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Content THE RELUCTANT VOICE
« « ■ ~
The Power of the Word in Selected Works of Joseph Conrad
by
John Tharal Hartzog
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
June 1975
UMI Number: DP23048
All rights reserved
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T h is dissertation, w ritte n by
John Tharal JHartzog........
un d e r the d ire c tio n o f hX s... D isse rta tio n C om
m ittee, and a p p ro ve d by a ll its m embers, has
been presented to and accepted by T h e G raduate
School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t o f requirem ents o f
the degree o f
D O C T O R O F P H IL O S O P H Y
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
...
I Chairman
U N IVER SITY O F S O U TH E R N C A LIFO R N IA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section Page
I. THE RELUCTANT VOICE.......................... 1
II. THE GIFT OF EXPRESSION: Some Explorations
of the Power of the Word in Conrad's Early
Fiction
The Nigger of the "Narcissus":
Filthy Eloquence and the Voice
of Command......................... 13
2. Finding a Voice: Marlow and
the Technique of Storytelling ........... 34
3. Heart of Darkness: The Gift
of Expression............... 42
4. Lord Jim: Words, Words— Artful
Dodges to Escape Self-Knowledge ........ 61
5. Typhoon: The Literal Captain MacWhirr . 103
III. THE PUBLIC VOICE: Articulating Social
and Political Reality
1. Nostromo: What's in a N a m e ? ........... 116
2. The Secret Agent: The Failure
of the Word.......... 172
IV. THE RELUCTANT VOICE AND THE L I E ............. 204
I. THE RELUCTANT VOICE
Joseph Conrad's fictional world is peopled with bizarre
figures like Wait, Jim, Kurtz, and Verloc, whose behavior
and motives are puzzling to those around them. The crea
tion of such a gallery of strangers seems appropriate for
one of the most enigmatic writers in the history of English
literature: Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, the
Pole, who becomes Joseph Conrad, a great writer in a foreign
tongue, the adventurous sailor who skims the surfaces of the
world's seas for half his life then suddenly becomes the
sedentary writer who plumbs the depths of the solitary self.
But perhaps there is nothing more strange about Conrad
than his deep ambivalence toward his vocation as a writer.
Conrad is a key figure in developing the craft of English
fiction through a strenuous commitment to the power and im
portance of words and the art of writing. Yet throughout
his life as a writer he continually questions the validity
of the whole enterprise of writing, frequently saying that
words are at best a fragile means of expressing anything
real, and at worst, the means through which men mask the
truth and hide from reality. Marlow's comment in Heart of
1
Darkness about the nature of Kurtz's gift of expression
states precisely Conrad's own ambivalence toward the power
of words: . .of all his gifts the one that stood out
pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real pres
ence, was his ability to talk, his words--the gift of ex
pression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most ex
alted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of
light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impene
trable darkness."'*'
Such sensitivity to the duality of language, the ca
pacity of words to be the vehicles of the most exalted humar
feelings and perceptions, to be "the pulsating stream of
light," or to be the means men use to bewilder and deceive
one another, is a sensitivity that pervades all of Conrad's
works. The word is the extraordinary gift that makes man
human. Such is Conrad's conviction and the conviction of
any man who devotes his life to using words. Conrad, how
ever, has an acute awareness of that other potentiality of
language: the potentiality of words for creating barriers
between men, for blinding them to the truth. Therefore he
speaks with a reluctant voice.
The "Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus," which is
so often read as a hymn of praise to the power of the word
^ All references to Conrad are to the Complete Works,
26 vols. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Com
pany, 1925) XVI, 113-14. Volume and page numbers are noted
parenthetically.
and the high importance of the art of fiction, actually de
lineates an extremely qualified and modest role for the
fiction writer. The Preface is no Lawrentian rapture about
the novel as the "one bright book of life," or ecstatic
vision of the role of the artist as forging in the smithy
of his soul the conscience of the race. Instead Conrad ex
presses a sense of the difficulty of using words, and con
sistently qualifies the significance and possibilities of
the writer's role. He says that, "the aim of art, . . .
like life itself, is inspiring, difficult— obscured by
mists." (XXIII, xv) Art seems only capable of giving mo
mentary revelations of truth through the mists. Words are
old and "worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage," and
the writer can at best hope that "the light of magic sug
gestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent in
stant over the commonplace surface of words." (XXIII, xv)
The work of art seems capable of arresting only "for the
space of a breath" the attention of men and then causing
them to merely pause "for a look, for a sigh, or a smile"—
a rather minimal response, to say the least, and that only
for a brief moment before they return to their work.
Even in the famous passage that celebrates the power
of the word to make the reader "see," Conrad qualifies this
power with characteristic irony. The "successful" work of
art will give the reader all he "demands": "encouragement,"
"consolation," "fear," and "charm." Perhaps, ironically,
_____________________________________________________3_
it will also give him something he has forgotten to ask for:
Truth. But then even at best, only a "glimpse” of Truth.
This awareness of the dual capacity of language is
centrally expressed in his fiction. His major works con
sistently explore the way words function, the power and
limits of the human gift of expression. Such a perception
of the elusive, ambiguous nature of language also has im
portant consequences for his method of conducting his ex
plorations into the functions of words. Much of the com
plexity of his narrative technique, his use of time shifts,
multiple narrators, and the use of the forms of letters and
diaries, grows out of this awareness of the ambivalent
nature of language.
Before examining in detail the content and form of
Conrad's major explorations of the power of the word, a
look at some biographical facts may be helpful in setting
the context for understanding his special sensitivity to the
function of language. Of course, making statements about
Conrad's life in general, and about the relationship of his
art to his life in particular, is risky business. There
has been controversy among the biographers over what
actually happened in certain periods of Conrad's life,
especially during his time in Marseilles. The biographical
facts are ambiguous at certain points, to say nothing of the
significance of the events in relationship to his fiction.
Even Jocelyn Baines' careful statement about the facts of
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4_
Conrad's life remains a fairly external account of events
and does little to explore the most provocative questions
about his motivations and sensibilities.
A significant biographical fact for understanding Con
rad's peculiar sensitivity to the power of the word was his
own personal experience as a foreigner, speaking and writing
in a foreign language. This experience has been noted and
marvelled at, but little explored. Yet it was an experi
ence that must have had a powerful and continuous influence
upon his sense of language, its possibilities and limits.
This assertion would be sheer speculation except for the
fact that there are two writings in which Conrad expresses
his experience of being a foreigner to England and the
English language, and which reveal some of the consequences
of such an experience. One of the writings is the well-
known autobiographical statement in the Preface to A Per
sonal Record. The other source of information about
COnrad's experience with language is in the early short
story, "Amy Foster." This story has been justly recognized
as one of Conrad's best, but not enough attention has been
paid to the autobiographical content of the story. The
story can be read as a powerful analysis of Conrad's own
experience of foreignness, and more importantly for the
thesis of this paper, as a story about the power of
language.
Conrad's self-analysis in A Personal Record has been
_______________________________________________________________________5L
too easily accepted at face value as an adequate account of
his experience. The statement, however, was a retrospective
statement made in 1919 at the peak of his fame and accep
tance, and seems a rather too easy and evasive analysis of a
complex experience. Conrad suggests that he did not really
choose to write in a foreign language, but that he was
"adopted" by the language. He expresses a strong sense of
having been fated to write in English, saying, "my faculty
to write in English is as natural as any other aptitude with
which I might have been born." (VI, vii) Such an explana
tion seems a defensive reaction on the part of one who was
sensitive to the fact of being a foreigner and who was try
ing to claim that his use of English was as "natural" and
an "inherent part" of himself as it was to any native
Englishman! What Conrad finally claims is that his rela
tionship to English is "a very intimate action and for that
very reason it is too mysterious to explain." (VI, viii)
Such a statement may reveal his sense of the limits of lan
guage, but it is more likely his own repression of the pain
of being a foreigner trying to write in a foreign tongue.
Conrad critics have noted that "Amy Foster" incorpor---
rates much of Conrad's own experience as a foreigner in
England. The story of Yanko Goorall, the Central European
castaway tossed upon the shores of England by the violent
sea into a terrifying experience of isolation, seems a clear
reflection of Conrad's own experiences. Guerard sums up
6—
most clearly the autobiographical basis of the story: "And
of course it is plausible to see in Yanko Goorall a projec
tion of Conrad's loneliness. The long years of solitude at
sea, the 'inexpressible melancholy' of tropic sunshine, the
austere separateness of command, the years without legal
nationality other than the unacceptable Russian, the arrival
in England ('No explorer could have been more lonely'), the
Congo experience and the year of sickness that followed it,
the major uprooting which came with abandonment of the sea,
the unreality and loneliness of a writer's life, the failure
of even his literary friends to understand his intentions—
all these may have conspired to determine the temperament
revealed not merely in 'Amy Foster'."^ Guerard's statement
is accurate as far as it goes. "Amy Foster," however, is
autobiographical in a more precise sense than simply that
of expressing Conrad's generalized experience of isolation
and foreignness. The story can be read as a powerful em
bodiment of Conrad's experience with language, of his
traumatic personal experience with the power of words.
"Amy Foster" articulates the precise meaning of what it
means to be an alien and a foreigner. It dramatizes the
essence of that experience as the inability to communicate,
to make human contact through language. The story is one
of misunderstanding, the story of a man who finds himself
1
Albert Guerard, Conrad the Novelist (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 49.
7
"a lost stranger, helpless, incomprehensible, and of a mys
terious origin, in some obscure corner of the earth!" (XX,
113) The key word here is "incomprehensible." Yanko's fate
results from his being literally incomprehensible. All his
efforts to communicate are misunderstood. His attempts to
verbalize his need only alienates those to whom he speaks.
His very cries for help drive help away. All because he
speaks in a "foreign" tongue, because he is "incomprehen
sible." His story is a study in terrifying isolation when
verbal communication is not possible, a dramatic portrayal
of the power of words to isolate and destroy.
Conrad at one time had thought of entitling the story
"The Castaway" rather than "Amy Foster." Such a title would
have been more accurate because the focus is on Yanko
Goorall and not on Amy Foster. Amy plays an important role
in Yanko's tragic story, but the story does not center in
dramatizing her limited perception and understanding. She
is one of a whole line of Conrad's minor characters who has
an experience and misses the meaning. She lives through her
experience with Yanko, yet there is no indication that she
has in any way understood her role in his tragedy. Her in
ability to understand her experience with Yanko is a final
ironic comment on the main theme of Yanko's tragic incom
prehensibility .
