifts and disruption

of narrative sequence, largely promotes the effect of destroying the

idealism around human experience. If Nostromo had preserved a more

orthodox, linear time scheme, such events would have possessed greater

stature than they are actually allowed. Conrad's intention seems to

have been to expose the futility of human existence which pursues the

ideal in life. In ~mother letter to R. B. Cunningham-Graham, Conrad

wrote: "Into the noblest cause, men manage to put something of their

baseness • • • Every cause is tainted: and you reject this one, espouse

that other one as if one \vere evil and the other good, while the same

evil you hate is in both, but disgl,lised in different words,,,2 The

~------ .. ..
~---- -~-------------------.------------

2. Jean~Aubry, Jo~eph Conrad: Life and Letters, I, p. 229.

 57

ideal concepts upon which man builds his civilization are no more than

insubstantial illusions born out of vanity. In destroying the illusory

foundations of civilization, Conrad destroys the medium through which

human history feels itself to progress, especially on a moral. level.

As ~ostromo reveals, there is no moral advancement and the changes that

take place in human history are only ones of surface detail. Humanity

can never surpass its primitive origins; it can only momentarily obliterate

the living reality of its past from consciousness by the illusion of

civilization. This is the common theme that runs throughout Conrad's

fiction. Conrad's treatment of time is one of the major w'ays through

l>lhich he conveys this vision of life; only ,,,hen the reader is totally

confused and has lost his bearings in clock-time, can he begin to perceive

this vision which penetrates the cosmic chaos as the reality underlying

human existence.

The process of. reading the novel allows one to maintain a

necessary double perspective; the reader can remain in his illusory

world while able to simultaneously see the abysmal reality. Language,

while a means of exposing this reality, also maintains the necessary

distance from it. WHhout this distance, man is plunged into the

destructive universe. Marlow is spared the destruction that befalls

Decoud and Nostromo because of his ability to articulate his knowledge.

He has the double advantage of being sufficiently distanced from the

cosmic vacuum that destroys, while being able to maintain the vital link

with his community. Marlow inhabits this precarious position betHeen

the two worlds through language. He is similar to the Ancient Mariner

in that although trapped in absolute knowledge discovered in a past

 58

moment, both characters can continue to live as long as they repeat the

experience to others. In this ''lay Marlm'l is able to commit himself to

the world of mankind Hhile ever aHare it is a sham: he must be faithful

to the illusion ''lhile being aware it is an illusion. This is the

crucial paradox of Conrad's fiction. Marlm'l is not like Decoud and

Nostromo who cross the barrier between the illusion and the abyss; rather,

he inhabits the middle region. The reader should ideally achieve this

perspective through Nostro~~.

In the first and second chapters of liThe Silver of the Mine",

Conrad juxtaposes the timeless world of mythology with the time-ori.ented

l'lorld of human action. This structual juxtaposition represents the t,'lO

levels of involvement that occupy the entire novel. Human history must

be considered against its cosmic background, represented in Nos~romo by

the geography. The mountain called Higuerota becomes emblematic of

the cosmic backdrop in the novel:

Knots of men ran headlong; others made a stand • • •

single figures on foot raced desperately. Horsemen
galloped toward each other ''lheeled around together,
separated at speed • • • the movements of the
animated scene ''lere like the passage of a violent
game played upon the plain by d''larfs mounted and on,
foot, yelling with tiny throats, under the mountain
that seemed a colossal embodiment of silence. (35)

Visually this scene is like a cinematic technique Hhere the

camera closely focuses on the activity before it, capturing its vitality

and vividness. Slowly the camera draws backward and upward to the height

of the mountain, focusing downward to encompass the scene in its physical

context. From this perspective the vitality dwindles, the voices fade

and the scene loses its grandeur so that the action becomes little more
 59

than a farcial game. It is significant that the scene ends with the

emphasis on silence, since silence and darkness are the t'YlO main defining

qualities of the created universe in ~?strom~.