Yanko Goorall's story is told in a retrospective
analysis by Kennedy, the local doctor. He has a penetrating
8
mind, and "his intelligence is of a scientific order, of
an investigating habit, and of that inappeasable curiosity
which believes that there is a particle of a general truth
in every mystery." (XX, 106) Kennedy resembles Marlow
in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, and the Language Teacher
in Under Western Eyes. He is the storyteller who articu
lates the meaning of persons, events, and experiences which
is incomprehensible to others. Just as Marlow expresses
the Significance of the enigmatic figures of Kurtz and Jim,
so Kennedy is the one who penetrates into the meaning of
Yanko's history. One of the central ironies of the story
is that the people who were involved in the tragedy of mis
understanding Yanko remain in ignorance to the end. Kennedy
alone understands and makes the meaning clear in the way he
tells the story.
Kennedy recreates the story of Yanko in the form of a
simple three-act tragedy. In the first act he recreates
Yanko's sense of terrible disorientation as he goes through
the experiences of leaving home, being thrust into the dark
hold of a ship, into the midst of total strangers, then
suddenly violently cast out of one nightmare world into
another as the shipwreck tosses him half dead onto the
English shore. Yanko's most terrifying experience is not
physical suffering, but the experience of being isolated
because he cannot communicate with the people he encounters,
His desperate efforts to get help are met by misunderstand-
9
ing and rejection. Ironically, his every effort to speak,
to communicate his need, only further alienates the people
who hear his cries as babbling, the senseless noise of a
frightening, subhuman creature. The climax of Yanko's at
tempts to communicate is reached when he tries to tell Mr.
Smith of his plight. Smith hears a "sudden burst of rapid,
senseless speech," and is persuaded that he is dealing
with an "escaped lunatic." With horrible irony, Yanko's
very addresses of respect and pleading for humane treatment
lead Smith into trapping him in his wood-lodge like an
animal: "As the creature approached him, jabbering in a
most discomposing manner, Smith (unaware that he was being
addressed as 'gracious lord,' and adjured in God's name to
afford food and shelter) kept on speaking firmly but gently
to it, and retreating all the time into the other yard. At
last, watching his chance, by a sudden charge he bundled
him headlong into the wood-lodge, and instantly shot the
bolt. Thereupon he wiped his brow, though the day was
cold. He had done his duty to the community by shutting
up a wandering and probably dangerous maniac." (XX, 120-
21) Yanko is taken in by Mr. Swaffer who views him as a
"sort of wild animal." He gradually learns English and is
partially accepted when he saves Swaffer's grandchild from
drowning. Yet he always remains a stranger, "reciting the
Lord's Prayer, in incomprehensible words," and alienating
the people by his strange, wild songs in the tavern. As
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________. ___________________________________m
Kennedy says, "he was different; innocent ofTTieart, ancTfull
of goodwill, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like
a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an
immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance froir
his future. His quick, fervent utterance positively shocked
every body." (XX, 132)
In his loneliness, Yanko desires contact, and remembers
Amy Foster’s compassion. His isolation appears to be over
come as he marries Amy, is given a cottage by Swaffer for
saving his grandchild, and at last has a son "to whom he
could sing and talk in the language of his country, and show
how to dance by and by." (XX, 137)
But Yanko.1 s happiness is short-lived. Once again his
words become a barrier which separates rather than a means
of communication. Amy is gradually alienated from Yanko
because of his efforts to teach his son a song and the
Lord's Prayer in his native language. Such strange sounds
frighten her and become a wall between them. The final act
of the tragedy moves to its denouement with Yanko!s illness
and Amy's inability to understand his feverish outbursts
in his native tongue. Amy expresses her growing fears to
Dr. Kennedy in her ironic statement: "Oh, I hope he won't
talkI" (XX, 139) In the climactic scene, Yanko, in his
sickness, cries out to her in his language: "Water! Give
me water!" But his very pleas only increase Amy's terror.
With pathos Kennedy relates: "He spoke to her, and his
11
passionate remonstrances only increased her fear of that
strange man." (XX, 140) Finally in his desperation and
pain, when his simple plea is not understood, he yells at
her. Amy takes the child and flees in fear and terror.
The next morning Kennedy finds Yanko lying in a puddle
in the front yard, dying from exposure. As he is dying, he
mutters, "I had only asked for water— only for a little
water." Even in the moment of dying, Yanko cannot compre
hend the cause of his rejection. He doesn't understand that,
his very words drove Amy away. He dies in utter isolation,
a tragic victim of the power of words.
Conrad, unlike Yanko, did not perish but lived through
his experience, and through the power of the word articu
lated the meaning of foreignness. "Amy Foster" is a power
ful enactment of the tragic potentialities of language which
reveals Conrad's own deep experience with the power of the
word. His other major fictions also bear witness to his
deep awareness of the dual potentialities of language. His
most significant works consistently explore the function
and limits of language, examining how men employ their
highly ambiguous "gift of expression."
II. THE GIFT OF EXPRESSION
Some Explorations of the Power of the Word
in Conrad's Early Fiction
. . . the world is but a place of many words and man
appears a mere talking animal not much more wonder
ful than a parrot. — Under Western Eyes
1. The Nigger of the "Narcissus"; Filthy Eloquence
and the Voice of Command
A voice booms out of the night: "Wait!" Mr. Baker,
the first mate, resents such a command and challenges the
man boarding the ship: "Who are you? How dare you . . . ?'
Suddenly out of the darkness a Black man emerges and says:
"My name is Wait--James Wait." Mr. Baker is shocked by
this dark presence and the misunderstanding of his name,
and cries out: "Ah! Your name is Wait. What of that?
What do you want? What do you mean, coming shouting here?"
James answers: "I belong to this ship."
This dramatic entrance of James Wait on board the
"Narcissus" embodies the central issue of the story--the
attempt to understand James Wait and his presence on the
"Narcissus." Mr. Baker's questions, "Who are You? How
dare you . . . ?" "What do you want? What do you mean,
coming shouting here?" are the questions that become cen-
13
tral to the crew on their voyage. James Wait becomes a
weight on the crew which tests them and reveals their self-
understanding. Mr. Baker's verbal misunderstanding of
"Wait" is symbolic of the crew's response to Jimmy as they
consistently "misapprehend" him and use him as an occasion
for self-deception. Like Narcissus who fell in love with
his own image and shaped his action by what he saw, the
crew of the "Narcissus" fall in love with their own images
of Wait and act upon the basis of their self-deception.
Whether it is Donkin's "filthy eloquence" disrupting
the order of ship life, or Podmore's fanatical religious
interpretations of events, or Wait's own smooth words of
self-deception, the loudest noise on the "Narcissus" is not
the shrieking of the typhoon, but the clash of dissonant
voices shouting out the "truth." Set over against the
crew's narcissistic speech are the oracular utterances of
old Singleton and Captain Allistoun's voice of command, so
that the central conflict of the story becomes not the ex
ternal one between man and the forces of nature but the
conflict between the power of lies and the struggle to
speak the truth.
Conrad uses a simple five-chapter division to struc
ture the dramatic conflict between the chaotic consequences
of narcissistic self-deception and the ordering power of
truth. The first two chapters create the world of the ship,
carefully delineating the chief characters in the drama and
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________14_
then showing how the normal order of the ship is destroyed
by the presence of James Wait. Chapter three shifts the
focus to the crew's struggle with the typhoon and their
heroic rescue of Jimmy. The irony of this section lies in
the men's ability to deal courageously with the challenges
of the natural world, but their inability to come to terms
with the challenge to their self-understanding posed by
Wait. Chapter four probes what the crew learns from the
typhoon experience, revealing how the storm has only pro
vided another occasion for self-deception. The last chap
ter focuses on Wait's confrontation with Death and the
crew's response to that final "truth" about James before
the ship sheds its weight and returns to "normal" as the
voyage ends.
The novel begins as though it is going to be a simple
adventure story of a sea voyage. Mr. Baker, the chief
mate of the "Narcissus," gives the word that it is time to
gather the crew for roll-call before setting sail. This
command provides the context for introducing the most im
portant members of the crew. The two central figures thus
introduced are Old Singleton and Donkin. Singleton is
carefully delineated as the "incarnation of barbarian wis
dom serene in the blasphemous turmoil of the world." (XXIII,
6) He is an embodiment of the long sea tradition of simple,
faithful commitment to hard work and duty. He is essen
tially unthinking and inarticulate, one of the "voiceless
15
men" of the sea who has the primitive wisdom of experience.
With a nice touch of irony, Singleton is first seen reading
Pelham, a novel by Bulwer Lytton. This is ironic because
Singleton who embodies real wisdom and truth is reading a
book of what are essentially romantic lies. This contrast
between Singleton's inarticulate wisdom and Lytton1s "ele
gant verbiage" is of fundamental importance in the novel.
Singleton, the representative of a passing generation of
sea men who were "inarticulate and indispensable," "strong
and mute" is contrasted to the current crew of the ship who
possess "sentimental voices" and who, "if they had learned
how to speak they have also learned how to whine." (XXIII,
25) Singleton speaks at certain key points in the novel,
and when he does his speech has an oracular quality in
contrast to the whining of the rest of the crew. When
Wait asks him a superficial question about what kind of
a ship the "Narcissus" is, Singleton stammers out the
truth: "Ship! . . . Ships are all right. It is the men
in them!" (XXIII, 24) The narrator comments on the source
of Singleton's wisdom: "The wisdom of half a century spent
in listening to the thunder of the waves had spoken uncon
sciously through his old lips." (XXIII, 24) Throughout
the novel Singleton's voice of truth will challenge the
whining voices of deception that try to dominate the ship.
The chief whiner on board the "Narcissus" is Donkin,
the cowardly little parasite who makes his way by begging,
16
cheating, lying, and preying upon the sympathies of those
around him. The narrator uses much vivid language to de
scribe his repulsiveness, but none more appropriate than
his description of him as a "sick vulture with ruffled
plumes." (XXIII, 128) Yet Donkin exercises great power
over the members of the crew and almost succeeds in causing
a mutiny. How can such a weak and cowardly person exercise
such great influence? He does it through the power of the
word. Donkin is a master of language and manipulates
those around him by his "filthy eloquence." He articulates
his "rights" and his sense of having been unjustly treated
by those in power. He is eloquent in expressing all the
rage of the injured ego when confronted by the claims of
others. Donkin's words have great power over the crew be
cause he voices their latent narcissism; he articulates
their hidden anarchic impulses and egocentric resentment of
authority. Donkin's whining, screeching, outraged voice
almost destroys the ordered life of the ship and is finally
only silenced by the powerful commanding voice of Captain
Allistoun.
In addition to Singleton and Donkin, the other impor
tant characters are briefly described in the opening chap
ters: the excited, scatterbrained, voluble Belfast carries
on about his heroic exploits on shore; Podmore, the cook,
says "I am ready for my Maker's call . . . wish you all
were," and thereby reveals his religious narcissism; Mr.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________17.
Baker, the solid, dependable First Mate grunts his blunt
orders to the men; and finally there is a brief opening
glance at the taciturn Captain Allistoun who "spoke but
seldom to his officers, and reproved errors in a gentle
voice, with words that cut to the quick." (XXIII, 31)
The crew is gathered and life on board the ship is
filled with movement and noise as the men prepare to get
underway. Suddenly into the normal world of the ship comes
the loud shout of James Wait and the drama of disintegra
tion begins. After a few short days on board, Wait exer
cises extraordinary power over the crew and disrupts the
order of their lives. He destroys the harmony between the
crew and their officers and his presence gradually becomes
the obsessive concern of their lives. The narrator ex
presses Wait's effect on the crew: "We began to hate him
for making fun of us. All our certitudes were going; we
were on doubtful terms with our officers; the cook had given
us up for lost; we had overheard the boatswain's opinion
that 'we were a crowd of softies.' We suspected Jimmy,
one another, and even our very selves. We did not know
what to do. At every insignificant turn of our humble life
we met Jimmy overbearing and blocking the way, arm-in-arm
with his awful and veiled familiar. It was a weird servi
tude." (XXIII, 42-43)
The question, of course, is why does James Wait exer
cise such power over the ship? Like Donkin, Wait controls
18
the men through the power of words. From the moment his
resonant, "sonorous" voice is heard deliberately challenging
the first mate by punning on his name, James Wait's voice
dominates the ship. His voice has such control over the
crew because he speaks about that most forbidden subject:
Death. He tells the crew that he is dying. But he doesn't
whisper it about in quiet, euphemistic language; he shouts
it out in the most direct, offensive, aggressive manner
possible. The first evening out to sea the ship has "a
reposeful aspect, resembling the autumn of the earth."
(XXIII, 31) The men are enjoying the simple communion of
storytelling after a hard day's work: "Suddenly the face
of Donkin leaning high-shouldered over the after-rail be
came grave. Something like a weak rattle was heard through
the forecastle door. It became a murmur; it ended in a
sighing groan." The sounds of death suddenly shatter the
peace of the ship and the crew acknowledges its presence:
"The washerman plunged both his arms into the tub abruptly;
the cook became more crestfallen than an exposed backslider;
the, boatswain moved his shoulders uneasily; the carpenter
got up with a spring and walked away--while the sailmaker
seemed mentally to give his story up, and began to puff at
his pipe with sombre determination." (XXIII, 34) James
Wait slowly staggers on deck and surveys the men. His pres
ence is overwhelming: "A black mist emanated from him; a
subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy
that floated out and settled on all the faces like a mourn
ing veil." (XXIII, 34) What this "something cold and
gloomy" is, is soon made clear by Jimmy as he confronts the
frightened and paralyzed crew with the unspeakable: "I
tried to get a wink of sleep. You know I can't sleep o'
nights. And you come jabbering near the door here like a
blooming lot of old women. . . . You think yourselves good
shipmates. Do you? . . . Much you care for a dying manI"
(XXIII, 35)
Wait speaks the forbidden truth and makes of himself a
dramatization of the presence of Death. His arrogant talk
ing about his death paralyzes the crew because he is a .
mirror which reflects their own death. The crew can't face
that reality and are rendered speechless and submissive by
Jimmy's scornful and open parade of his dying. He uses his
blunt statements about death to exploit their hidden fear
of their own death which they mask as pity for a dying man.
Jimmy exploits their impotence to get out of work, to make
his presence and his wants a constant oppressive weight on
the men which inhibits all their responses and actions.
However, Wait's statements about death are so direct
and arrogant and his exploitation of his condition is so
flagrant and contemptuous of the crew, that they can't be
sure he isn't simply lying to them as a way of getting out
of work. The narrator expresses their dilemma: "Was he a
reality--or was he a sham— this ever-expected visitor of
20
Jimmy* s? We hesitated between pity and mistrust, while, on
the slightest provocation, he shook before our eyes the
bones of his bothersome and infamous skeleton." (XXIII,
36) The crew hesitates between pity and mistrust, para
lyzed by their uncertainty about the meaning of Wait.
Jimmy's ambiguous presence does indeed destroy all their
certitudes. Because they can't face seeing their own
death in him they want to believe he is in fact lying to
them. The climax of their desire to hide the truth comes
when they almost mutiny after the typhoon in support of
Jimmy's lie that he is perfectly healthy when Captain
Allistoun confines him to his berth.
Singleton is the only one of the crew who is not ren
dered speechless by Wait's presence. He confronts him and
bluntly speaks the truth about him:
The old man, addressing Jimmy, asked: "Are you
dying?" Thus interrogated, James Wait appeared
horribly startled and confused. We all were startled.
Mouths remained open; hearts thumped, eyes blinked;
a dropped tin fork rattled in the dish; a man rose
as if to go out, and stood still. In less than a
minute Jimmy pulled himself together: "Why?
Can't you see I am?" he answered shakily. Single
ton lifted a piece of soaked biscuit . . . to his
lips. "Well, get on with your dying," he said
with venerable mildness: "don't raise a blamed
fuss with us over that job. We can't help you."
(XXIII, 42)
This oracular statement of truth stirs both the crew and
Jimmy. The crew can't handle this direct statement about
death, and Jimmy's shaken reply to Singleton reveals that
he is involved in a double act of deception: lying to the
21
crew about his dying, and lying to himself. One of the
powerful ironies of the novel is that Wait intentionally
lies to the crew in order to exploit them; yet what he
intends to be lies about his dying is in fact the truth
which he tries desparately to avoid. His very pretense of
dying becomes the way he lies to himself.
Wait's disruptive power over the ship is temporarily
broken by the coming of the typhoon. The vivid descrip
tions of the typhoon experience have been justly admired by
most Conrad critics. Also the way the men react to the
fearful challenge of the sea has been pointed out as
Conrad's celebration of courage and human solidarity. John
Palmer suggests that the men of the "Narcissus" "achieve
self-discovery and self-purgation through direct inter
action with the forces of nature . . ."1 However, this
positive view of the meaning of the crew's confrontation
with the typhoon misses the irony of the typhoon experi
ence. It is true that the crew does act courageously in
facing the storm. Podmore's act of making coffee in the
midst of the typhoon is indeed a heroic act. His great
saying, "As long as she swims I will cook," expresses the
crew's sense of fidelity to duty that enables them to
triumph over the storm. Certainly the men act courageously
1 "Introduction," Twentieth Century Interpretations of
The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), p. 3.
22
in saving Jimmy from sure death. However, in terms of self-
knowledge the men learn very little from their encounter
with primal chaos and death. In fact they simply use the
experience of the typhoon as another occasion for narcis
sistic self-deception. The narrator's comments on their
response to the experience reveal their deception:
It had ended— then there were blank hours; a living
blurr— and again we lived! Singleton was * possessed
of sinister truth; Mr. Creighton of a damaged leg;
the cook of fame— and shamefully abused the oppor
tunities of his distinction. Donkin had an added
grievance. He went about repeating with insistence:
"'E said 'e would brain me— did yer 'ear? They are
goin' to murder us now for the least little thing."
We began at last to think it was rather awful. And
we were conceited! We boasted of our pluck, of our
capacity for work, of our energy. We remembered
honourable episodes: our devotion, our indomit
able perseverance— and were proud of them as though
they had been the outcome of our unaided impulses.
We remembered our danger, our toil— and conven
iently forgot our horrible scare.
(XXIII, 100)
The crew conveniently forgets their "horrible scare,"
their confrontation with Death and retreats into the safety
of lies about their own virtue. The community and solidar
ity the storm created is short-lived as they begin to re
flect on their heroism and the unjust way the Captain drove
them during the storm. Donkin is on hand to exploit the
crew's desire for evasion and self-deception and eloquently
articulates their lies about themselves. He becomes "the
fascinating Donkin," that "consummate artist" who moves
them by his "impassioned orations." He gains power over
the men through his "picturesque and filthy loquacity,"
23
which expresses for them the "truth" of their situation:
"He told us we were good men— a 'bloomin’ condemned lot of
good men.' Who thanked us? Who took any notice of our
wrongs? Didn't we lead a 'dorg's loife for two poun*' ten
a month? Did we think that miserable pay enough to com
pensate us for the risk to our lives and for the loss of
our clothes? 'We've lost every rag I' he cried." (XXIII,
100) Donkin's eloquence will eventually lead to near mu
tiny and a confrontation with Captain Allistoun. But be
fore the confrontation with Allistoun there are two dia
logues between Wait and Donkin and Wait and Podmore which
dramatically reveal the power of the word to mask the truth.
Donkin and Wait, the two con-men, finally confront
each other alone and share with each other their secret
lies about themselves. The reason for the kinship that
each has felt for the other throughout the voyage is now
revealed. They are double figures, each mirroring the other
in his total absorption in his own selfish world. Donkin
speaks the truth about Wait: "It's a blooming imposyshun.