The lighthouse on the Great Isabel and the temporary stability

brought to Sulaco after the Monterist defeat represent the establishment

of civilization over the underlying abyss. But the lighthouse, representa-

tive of the mercantile values that are taking root in Sulaco, will never

penetrate the symbolic darkness of the Placid Gulf. Similarly, the

economic benefits brought to Sulaco by the success of material interests

will not maintain the political stability necessary to prevent another

revolution. By the end of Nostromo the ironic attitude of the narrator

is most explicit; faith in material interests has betrayed its believers

and the former chaos will reassert itself in a ne", revolution. The

moral principles with which the characters invested the pursuit of

material interests is exposed as a fasade to disguise individual moral

corruption.

The novel ends essentially where it began; its final focus on

Nostromo completes its cyclic structure in that the myth has been fully

re-enacted. The last foreboding references to new political unrest

with the imminent possibility of another revolution not only help to

reinforce the novel's circular structure, but along with the account of

Nostromo's destiny, the illusory nature of time is emphasized. Nostromo

has not progressed beyond its opening chapter in the sense that every-

thing that occurs in the novel is contained on a symbolic level in that

chapter.
 60

Conrad's main concern in No~t~ is not to tell a particular

story; or to explore the dimensions of a character. On the other hand,

it would be totally false to deny that Conrad has created a convincing

literal narrative; as Oscar Wilde vlrote: "All art is at once surface

and symbol.,,3 Rather, Conrad works through the narrative and the

characters in order to discover a vision. In his essay on Nostr~mo,

Arnold Kettle agrees that: "Some kind of 'moral discovery', Conrad

wrote, 'should be the object of every tale.' He was no Art-far-Arter,

this artist • • • and by 'moral discovery' he did not TIlean merely the

illustration of some preconceived moral truth. It ~<1as in the creation

of the work of art that the discovery vlaS made.,,4

F. R. Leavis, dubbing Nostro~o as a masterpiece of English prose

fiction, feels that: "for all the rich variety of the interest and the

tightness of the pattern, the reverberation of Nostromo has something

hollow about it • • • ,,5 The "hollmvness ll that Leavis feels after read-

ing ~ostromo does not arise from any fa~l4iness within the novel, but

rather in the nature of the universe that Conra.d conveys. His purpose

was not to flatter human illusions by asserting the existence of an

ordered, harmonious cosmos; instead, he exposed the universal moral

vacuum into which mankind was born. This is the aspect of human existence

in 'vhich Conrad is most interested. Through direct confrontation with

3. Oscar Wilde, lb.!!: Pict_~of J2.c:..rian Gr~y', (Harmonds'vorth: Penguin,

1949), p. 6.

5. Leavis, The Gre8.t Tradition, p, 211.

 61

the cosmos, man discovers the reality of his Oi'ffi nature. Marlow" s

journey into the Congo parallels a descent into the self, where he

finds nothing. His recognition of kinship with the primitive tribes

of Africa confronts him with the knm171edge that mankind has not developed

morally beyond his primitive ancestors, despite the passage of centuries.

The future of humanity lies in its primordial past. But man-

kind cannot face the reality of its existence; it must obliterate it

with the presence of a grand illusion. Yet the more mankind tries to

blot out reality, the more he shrouds himself in illusions, denying

hi.mself the possibility of a future through which he might hope to over-

come some of the limitations of his existence.

I have devoted this thesis to showing that the concept of time

is. fundamental to understanding Nostromo. The true nature of time

that Conrad reveals in this novel is best expressed in the opening lines

of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets":

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable. (11 1-5).

For Eliot, this idea of time is hypothetical, whereas for Conrad

it is reality. Because time past contains time future, then there is no

possibilHy for human existence to renew itself through time. Thus

time, for Conrad, is unredeemable. Human existence may change through

surface detail, but essentially it is static, confined within its own

origins. For Eliot, man is redeemed through time by the Incarnation; thus

the opening lines of 'IBurnt Norton ll are rejected as a hypothesis by the

poet. But for Conrad, God does not intervene in human history; for man,
 62

there is no possibility of redemption through time.

 EPILOGUE: CONRAD AND TUE TRADITION

"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete;

it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderw'eb
of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber
of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle
in its tissue." (Henry James, HThe Art of Fiction").