A blooming, stinkin', first-class imposyshun— but it don't
tyke me in. Not it." (XXIII, 110) Donkin knows that
Jimmy is "shamming" sick because he can recognize himself
in Wait. Jimmy does not deny the truth of Donkin's accusa
tion about his lying about his sickness. In fact, he
rather triumphantly admits to Donkin that he has used this
dodge before: "Laid up fifty-eight days! The fools! O
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________24
Lord! The fools! Paid right off." (XXIII, 111) Donkin
agrees with him: "Anyone can see that." This exchange is
ironic because it is a lie. Both Wait and Donkin avoid the
clear truth that Wait is dying. Jimmy's lie is ironically
the truth. His lie to the crew becomes the means of mask
ing the truth from himself. As he becomes progressively
sicker his final escape from the truth of his dying will be
to believe desperately that he was indeed only shamming
and that he is "as well as ever."
Donkin also reveals to Wait his own lies about him
self. Jimmy wants to know why Donkin likes to make trouble
on the ship. Donkin reveals his sense of his own impotence.
His phrase "ain't we men?" which occurs again and again in
his complaints, ironically reveals his own sense of inade
quate manhood, which he desperately tries to deny by assert
ing the opposite. Both Donkin and Wait are hopelessly
blinded by the power of their lies about themselves. What
Donkin contemptuously says about his Double, James Wait,
is the truth about himself: "Yer all for yerself, s'long
as ye're right. ..." (XXIII, 112)
Podmore, the cook, who acted so courageously during the;
typhoon, also seems to have learned nothing from his
experience but has only had his egocentric religious vision
reinforced. He comes to James Wait and sees in him an
opportunity for exercising his power to save a lost soul.
The encounter between this "conceited saint" and Wait is a
25
powerful example of the sadistic function of words. Pod-
more becomes "a voice— a fleshless and sublime thing, as
on that memorable night--the night he went walking over the
sea to make coffee for perishing sinners." (XXIII, 116)
This voice speaks eloquently to Jimmy of his lostness with
"words of entreaty and menace" which "broke out of him in
a roaring torrent." (XXIII, 116) Podmore is so caught up
in his eloquence that he cannot see that his words are
destructive and only succeed in terrifying Jimmy and making
him suffer. Podmore's words of "help" mask his hostility
and are but an expression of his narcissistic self-
righteousness. He so believes in the "truth" of his own
language that he never does see the negative consequences
of his verbal assault on Jimmy. He remains blind to the
end, effectively isolated from others by his religious
language, convinced that he has tried to tell them the
truth, but that they are all hard-hearted children of the.
Devil.
Podmore's harassment of Jimmy precipitates the climac
tic confrontation between the disruptive power of lies and
the ordering power of truth. Captain Allistoun delivers
Jimmy from Podmore1s fanatic torture and then confines him
to his quarters. He tells him: "You have been shamming
sick, . . . Why, anybody can see that. There's nothing the
matter with you, but you choose to lie-up to please your
self— and now you shall lie-up to please me." (XXIII, 120)
26.
Wait's confinement upsets the crew who see it as an un
reasonable, arbitrary abuse of power and of their "rights."
Donkin quickly exploits the issue and articulates their
grievances: "'Are we bloomin' masheens?' . . . 'Soon show
'im we ain't boys . . — 'The man's a man if he is black'
— 'We ain't going to work this bloomin' ship shorthanded if
Snowball's all right . . .'— 'He says he is'--'Well then,
strike, boys, strike!'— 'That's the bloomin' ticket.'"
(XXIII, 121)
That Captain Allistoun's order should create such a
row on the ship and almost drive the men to mutiny is
ironic. The Captain's words to Wait about his shamming
sick are a deliberate lie. Allistoun saw the obvious truth
that Jimmy was dying. But as he later tells his officers,
he lied to Jimmy to protect him from the devastating truth
he was so desperately trying to avoid. His order was an
act of compassion: "When I saw him standing there, three
parts dead and so scared— black amongst that gaping lot—
no grit to face what's coming to us all— the notion came
to me all at once, before I could think. Sorry for him—
like you would be for a sick brute. If ever creature was
in a mortal funk to die. . . . I thought I would let him
go in his own way." (XXIII, 127)
Ironically his benevolent lie is totally misunderstood
by both Jimmy and the crew and becomes the immediate cause
of rebellion and near mutiny. The crew refuses to see the
__________________________________________________________ 27
obvious truth of Wait's condition which Allistoun so sensi-
tively responds to. They refuse to see that Jimmy is a
dying man and willingly cling to the lie that he is all
right and that the Captain is unjust in confining a healthy
man to his quarters. They respond to Donkin's filthy elo
quence, confront Allistoun, and almost mutiny to preserve
the lie so they can avoid the knowledge of Death. Donkin
exploits the situation, whining and shrieking about their
"rights" and caps his lies by sneakily throwing a belaying-
pin at the Captain.
Just when lies and deception seem about to overwhelm
the ship and plunge it into chaos, Singleton and Allistoun
step forward to articulate the truth of the situation
which restores order to the ship. First Singleton with all
the force and cryptic quality of an oracle cuts through
the crew's lies about Wait's situation: "'You can't help
him; die he must.' He made another pause. His moustache
and beard stirred. He chewed words, mumbled behind tangled
white hairs; incomprehensible and exciting, like an oracle
behind a veil. . . . 'Stop ashore . . . sick. Instead . . .
bringing all this head wind. Afraid. The sea will have her
own. . . . Die in sight of land. Always so. They know
it . . . long passage . . . more days, more dollars. . . .
You keep quiet. . . . What do you want? Can't help
him.'" (XXIII, 130) To Donkin who is attempting to ex
ploit the lie to disrupt the ship, Singleton speaks the
28
truth: "Damn you." (XXIII, 130)
But it is Captain Allistoun's voice of command that
finally restores order to the ship. Allistoun confronts
the angry, rebellious crew and tells them the simple,
blunt truth. He asks them a direct question: "What do
you want?" Suddenly the men are confused and become in
articulate: "... all the simple words they knew seemed
to be lost forever in the immensity of their vague and
burning desire. They knew what they wanted, but they could
not find anything worth saying." (XXIII, 134) Allistoun
then deflates their heroic pretentions about their hard
-work, their virtue, and courage during the typhoon by
-telling them that they have lied to themselves about how
good they are. A sailor cries that they all did their
best by the ship. Allistoun tells them straight: "You
hear a lot on shore, don't you? They don't tell you there
your best isn't much to boast of. I tell you— your best
is not better than bad. You can do no more? No, I know
and say nothing. But you stop your caper of I will stop
it for you. I am ready for youl Stop it I" (XXIII, 134-
35) The truth stuns the crew and they are rendered speech
less. Then Allistoun takes care of Donkin. He calls Don
kin forward to replace the belaying-pin he threw at him in
the night. Allistoun makes him admit his cowardly act and
he articulates his reality: "You are a cur." Thus, Donkin,
the passionate spokesman for the crew's rights, is exposed
________________________________________________________________ 29
for all to see as a whimpering, slinking coward. After
puncturing the crew's pretentions and stripping Donkin's
filthy eloquence of its power, Allistoun addresses the
crew in a "calm voice:" "And you men try to walk straight
for the future." (XXIII, 137) Allistoun's straight
forward telling of the truth, his voice of command, defeats
the power of the lies and restores order to the ship.
Although;.chaos is averted and order restored, James
Wait is still aboard and his presence continues to para
lyze the ship. The "Narcissus" can't reach shore until it
sheds its weight, until it comes to terms with the final
truth— Death itself. The last chapter of the novel ex
plores this confrontation.
Jimmy continues to dominate and demoralize the crew
because the men can't tell the truth. The men all know
now that he is dying. Wait, however, continues his self-^
deception and refuses to confront his own death. The men
cannot tell him the truth and indulge and support his
illusions. They fancy themselves to be benevolent and ten
derhearted and "highly humanized" in their lying to Jimmy.
But their "compassion" is only a way of evading the reality
of Death. So they "lied to him with gravity, with emotion,
with unction, as if performing some moral trick with a
view to an eternal reward." (XXIII, 139)
The only one who doesn't lie to Jimmy is Donkin who
takes out all.his humiliation and bitterness on Jimmy by
_______ 30
telling him the brutal truth. In a final confrontation the
two men who have so lived by lies viciously tell each other
the truth. Donkin listens to Wait spin out his illusions
of going to visit a white girl on Canton street in ten
days, and then tells him bluntly that he will be dead in
ten days. Wait counters by telling him the truth: "You're
a stinking, cadging liar. Everyone knows you." (XXIII,
150) This enrages Donkin and he begins a torrent of
sadistic taunting. He tells Wait that he is a nobody--
that he is without friends and has no meaning or signifi
cance to anyone. He screeches at Jimmy that he is going
to take all his valuables from his chest— because he is
already too dead and helpless to do anything about it.
With bitter cruelty he taunts him: "Yer will pay fur it
with yer money. Ite goin' ter 'ave it in a minyt; as soon
has ye're dead, yer bloomin' useless fraud. That's the man
I am. An' ye're a thing— a bloody thing. Yah— you
corpse!" (XXIII, 152) Jimmy pathetically struggles to
answer Donkin's attacks, but he is so far gone that he can
only make torturous movements of his lips and grotesque
"hollow, moaning, whistling sounds" in a "frantic dumb show
of speech." Donkin's cruelty reaches a pitch of fury as
he throws a biscuit at Jimmy and exhorts him to die,
describing his corpse being tossed into the sea: "...
Splash! Never see yer any more. Overboard! Good 'nuff
fur yer." This last description finally pierces Wait's
________________________________________________________________31
consciousness and he suddenly is forced to see the truth
he has evaded for so long: "Suddenly with an incredibly
strong and heart-breaking voice he sobbed out: 'Overboard!
. . .1! . . . My God!” (XXIII, 153) In a fully lighted
room, Jimmy utters his last words to Donkin: "Light . . .
the lamp . . . and go."
Naturally, Wait's death takes the crew by surprise.
They had supported his illusions of health as a way of
avoiding confronting Death and the reality comes as a
shock. As the narrator says: "A common bond was gone; the
strong, effective and respectable bond of a sentimental
lie." (XXIII, 155) For a moment the crew faces the folly
of their evasions and are stunned into silence. But soon
Jimmy is sent overboard, however reluctantly, and the ship
is relieved of its burden of death. Once Wait is gone, the
breeze comes and the ship speeds lightly to its voyage's
end. Relieved of its weight of Death, the world of the
"Narcissus" returns to normal.
What has been the meaning of the events that have
taken place on the "Narcissus?" The story, like the voy
age, ends inconclusively. Once the ship lands the men are
utterly helpless on shore, uncomfortable and unable to
communicate anything significant about the voyage. To
those on shore, the seamen seem crude and contemptible as
seen in the pay clerk's view of Singleton as a "disgusting
old brute." Nothing much has seemed to happen to the crew.
______ 32
They have been through an experience where they have had
to encounter the power and reality of Death daily; yet they
seem to have learned very little from such an experience.
The crew has for one brief moment been forced to confront
Death, but then each quickly returns to his own private
narcissistic world. Belfast goes off remembering only his
own egocentric involvement with Jimmy: ". . .1 pulled him
out." Donkin makes his last whining claim to be a man
as he leaves the sea to earn his living "with filthy elo
quence upon the right of labor to live." (XXIII, 172) The
rest of the crew just drifts out of sight absorbed into the
land world. The voyage is truly ended.
But what of the reader? What does he learn from such
a voyage? He has watched a group of men confront their
Double in James Wait. He has seen their evasions and heard
their lies. He has seen James Wait, Donkin, Singleton and
Allistoun engage in a struggle between eloquent lies and
the simple truth. Mirrored in their struggles, he has for
one brief moment been offered that "glimpse of truth" about
himself for which he had forgotten to ask.
33
2. Finding a Voice: Marlow and the Technique of
Storytelling
Conrad, with his studied apparatus of spoken narra
tive discharged into reflective silence, attempts
to carry to some ideal limit the convention under
which Dickens, for instance, had operated with such
confidence: the convention that a tale is some
thing told, an act of intrepidity on the part of
the teller, who is venturing where he has really
never been before . . .
Hugh Kenner in Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett
Conrad's sensitivity to the power of words reveals it
self in his acute consciousness of himself as a word-user,
one who devoted his life to making verbal worlds. Through
out his career as a writer he is preoccupied with the
problems of how to tell a story, constantly searching for
le mot juste. Two central aspects of Conrad's method of
storytelling reflect his particular awareness of the power
of words— his creation of a certain kind of narrator who
tells a certain kind of story.
The creation of Marlow as the storyteller in his early
stories, "Youth," Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim, is a
crucial development in Conrad's search to find an appro
priate voice for the kind of story he wants to tell. He
creates in Marlow a narrator who is a type of word-artist—
a reflection of himself— who embodies his understanding of
the possibilities and limits of verbal expression.
Marlow, like Kurtz, is essentially a voice. As a
________________________________________________________________3A
character in the stories he is quite unsubstantial and
shadowy with little definite physical reality. What he
says about Kurtz is also true about himself: "... of all
his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that car
ried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to
talk, his words— the gift of expression ..." (XVI, 113)
Marlow loves to talk, to spin out his yarns for his fellow
seamen. But his stories are quite different from simple
sea yarns. They are indeed in Kenner's phrase, an "act of
intrepidity" exploring enigmatic people and events, try
ing to put into words what hasn't been said before. The
narrator in Heart of Darkness expresses this sense of the
unique type of story Marlow tells when he says: "The yarns
of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of
which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow
was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be ex
cepted) , and to him the meaning of an episode was not in
side 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 those misty halos that sometimes are
made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine."
(XVI, 48) Marlow does not tell stories which have a
"direct simplicity" but is a verbal explorer venturing
where he has never been before, trying to report what he
has experienced. His stories are complex, involuted,
sometimes "inconclusive" tales which - attempt to evoke and
________________________________________________________________ 35
suggest subtle meanings "as a glow brings out a haze."
Marlow is "a voice"— the perfect Conradian voice—
hesitant and tentative, sometimes eloquent, struggling to
interpret the meaning of people and events. He is the
self-conscious storyteller who is aware of the problems of
speaking the truth about ambiguous actions. Marlow ven
tures to express the significance of such actions, but is
always vividly stating the limitations of such an endeavor,
reminding his listeners: "Are not our lives too short for
that full utterance which through all our stammerings is
of course our only and abiding intention?" (XXI, 225)
Marlow's reluctant voice sends forth words into the
presence of a group of listeners who serve several impor
tant functions in Conrad's attempt to create an awareness
of the problems of verbal communication. In the three
Marlow stories, Marlow speaks to a group of men joined by
a common bond of the sea. Although the various hearers
are described by their occupation, their individuality
doesn't matter because they are not active participants in
the stories. Such a passive audience has a two-fold func
tion. The first is that having Marlow speak to an audience
dramatizes the spoken quality of the narratives. At
certain moments Marlow breaks the spell of his story by
stopping to speak directly to his listeners. "Pass the
bottle" is the recurring refrain in "Youth" which breaks
the continuity of Marlow's story. Such an intrusion dis-
________________________________________________________________ 36
urbs the reader's absorption into the events of the story
and reminds him that he is actually only hearing words.
More importantly, calling attention to the audience is a
means of making the reader conscious of the frustrations
involved in putting the complexities of human experience
into words. Especially in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim,
Marlow interrupts his story to confess to his audience the
limits of his ability to tell the truth. Over and over
again, he shifts from his story to addressing them on the
problems of using words to capture the mystery of human
actions. He constantly confides in his hearers his own
inability to see clearly and to express his experience
adequately. As Marlow says in Heart of Darkness: "...
No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-
sensation of any given epoch of one's existence— that which
makes its truth, its meaning— its subtle and penetrating
essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone
. . . ." (XVI, 82) This shift from telling his story to
addressing his audience is a device which dramatizes the
problems of storytelling and continually keeps the reader
aware of the limits of using words to convey the truth. •
The speaker-listener situation as the basic frame of
the narratives also creates an identification between the
reader and the hearers of Marlow's tales. The most impor
tant hearers of Marlow's tales are the readers. By creat
ing a group of listeners who are essentially ordinary
37
people, Conrad finds a way of creating reader participation
in the stories. The reader knows that Marlow is talking
to him through the illusion of the audience. When Marlow
discharges his tales into what Kenner calls, "reflective
silence," it is into the silent presence of the reader who
hears the words and knows they are addressed to him. Mar
low in the midst of trying to tell about his incredible
experience with Kurtz, suddenly attacks his audience:
"This is the worst of trying to tell . . . Here you all
are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with
two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round
another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal— you
hear— normal from year's end to year's end. And you say,
Absurd’ Absurd be1 — exploded’" (XVI, 114)
Conrad's attempt at "full utterance" gives a basic
shape to his stories. The major stories are essentially
explanatory fictions, fictions whose very form is the
process of verbalizing the meaning of confusing occur
rences. By means of the various stammering narrators,
who embody the struggle of verbalization, Conrad constructs
stories whose aim is literally putting the truth into words.
His fictions are not simply concerned with presenting
dramatic action and adventure. In most of his works, the
significant action is in the past and the stories are con
cerned with exploring the meaning of those past events.
Even the sea stories like The Nigger of the "Narcissus"
___________________________________________
and Typhoon which are often superficially described as
adventure stories, are not primarily concerned with the
heroic battle of man against nature, but with probing
issues of self-knowledge and understanding. The major
function of Conrad's celebrated devices of narration such
as the time-shifts, the use of multiple narrators, and
letters and diaries is to move the focus of the stories
away from direct presentation of action so that the ques-,:L
tion of the meaning of that action can become central.
The stories are attempts to detect the meaning of
certain enigmatic and puzzling actions. The focus is not
on what happened, but on what it means; not on who did it,
but why; not on action, but on motivation. The pattern
that emerges is the struggle to tell the truth about people
who are misunderstood (Kurtz, Jim, Nostromo— virtually all
of the major characters) and events whose meanings are
hidden by lies and distortions (a South American revolu
tion, European presence in Africa, a typhoon).
The early Marlow stories reveal this basic pattern.
The three stories have the same structure. Marlow the
narrator tells his listeners the meaning of his experiences
with three characters: Marlow himself as a young man, the
remarkable Mr. Kurtz, and "Tuan" Jim. In each case the
story centers in explaining the significance of the prob
lematic behavior of the central character which is mis
understood by others.
39
Marlow has a complex relationship to his subject of
investigation and to those who listen to his story. He is
fascinated by the men he is trying to explain because he
sees himself in them. He realizes that they are double
figures who have actualized potentialities which are in
him. This relationship is obvious in "Youth" where the
character he is explaining is literally himself— his ear
lier, youthful self. In analyzing the actions of the young
Marlow from the distance of twenty years later, he gains
a perspective on himself that allows him to see and under
stand the vitality but also the delusions and foolish ig
norance of his earlier self. In Heart of Darkness Marlow
sees himself in the eloquent Mr. Kurtz who mirrors for him
his own hidden possibility of using his voice to conceal
the truth of the heart. Marlow is fascinated by "Lord"
Jim because he sees that Jim realized the potentiality for
cowardice and self-deception that exists also in him.
Marlow's act of explaining his own involvement with
the three men becomes the means of universalizing their
significance. In the act of explaining the motives and
actions of young Marlow, Kurtz, and Jim, he creates a
verbal mirror in which the reader as hearer can see that
the three men are not only alter egos for Marlow, but for
him as well. His explaining the meaning of their actions,
exposing the truth about their behavior becomes a means of
revealing the hearer's illusions about his own youth, and
40
confronting him with his own capacity for using eloquent
words to mask a heart of darkness or to create an inter
pretation of himself that effectively prevents self-
knowledge. These investigative fictions become an oppor
tunity for the hearer to discover himself, to detect the
hidden sources of his own motivations. In Marlow's verbal
mirrors he may catch a glimpse of the truth that each of
these men is also "one of us."
3. Heart of Darkness; The Gift of Expression
. . . of all his gifts the one that stood out pre
eminently, that carried with it a sense of real
presence, was his ability to talk, his words--the
gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminat
ing , the most exalted and the most contemptible, the
pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow
from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
Heart of Darkness presents the eloquent voices of
Kurtz and Marlow. Kurtz is a "gifted creature" whose
greatest gift is "his ability to talk, his words--the gift
of expression." Marlow went into the heart of darkness
to hear this voice, and his story to his friends on the
Nellie is his attempt to tell what he has heard from Mr.