Having devoted this thesis to a detailed analysis of Conrad's

major novel, ~ostromo, I find it becomes necessary, in conclusion, to

make a more general statement about Conrad and place him in the tradition

of English novel-writing. F. R. Leavis, in attempting to locate Conrad

in the tradition, writes:

The impressiveness [of Nostromo] is not a matter of any

profundity of search into hu~an experience, or any explorative
subtlety in the analysis of human behaviour. It is a matter
rather of the firm and vivid concreteness \"ith \"hich the
representative attitudes and motives are realized, and the
rich economy of the pattern that plays them off against one
another,l

Nostrom<2. is a !1 magnificent" novel for Leav:ts because it "addresses

the senses, or the sensuous imagination,,;2 it is great because of its

3
1!life-like convincingness" of characterization. While one cannot argue

against these statements as being incorrect, one can reject them as valid

tenets of criticism and as improper reasons for including Conrad (or any

novelist, for that matter) in a great tradition. It is Leavis' critical

criteria t"hich cause him to overlook the essential !'profundity of search

into human experience" that is a vital part of Nostromo. Rather, one

1. F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition, p. 215.

2. Ibid" p, 211.

3. Ibid, p. 216.

63
 64

must see Conrad as part of a tradition that extends back beyond Jane

Austen into the Renaissance and form·mrd beyond D. n. La1;\1rence to include

such writers as Joyce~ Faulkner and Samuel Beckett. The "great l l tradition

to which Conrad belongs is one that began with Rene Descartes' philosophical

dictum IlCogito ergo sum!!: it is the tradition which is predominantly

preoccupied with the question of consciousness.

In his revie1;11 of Chance t Henry James rec'ognized an artisitc

technique akin to his O1;m when he wrote of that novel as na prolonged

hovering flight of the subjective over the outstretched ground of the

II
case exposed. 1I The concern of subjectivity, or consciousness, is

central to the art of both James and Conrad. Jame.s describes this kind

of technique in his Preface to The Portrait of a Ladx.:

'Place the centre of the subject in the young woman's

own consciousness s ' • • • !and you get as interesting
and as beautHul a difficulty as you could 1;llish. Stick
to £..:~~t:. -- for the centre; put the heaviest \Ileight into
that scale, 1;llhich 1;llil1 be so largely the scale of her
relation to herself.'

Conrad's technique is similar to James' method in his major fiction,

especially in those works where Marlow appears. In Heart of Dark~~~~,

Lord Jim and Chance, the subject or central concern is Marlow's conscious-

ness as it broods upon the "case exposed." Through his interaction Hith

Kurtz, Jim or Flora de Barral, Marlow comes to discover and understand

the true nature of his ovm self. It is the effect of experience upon the

central consciousness 1;llith which these works are largely concerned. Yet

\vher-eas James tends to concentrate upon one central consciousness in his

----------------
4. Henry James, ,!'he Art 0~Fi~tiOl~_3J.nd Other Ess~s (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1948), 1!. 204.
 65

novels, Conrad is more interested in the negative implications of con-

sciousness in more than one particular character. The story of Kurtz

affects tlvO minds. those of l1arlm>l and the general narrator of .Hear..!:.~~.

Darkness; the same can be said of ~ord Ji~ and Chan~e. Thus characters

like Kurtz and Jim are at once the means through which Harlow (and the

actual narrator) discover themselves, while they are also a symbolic

representation of the extreme implications of the predicament of con-

sciousness. Kurtz and Jim are similar to Isabel Archer in that they are

deceived also by a romantic ideal, the centre of \oThich is the self. All

three characters are possessed by their own egotism and tend to interpret

the external world in terms of their personal desires and aspirations.

But Conrad goes farther than James in exploring the horrific implications

of consciousness as the centre of everything. Consciousness (the sub-

jective perspective) in Conrad's fiction tends to become identified with

a will to power over the external w'orld. Kurtz desires to recreate the

savage darkness of the Congo jungle in his own image; his beneficent

. intentions are in fact a mask to disguise a self-exalted ego. He discovers,

to his horror, that the true image of his self lies in that primal dark-

ness that he is trying to convert. In the depths of the impenetrable

jungle· Kurtz sees reflected there the essence of his self. Decoud and

Nostromo discover the same thing. In his fiction Conrad explodes the

implications of "Cogito ergo sumll -- that everything exists as the object

of human thought. In this respect Conrad reprsents a culminative point

in the tradition of the English novel. J. Hillis Miller agrees that:

The development of fiction from Jane Austen to Conrad

and James is a gradual exploration of the fact that
for modern man nothing exists except as it is seen by
 66

someone vie~..ring the ,,,orld from his ovm perspective. 5

This comment could very easily be appHed to ~hal!_<:'C:_' where the basic

narrative is refracted through a multiplicity of consciousnesses until it

is finally told to the reader. It becomes increasingly obvious in ~_ha~ce.

that the possibility exists that the story of Flora de Barral was very

different than ,,,e are told, since even Marlm.-l does not receive all his

information first hand. The growing hostility that the reader senses

bet\l7een Marlmv and the actual narrator raises the problem that perhaps the

latter may be distorting Marlow's story. The reader, having no other

information, must finally accept the story of Flora de Barral as it is

r'elated by Marlow and the actual narrator. The same problems arise with

Lord Jim: 11 'He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that

he exists for you" (171) •

In accounting for the very possibility of the novel-genre, Ian

Watt attributes -it to the new concept of the individual consciousness as

the basis of reality.

The novel is the form of literature which most fully

reflects this individual and innovating reorientation.
• • • literary traditionalism was first and most fully
challenged by the novel, whose primary criterion 'vas
truth to individual experience -- individual experience
,-,hich is ahvays unique and therefore new. The novel
is thus the logical literary vehicle of a culture which,
in the last fe\" centuries, has set an unprecedented
value on or~ginality, on the novel; it is therefore
,,,ell named.

Hatt also refers to the fact that "from the Renaissance otnvards, there

-----------------------,
5. Hillis Miller, !oe~~Re~lity, p. 4.
 67

was a growing tendency for individual experience to replace collective

7
tradition as the ultimate arbiter of reality.1l Conrad is very much a

part of this post-renaissance tradition; he also begins another tradition,

along "'ith Henry James, which interprets the centrality of consciousness

in a negative vmy. D. H. La\vrence interpreted the light of rational

consciousness as a death-like state. Hermione in Homen in Love is a

diseased, dying character because of her need to absorb everything in

the external 'vorld into her own consciousness. In Lm.;rrence I s terms,

Hermione murders or annihilates life because she does not allow it to

exist in its own right. Birkin's accusations of Hermione best illustrate

her sickness:

'It's all that Lady of Sha10tt business,' he said, • ,

'You've got that mirror, your o\.;rn fixed will, your
immortal understanding, your own tight conscious world,
and there is nothing beyond it. There, in the mirror,
you must have everything . • • you want it all in
that loathsome little skull of yours • • • \.;rhat you
want is pornography -- looking at yourself in mirrors,
• • • so that you can have it all in your consciousness,
make it all mental. 18

But Lawrence went beyond Conrad in that he not only exposed the

negative implications of consciousness, but he also attempted to resolve

them. Lmvrence 'vas able to foresee a new \<7orld where the light of

consciousness would form a perfect union with the darkness of the blood-

unconsciousness.

7. Ibid" p. 14.

8. D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, with a foreward by the author and an

introduction by Richard Aldington (Ne\v York: The Viking Press, 1960),
pp. 35, 36.
 68

Samuel Beckett is perhaps nearer to Conrad in the sense that he

too concentrates upon the negativism of consciousness w'ithout really

resolving it. In his vlOrk t Beckett explores the inadequacy of human

consciousness to deal with reality and its metaphysical dimensions. His

characters are only able to cope with trivia; it is impossible for them

to reckon with concepts that transcend the realm of the mundane and the

simple. The narrator can only account for himself and his misfortunes

in terms of physical circumstance. The story focuses on the inept way

in which the character walks, which, to him is a means by which to

explain his present predicament.