Kurtz. Through the presentation of these two voices,
Conrad examines "the gift of expression" in its ambiguity
as "the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow
from the heart of an impenetrable darkness."
The eloquent Mr. Kurtz rarely speaks directly in the
novel; he is presented through the consciousness and words
of Marlow. Kurtz, however, was a "remarkable man" and his
few words dominate the entire story; his eloquent voice
haunts Marlow's consciousness and shapes profoundly the
nature of Marlow's speech. Throughout the story Kurtz is
characterized as an extraordinary person. When Marlow is
at the Company station preparing to begin his journey into
the interior, the first words he hears about Mr. Kurtz are
_______________________ _______________ 42
from the chief accountant: "He is a very remarkable per
son." (XVI, 69) When he gets to the Central station the
general manager tells him that Kurtz is "a prodigy," an
"emissary of pity, and science and progress. ..." (XVI,
79) When Marlow reaches the "Inner station" he encounters
the young Russian disciple of Kurtz who adores him: "Ah!
I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have
heard him recite poetry— his own too it was, he told me.
Poetry]' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these
delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!'" (XVI, 140) When
Marlow finally gets to hear the voice of Mr. Kurtz he is
repulsed by Kurtz's "incredible degradation"; yet he is
compelled to say of Kurtz: "He was a remarkable man."
(XVI, 151) The final witness to the exceptional abilities
of Kurtz comes in the closing scene of the novel. Kurtz's
"Intended" is still in mourning a year after his death and
she continues to adore Kurtz like a god: "Ah, but I be
lieved in him more than anyone on earth— more than his own
mother, more than— himself. He needed me! Mel I would
have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every
glance." (XVI, 161) A remarkable man, Mr. Kurtz.
The essence of this unusual man is his voice. His
great gift is his gift of expression, his ability to use
the power of words to express himself and to affect others.
All the people who knew Kurtz were deeply impressed by his
eloquence. Mr. Kurtz uses the power of the word to express
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________43.
eloquently his reasons for going into the heart of darkness.
He does not go into Africa like the members of the Eldorado
Exploring Expedition who were sordid buccaneers motivated
only by greed. He expresses his motives in noble words
like "pity," and "science," and "progress." He goes to
Africa to bring the highest ideals of Western civilization
to the savage natives.
In a highly ironical context Marlow hears some of
Kurtz's magnificent words. The Central Station manager and
his rapacious uncle are talking about the problem of Kurtz
and they contemptuously quote him: "Each station should
be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a
centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, im
proving, instructing." (XVI, 91) Kurtz came armed with
such noble words and also as the representative of "the
International Society for the Suppression of Savage Cus
toms." (XVI, 117) He wrote a report for "its future
guidance." Marlow reads his report and is caught up in its
eloquence: "The peroration was magnificent, though diffi
cult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an
exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made
me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power
of eloquence--of words— of burning noble words." (XVI,
118) There is however, one jarring note at the end of all
this eloquence, a postscript that Kurtz had added to his
report at a later time: "It was very simple, and at the
________________________________________________________________ 44
end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it
blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of
lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'"
{XVI, 118) What happened to the "remarkable" Mr. Kurtz?
What happened to his "noble, burning words" in the heart of
darkness? This is what Marlow is trying "to account for"
to himself and to his audience.
Marlow's verdict is finally quite simple: Kurtz
turned out to be "hollow at the core." (XVI, 131) Mr.
Kurtz's words were not a "pulsating stream of light," but
a "deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable dark
ness." When he entered into the silent wilderness where
there were no external checks on his behavior, he gave
way to the forces of darkness within his own heart. Mr.
Kurtz, the spokesman for the society for "the Suppression
of Savage Customs," succumbs to his own repressed impulses.
The one who talks so powerfully about science and progress
actualizes his own hidden desires to be God and allows
himself to be worshipped by the natives. Marlow renders
an incisive judgment on Kurtz: ". . . there was something
wanting in him— some small matter which, when the pressing
need arose, could not be found under his magnificent
eloquence." (XVI, 131) His noble words about the white
man's burden and the need to be a beacon-light of progress
hid hiseinner reality and prevented him from knowing the
truth about himself. The voice that finally speaks the
45
truth about him is the whispering voice of the wilderness:
". . . it had whispered to him things about himself which he
did not know, things of which he had no conception til he
took counsel with this great solitude— and the whisper had
proved irresistibly fascinating." (XVI, 131) What this
voice speaks to Kurtz renders his words about pity and
progress empty. Kurtz's idealistic rhetoric about suppres
sing savage customs has no relationship to his inner reali
ty. His words are hollow at the core.
Even when Kurtz casts off all restraints of civiliza
tion and indulges in "unspeakable rites," which seem to
include even cannibalism,^ he does not become silent. In
stead he puts his gift of expression to the ultimate de
monic use: he calls his evil, good and the darkness of
his heart, light. At the very time he is raping the land
of its ivory, killing helpless natives who will not submit
to his will, and allowing himself to be deified, Kurtz is
enlarging the mind of the young Russian with the power of
his words. He writes and recites poetry and gives "splen
did monologues on . . . love, justice, conduct of life
. . . ." (XVI, 132) When Marlow first hears the eloquent
Mr. Kurtz what he hears is a powerful voice insisting he
is well and will still achieve great things: "I'll carry
1 Stephen Reid, "The 'Unspeakable Rites' in Heart of
Darkness,1 1 Modern Fiction Studies IX, No. 4 (Winter, 1963-
64), 347-56.
46
out my ideas yet--I will return. I'll show you what can
be done. You with your little peddling motives--you are
interfering with me. I will return. I . . ." (XVI, 137)
Marlow finally personally confronts Kurtz as he is crawling
through the grass towards the "gleam of fires, the throb
of drums, the drone of weird incantations," to once again
engage in unspeakable rites. Even at this fiendish moment
Kurtz masks his evil in fine words: "I had immense plans.
. . . I was on the threshold of great things. ..." (XVI,
143)
On the way back down the river, even as he is dying,
Kurtz continues to talk: "Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a
voice! It rang deep to the very last." (XVI, 147) With
feverish eloquence he talks about his Intended, his sta
tion, his career, his. ideas. These are the subjects of
"the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments." Kurtz
is like Lord Jim. He uses his gift of expression to hide
the meaning of his actions. His words, like Jim's, are
"artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-
knowledge. "
But Kurtz is significantly different from Jim because
he finally speaks the truth. Marlow's final verdict on
Kurtz is positive: "He was a remarkable man." (XVI, 15)
The reason Marlow judges him favorably is not because he
accepts Kurtz's moral deterioration, but because Kurtz in
the end came to authentic self-knowledge. Finally Kurtz
_______________________________ 47
can lie to himself no more. He at last uses his great gift
of expression constructively. Marlow comments on this
change: "It [his voice] survived his strength to hide in
the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of
his heart." (XVI, 147) Kurtz's voice survives its capaci
ty for eloquent self-deception and finally speaks the
truth. At last he uses his gift to illuminate rather than
conceal the darkness of his heart. This moment of insight
comes as Kurtz lay dying: "I saw on that ivory face the
expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven
terror— of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live
his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and
surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision— he
cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
'The horror! The horror!'" (VXI, 149) In this moment Mr.
Kurtz becomes more than "the hollow man." He comes to know
his own hollowness; he is no longer deceived by his own
eloquence. He confronts the darkness and in a whisper
voices its reality.
Kurtz is destroyed by the power of darkness, but not
before he sends back a report: "The horror! The horror!"
In these few words the eloquent Mr. Kurtz expresses the
reality of the heart of darkness. Marlow says: "This is
the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man.
He had something to say. He said it." (XVI, 151) This
_________________________________________________________48
act of articulation constitutes Kurtz's moral victory. As
terrible as the words are, at last Kurtz uses his gift of
expression as a means of illumination and not deception.
This is why Marlow can say of his cry: "It was an affirma
tion, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by
abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it
was a victory!" (XVI, 151)
In the character of Marlow Conrad embodies the problem
of the artist as eloquent man. Marlow, like Kurtz, is pre
eminently "a voice." His dilemma is that he is using words
in order to talk about the deceptive power of words. He is
a voice speaking about the "gift of expression" and its
bewildering capacity to be a "deceitful flow from the heart
of an impenetrable darkness." (XVI, 114) Unlike the naive
Kurtz who came to Africa filled with the power of his noble
words, Marlow is aware of the irony of his situation as
"a voice." His acute awareness of the capacity of language
to hide rather than reveal reality accounts for the form
of his story. The story is filled with enigmatic state
ments like the sudden opening remark: "And this also . . .
has been one of the dark places of the earth." There
are sudden time shifts in the chronology of events, sudden
qualifications, and always; hesitations. In a story full
of dramatic possibilities, Marlow carefully shifts the
focus of the story away from sensational action. He at
least could have told his hearers what the "unspeakable
___________________________________________________ 49
rites" were. Marlow ends his story abruptly without a neat
resolution. His last words just fade away into the night:
"It would have been too dark— too dark altogether. . . ."
(XVI, 162)
Marlow's story is "inconclusive" and takes the form it
does because of his fundamental ambivalence toward words.
Five times during the story he interrupts his narrative to
express doubts about what he is doing (XVI, 82, 94, 114,
116, 144) . The first, time is when he is telling about the
Central station manager's vicious verbal attack on Kurtz.
Suddenly he breaks the narrative:
"Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It
seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making
a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can
convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of
absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor
of struggling revolt, that notion of being cap
tured by the incredible which is of the very es
sence of dreams. . . ."
He was silent for a while.
"... No, it is impossible; it is impossible
to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of
one's existence— that which makes its truth, its
meaning— its subtle and penetrating essence. It
is impossible. We live, as we dream— alone. ..."
(XVI, 82)
Marlow seems to deny the capacity of language to convey the
kind of reality he has experienced; yet he goes on with
the story. The next three interruptions come not so much
out of Marlow's frustration with the limits of language,
but with the limitations of his listeners. He stops the
story in order to attack his listeners as being incapable
of understanding the reality he is trying to tell them
50
about. When he expresses his reactions of disappointment
at thinking he was not going to hear Kurtz1s voice because
he thought he was dead, someone in the audience gives a
critical sigh. Marlow responds in anger: "'Absurd!1 he
cried. 'This is the worst of trying to tell . . . Here
you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a
hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a
policeman round another, excellent appetites, and tempera
ture normal— you hear— normal from year's end to year's
end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be— exploded!'" (XVI,
114) Marlow is angry because his listeners in their safe
world of "surface realities" refuse to look beneath the
surface. They seem to be capable only of ridiculing the
experience he is struggling to put into words.
The final break in his story comes when he is describ
ing his encounter with Kurtz crawling in the grass to be
with his worshippers. He recreates the experience of con
fronting this being who had "kicked himself loose from
the earth," and he suddenly despairs of reaching his
hearers: "I've been telling you what we said--repeating
the phrases we pronounced— but what's the good? They were
common everyday words— the familiar, vague sounds ex
changed on every waking day of life. But what of that?
They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestive
ness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in night
mares." (XVI, 144) Here Marlow states the dilemma of
51
language. He is forced to use "waking day" words to try
to convey the meaning of a nightmare experience. Like
Kurtz, Marlow is an explorer, trying to find a language
for the world of dreams; like Kurtz he is trying to give
the darkness a voice.
Even though Marlow says "what's the good?" of talking
he does tell his story. He is aware of the great limita
tions of language but he does believe that words have some
capacity for illumination even if at best they shed a
very dim light on reality. Marlow's ambivalent attitude
to language is effectively expressed in a "hazy" light
metaphor: ". . .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."
(XVI, 48) So Marlow in his "hazy," "misty" way attempts
to communicate the meaning of his encounter with "a voice"
from the heart of darkness.
From the beginning Marlow suggests that the problem of
Kurtz is the problem of Western European culture. Marlow
does not begin his story with talking directly about Kurtz,
but about England: "This also . . . has been one of the
dark places of the earth." (XVI, 48) He suggests that in
the early times Britain was just like Africa— a darkness,
and that the Romans conquered the savage land by blind
__________________________________________________: ________t _____ 52
brute force: "They grabbed what they could for the sake
of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence,
aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it
blind— as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness."
(XVI, 50) Marlow comments harshly on the development of
civilization: "The conquest of the earth, which mostly
means the taking it away from those who have a different
complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is
not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." (XVI,
50-51) But looking into it is precisely what Marlow is
doing and what he sees is the hypocrisy of Western European
culture that has couched its conquests in idealistic rhet
oric, that has sought to redeem its dark, violent acts by
its noble words. Kurtz, who is an outstanding example of
that culture, goes into Africa with those noble words on
his lips. His tragic story becomes for Marlow a judgment
on Western culture: "All Europe contributed to the making
of Kurtz."
After setting the story of Kurtz in its proper con~
text, Marlow begins to relate his own journey into Africa.
He begins not with the actual journey itself, but with how
he got the job as skipper of the river steamboat. The
point of this background is to expose the hypocrisy of
Europe's involvement in Africa. The company Marlow is to
work for is in Brussels, the city which always makes him
think of "a whited sepulchre." (XVI, 55) This is an
allusion to the words of Jesus to the pharisees in Matthew
23:27: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear
beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and
all uncleanness." Marlow's point is that Brussels, the
center of European commerce, is built on a lie. All the
marvelous eloquence and the high ideals that issue forth
from this city hide "dead men's bones and all uncleanness."
Marlow makes his hearers aware of this hypocrisy in the
way in which he presents his interview with his aunt just
before he leaves. In the conversation he discovers that
she views him as "one of the Workers, with a capital. ..."
(XVI, 59) She sees him as "an exceptional and gifted
creature" like Kurtz. He also is to be an "emissary of
light" to the savages. His aunt talks of his mission in
"weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways
. . . ." (XVI, 59) Marlow shows the irony of her statement,
in a terse comment that exposes the reality beneath the
words: "I ventured to hint that the Company was run for
profit." (XVI, 59)
At every stage in his journey to the inner station
Marlow makes his hearers aware of the discrepancy between
the words of European civilization and the reality these
words mask. The French steamer instead of disembarking
"emissaries of light" lands soldiers and custom-house
officers to exploit the land for the benefit of the ideal-
54
ists back home. The utter blindness and folly of the whole
procedure is dramatized in the incident of the French gun
boat firing into the jungle. The only light the gun-boat
is bringing is the explosion of shells, as it violates the
continent. The gun-boat's firing is justified because
someone had found a word for the situation: "enemies."
When Marlow gets to the main Company station he dis
covers the real meaning of "weaning those ignorant millions
from their horrid ways." The people around the station
are building a railroad, a traditional symbol of "progress."
But it is being built by native slaves. Marlow sees the
results of the "burning, noble words" of Kurtz and the
culture he represents when he stumbles into a ravine where
the blacks who are too sick and weak to work are left to
die. His comment is bitterly ironic: "Black shapes
crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the
trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half ef
faced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain,
abandomnent, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went
off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my
feet. The work was going on. The workl" (XVI, 66)
The journey up river only reveals more lust and greed
masked over by noble words and ideals. At the central
station there are about twenty "pilgrims" waiting for the
steamboat to be fixed so they can go up the river to bring
"progress." Marlow's comment exposes their reality: "They
55
beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each
other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plot
ting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course.
It was as unreal as everything else— as the philanthropic
pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their
government, as their show of work." (XVI, 78)
Besides men like the "pilgrims," the Central station
manager, and the "Eldorado Exploring Expedition," who are
clearly motivated by greed and cruelty, Marlow encounters
two other strange figures, the chief accountant and the
Russian "harlequin." They are both variations on what
Marlow describes as the fool who is "too dull" even to know
"he is being assaulted by the powers of darkness." (XVI,
116-17) Both men cling to their ideas and go about their
business completely blind to the forces of darkness sur
rounding them. The chief accountant maintains an elegant
personal appearance and is only concerned with making
"correct entries," even though he is literally surrounded
by human suffering. In a beautifully ironic statement to
Marlow he says: "The groans of this sick person, . . .
distract my attention. And without that it is extremely
difficult to guard against clerical errors in this
climate." (XVI, 69)
The young Russian Marlow meets at the "Inner Station"
is even more amazing. He is totally captured by the power
of Kurtz's words, and cannot see the reality beneath the
56
rhetoric. He listens avidly to Kurtz's discourses on love,
and justice, and the conduct of life, and marvels at his
poetry. He is so caught up by Kurtz's magnificent elo
quence that he is able to rationalize even Kurtz's vilest
actions. The only thing the Russian can comprehend from
his experience with Mr. Kurtz is that "he enlarged my
mind." ' (
What saves Marlow from such moral blindness on the one
hand, and moral collapse on the other, is his awareness of
the disparity between words and reality, between the idea
and the actuality. In the middle of the Russian's descrip
tion of Kurtz's actions Marlow shouts at him not to tell
him how the natives crawled before Kurtz. The Russian is
surprised at Marlow's anger. Marlow says: "He forgot I
hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was
it? on love, justice, conduct of life— or what not. If it
had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much
as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the
conditions,.he said: these heads were the heads of rebels.
I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels 1 What would
be the next definition I was to hear? There had been
enemies, criminals, workers— and these were rebels." (XVI,
132) Marlow cannot accept definitions. He knows the de
ceptive power of words and does not let "definitions" and
"ideas" and "noble words" blind him to the ghastly reali
ties beneath these words. Marlow carefully dramatizes this
________________________________________________________________ 57
discrepancy between words and reality in the story of his
journey. By the time he gets to telling directly about
Kurtz and his engagement in "unspeakable rites” the hearer
is not shocked because Kurtz's story is only the climactic
revelation of the heart of darkness that Marlow has been
portraying as present in every step of the journey.
Since Marlow cannot mask his own dark heart by ideal
izing his motives and actions what he clings to is the
"surface realities" of work. He doesn't jointthe natives
for "a howl and a dance" because he is too busy steering
his boat up the river. But even though holding to "sur
face truth" keeps him from engaging in savage rites,
Marlow realizes that this is also a way of evading the
darkness rather than confronting it. He says of his ac
tivity: "When 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." (XVI, 93) But Marlow's experience
with Kurtz made it impossible for him to keep the "inner
truth" hidden. Marlow says of Kurtz's final words: "No
eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in
mankind as his final burst of sincerity." (XVI, 145)
Kurtz's articulation of the darkness does have a
"withering" effect on Marlow. After his return to the
"sepulchral city" he is reduced to bitter resentment against
the utter blindness of the people around him. Yet he does
58
not try to do anything about the injustices he has seen in
Africa, and he does not immediately try to tell others what
he has seen. He perpetuates the illusions of European
culture by giving Kurtz's report on the "suppression of
Savage Customs" to Kurtz's journalist friend, with the
postscript torn off. And he tells a lie to Kurtz's "In
tended." He cannot speak Kurtz's withering words of truth
because he sees that they would be too shattering for this
innocent girl. So as a result of hearing Kurtz's words of
truth, words which were "so withering to one's belief in
mankind," Marlow is almost overwhelmed by the power of the
darkness and comes close to despairing over the human
capacity to use words for anything more than hiding from
the truth. He could not tell the Intended the truth be
cause it "would have been too dark— too dark altogether. .
. ." (XVI, 162)
Yet Marlow does not remain silent, but struggles to
tell the men on the Nellie the truth about his encounter
with the eloquent Mr. Kurtz in the heart of darkness. As
he says of himself: "I have a voice too, and for good or
evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced." (XVI,
97) He, like Kurtz, has a voice and he uses it to illumin
ate the darkness. By the power of the word, he reveals
the darkness that is hidden under the great "work" that is
being done in Africa. By telling his story he allows
Kurtz's testimony about the darkness to continue to be
59
heard.
Marlow may stammer and hesitate and say it cannot be
said. He may speak in a whisper or in inscrutably ambigu
ous language about the "impenetrable" darkness and the
"unspeakable" rites. He may show how deceptive the human
voice can be. Yet his voice speaks this truth. His final
judgment on Kurtz's use of the gift of expression is also
the truth about his own: "He had something to say. He
said it."•
4* Lord Jim: Words, Words— Artful Dodges to Escape
Self-Knowledge
. . .no man ever understands quite his own artful
dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-
knowledge .
He was one of us.