. I refer to the period \oJ'hich extends . • • from the

first totterings • • • I had then th~ deplorable habit,
having pissed in my trousers, or shat there, 'vhich I did
fairly regularly early in the morning, • • • of persist-
ing in going on and finishing my day as if nothing had
happened. The very idea of changing my trousers, or of
confiding in mother • • • tvas unbearable, • • • and till
bedtime I dragged on with burning and stinking between
my little thighs, or sticking to my bottom . • • \fhence
this \vary vlay of walking, Hith the legs stiff and \vide
apart, and this desperate rolling of the bust, no doubt
intended to put people off the scent, to make them think
I Has full of gaiety • . • without a care in the world,
and to lend plausibility to my explanations concerning my
nether rigidity, \"hich I ascribed to hereditary rheumatism
• . • I became sour and mistrustful, a little before my
time, in love with biding and the prone position. Poor
juvenile solutions, explaining nothing • • . we may reason
to our heart's content, the fog won't lift.9

It appears that the Beckett character cannot bear the weight of

reality. His consciousness is unable to deal with it, except in the most

simplistic terms. In Hollo~, the consciousness of the narrator is incapable

of dealing with murder, and must revert to a contemplation of incidentals.

-------------.----,----~-

9. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts ~EE.._~.?thinfl, (Netv York: Grove Press,
Inc., 1967), pp.--14, 15.
 69

According to Hillis Hiller, the belief that God was ever present

in the external world gave man a sense of unity and order in his own

life and the world around him. But 'l7hen man posits his individual con-

sciousness as the basis of reality, God disappears and the human ego is

not strong enough to maintain the sense of unity that came 'l7ith a God-

oriented world. Thus consciousness can only retreat back upon itself

until there is nothing. This is essentially what happens in Conrad's

novels; Kurtz, Jim, Decoud, Nostromo -- this type of character lives \vithin

the supremacy of his o\vn consciousness which is only possible within the

communal context. But when such characters are removed from this context

and are forced to confront the physical world alone, consciousness cannot

hold and dissolves into reality. At this point in human experience, man

discovers the infinite nothingness of his ego. As Conrad 'I7rote to R. B.

Cunningham-Graham:

Of course reason is hateful, -- but why? Because it

demonstrates (to'those who have the courage) that we,
livings are out of life, -- utterly out of it. The
mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and
clods of mud do not concern us in the least •
Life knows us not and we do not know life. IO

Thus Conrad devoted himself ultimately to the problem of the

subjective consciousness and discovered the logical conclusions of the

Cartesian philosophical dictum out of which the modern world was born.

It is significant that Conrad 'vas writing, with Henry James, at the

beginning of a century v7hich is seriously examining the principles upon

which it was founded. "It remained for Conrad to explore nihilism to its

depths, and, in doing so, to point the way toward the transcendence of

10. Jean-Aubry, The Life and Letters of Joseph Conrad, I, p. 222.

 70

nihilism by the poets of the twentieth century. 1111 LI,n..rrence was able to

achieve this transcendence by forgoing a new vision which creates a

marriage betHeen soul and body; Beckett does the same in the sense that:

he explores the comic potential of a despairing situation. Any trans-

cendence of nihilism could not have been possible unless Conrad had con-

fronted it head-on and exposed it in his Hark. Thus Conrad not only

belongs to a great tradition, he is also a crisis point in it,

._-_.._--- --------~.~---~----~~--~---

11. Hillis Hiller. Poets of i\eality, p. 6.

 71

LIST OF HORKS CONSULTED

Baines, Jocelyn. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography. London:

Heidenfeld and Nicoiso"'i1:-[19-59).""--.------.~

Bergson, Henri. Tir~~d_Fr~~ \.;ri1~. trans. F. L. Pogson, London:

G. Allen and Co. Ltd., 1913.

Conrad's Prefaces to His Works. With an Introduction by Edward Garnett,

-London":"J.--~-Dent ·"mi-d-sons Ltd., [1937].

Fleishman, Avrom. I..~e ..!pglish Historical No~l: _.¥aJ.:..~E.:E.~c_<?!.~" to.

Virginia Woolf. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press,
1197 ff:------

Guerard, Alhert. .c;:_onr~E.. }h~.!~.Y_~l~_st. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1958.

Harvey, W. J. Character and the Novel. London:

Chat to and \~in-d-;"s-~-i965-:-----

He\.ritt, Douglas. Conrad: A Reassessment. 2nd edition, Chester Springs:

Dufour Edition"s;Tfg-69L-----·----

Kettle, Arno.ld. An Introduction to the En~lish Novel. 2 vols. London:

Hutchinson University -f.JTbrari~-11953T:--------

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