A young, handsome man dressed in immaculate white.
A water-clerk who does his job well, but suddenly quits and
moves on to the next Eastern seaport to do the job again.
A man on the run who finally runs from seaports and white
men into an Eastern jungle. His name is Jim— just Jim. A
name meant to conceal rather than reveal— an incognito. In
the jungle he gets a new name, "Tuan," and so becomes Lord
Jim.
This briefly is the story presented in the opening
paragraphs of Lord Jim. Who is Jim or "Lord" Jim that
anyone should care to hear his story? The first four chap
ters of the novel don't help much. What we get is the
story of a young man who reads adventure stories and de
cides to go to sea. He goes to seaman's school, passes,
goes to sea, is injured, goes to a hospital in an Eastern
port, and finally takes a berth as chief mate of the Patna.
We see Jim on board the Patna quietly dreaming of heroic
adventures, enjoying the peace and safety of a soft, secure
passage, when suddenly the ship runs over something sub-
■ 61
merged. What has happened? The reader doesn't know be
cause there is a sudden shift in time and place to "a
month afterwards" at an "Official Inquiry" in "the police
court of an Eastern port." Jim is in the witness-box try
ing "to tell honestly the truth" of his experience. What
has happened? The reader still doesn't know. All he knows
is that the ship hit an object that tore a hole in it. He
knows that Jim is struggling to explain something to the
court because he says: ". . . only a meticulous precision
of statement would bring out the true horror behind the
appalling face of things." (XXI, 30)
Why the court of Inquiry? Who is this Jim? Jim has
been involved in something wrong, but what he has done and
why aren't clear. The reader only knows a jumble of enig
matic events until a man named Marlow enters the scene and
begins to speak. Marlow takes the fragments of informa
tion and puts them into a coherent story; he makes actions
that are puzzling make sense by putting them into a pattern
of significance. By the power of the word Marlow creates
order out of the chaos of impressions. By his own meticu
lous precision of statement he brings out the truth behind
the "appalling face of things." Who is Jim? Why does he
matter? We don't know until Marlow tells us a story— the
story of Lord Jim.
But Marlow's story is no simple story. It is not a
straightforward narrative that presents in chronological
62
order a coherent account of the life of Jim. Instead
Marlow's narrative is a complex series of stories within
stories, a bewildering array of speakers telling their
stories that are often disconnected from each other both
in time and in content. Marlow tells a story but it is
more like a montage of fragments. The only thing that
gives coherence to these fragments is Marlow and his way of
presenting them to his listeners.
Why is Marlow's narrative so torturous and involuted,
filled with so many qualifications, and finally ending
with a refusal on his part to make any clear judgment about
Jim? Why does he say that he isn't sure about Jim, that
he always sees him as in a fog? Why does he constantly
remind his hearers that it is impossible to give full
utterance to a man's life? Because, unlike most story
tellers, Marlow is aware of the power of the word— its
power to illuminate but also its power to distort, and mask
the truth. This very sensitivity to language and its
limitations is an essential part of Marlow's story. He
continually confronts his listeners with the problem of
telling the truth, and especially the truth about the
elusive and ambiguous human self.
Marlow is aware that there is no simple way to tell
the kind of truth about Jim that really matters. The
Court of Inquiry's investigation of the facts of the Patna
incident can only reveal the superficial how and not the
_________________________________________63
fundamental why that engages Marlow. He wants to do what
the constituted authorities can't do: "to inquire into the
state of a man's soul." (XXI, 57) Marlow's problem is
how to tell a story that will reveal such truth. It is a
problem because there are all sorts of stories already in
existence about Jim and the Patna incident. Marlow was
not a participant in any of the significant events, nor is
he an eyewitness. All he has to work with are words--the
words of those involved in the events as they attempt to
articulate the significance of those events. Marlow does
meet Jim, but never observes him in any of his decisive
actions. His, relationship to Jim is all verbal. Marlow
is like a priest hearing Jim's confession. Jim talks
obsessively to Marlow, laying bare his soul, attempting to
articulate the meaning of his experience, trying to con
vince Marlow that his version is the truth. Even when
Marlow goes to Patusan supposedly to observe Jim directly,
he spends his time listening— to Jewel, Cornelius, and Jim
himself-— as they try to put into words the meaning of the
Patusan experience.
Out of the bewildering world of words that surrounds
Jim, Marlow wants to discover and speak the truth. Such
a task is not easy and is always vulnerable to the charge
that it will be one more lie and distortion among many.
Because it is not easy Marlow always speaks with a reluc
tant voice. He is hesitant and groping, and creates a
________________________________________________________________ 64
form of storytelling which is appropriate to his sense of
the problems and possibilities of language. The form is
that of an Inquiry, with Marlow casting himself into the
role of chief investigator. What Marlow does is make his
own unofficial inquiry into the case of Lord Jim. He
conducts his investigation like a good lawyer, by gather
ing as much evidence as possible from as many different
sources as he can dig up. He sorts out the various testi
monies of eyewitnesses and participants, seeks expert
opinions, and tries to keep his own judgments to a minimum
by presenting directly the words of others, so the evidence
can speak for itself. He develops the method of juxta
posing the various testimonies, stories, interpretations,
and opinions relevant to the case, thereby allowing them
to complement or clash with each other. Out of the inter
action of all the various fragmentary accounts a glimpse
of the truth about Jim at last emerges.
In conducting his inquiry Marlow has two facts to in
vestigate: the incident of the Patna and Jim's adventures
in Patusan. Jim left the Patna at sea with its human cargo
of pilgrims and he subsequently left the white world to
become "Lord" Jim, protector of the people of Patusan.
These are the superficial facts of Jim's case. But the
question is what is their significance? What happened to
Jim on the Patna? How did he understand his action? How
did Jim become "Lord" Jim? What is the meaning of his
_________________________________________________________________
death? Is it a victory or a defeat? Is it tragic or
pathetic? These are the hard questions about Jim, ques
tions about the fundamental why of his actions, which
Marlow seeks to answer in his investigation. Marlow the
investigator gathers the evidence by listening to a series
of witnesses give their testimonies about the two events.
The novel is basically structured around a series of en
counters between Marlow and a variety of people who tell
him their stories. He never observes the action directly
but listens to other men express their understanding of the
crucial events. Marlow, however, is not a passive listener
who gives a simple report of what he has heard. His mode
of reporting the testimonies is quite complex. He becomes
a dramatist who creates miniature dramas for his hearers.
He recreates his encounters with the various witnesses like
the French Lieutenant and Stein and presents them as
speakers telling their stories in their own words. He
also presents himself as a character in dialogue with the
various witnesses. His role is especially important in his
encounters with Jim. The kinds of questions he asks Jim
and his responses to his statements become a significant
commentary on Jim's testimony.
Marlow's presentation of the various judgments about
Jim dramatizes the limits of language, of any account of
human behavior. Juxtaposing the many reactions to Jim
reveals the impossibility of any one story's being the
66
"full utterance" about a man's life. Marlow continually
reminds his listeners of the limits of his inquiry.
Throughout his investigation Marlow qualifies his own per
ception of Jim by means of a recurring sight metaphor. He
states that he never quite sees Jim clearly. He says that
his knowledge of Jim is at best a series of glimpses
"through the shifting rents in a thick fog." (XXI, 76)
In his bedroom during Jim's night of agony after the
court's verdict, Jim says something that is particularly
revealing, and Marlow wants to speak a truthful word but
finds himself unable to speak. He reflects on the limits
of language in articulating the elusive self: "... but
-it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the
power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same
way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold.
It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate
need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and
misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the
stars and the warmth of the sun." (XXI, 179-80) It is
this sense of the problem of speech, the difficulty of
finding the right words that will reveal rather than ob
scure the truth about another man's intimate need, that
makes Marlow speak with such a reluctant, tentative voice.
He is sensitive to the power of the word to mask the truth
and to sustain men in their blindness and self-deception.
Yet he does not remain silent, -but tries to honor the
______________________________________________________67
power of the word by struggling to achieve a meticulous
precision of statement. So in spite of his constant aware
ness of the difficulty of inquiry into a man's soul, Marlow
does in fact conduct such an inquiry and struggles to tell
the story of Jim in such a way that it will become an
"essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the
horror, of human emotions."
Court of Inquiry I: The Patna Incident
Marlow sees Jim for the first time when Jim and the
crew of the Patna come to give their report not knowing
that the ship didn't sink. Marlow is shocked by Jim's
appearance and reaction to the news that the Patna sur
vived. He is angry that Jim looks so wholesome and reacts
so nonchalantly to the news, as though what had happened
had nothing to do with him, although in fact he had failed
to do his duty. Marlow wants some explanation, some ex
cuse for Jim's behavior because his actions are a threaten
ing possibility for all those who confess to live by cer
tain ideals of human behavior expressed in such lofty
words as duty, honor, fidelity and courage. Marlow care
fully explains his motives for conducting an inquiry into
Jim's case:
Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable
details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned
me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men
held together by a community of inglorious toil and
by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I
can't explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity
______________________________________________________________________________ 6R.
if you like; but I have a distinct notion I wished
to find something. Perhaps, unconsciously I hoped
I would find that something, some profound and re
deeming cause, some merciful explanation, some con
vincing shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now
that I hoped for the impossible— for the laying of
what is the most obstinate ghost of man's creation,
of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and
gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the cer
titude of death— the doubt of the sovereign power
enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct.
(XXI, 50)
Marlow's search for "some merciful explanation" of
Jim's action leads him into encounters with three principal
witnesses in addition to Jim: Captain Brierly, the French
Lieutenant, and Stein. Their stories are revealing be
cause each of them is a version of Jim, a man who has con
fronted the same kind of test, and whose understanding of
and response to the test becomes a significant commentary
on Jim.
Marlow's first piece of evidence, the story of Captain
Brierly, would appear to have little connection with Jim.
Brierly was simply one of the examiners who made the in
quiry into the Patna case. Shortly after the Inquiry,
Brierly committed suicide. What relevance do Brierly's
actions have to Jim? Why does Marlow choose to tell a
rather long and complicated story about Brierly?
What Marlow makes clear is that "Big" Brierly, as he
was called, is a version of Jim. Brierly is a successful
Jim. He had achieved the heroic stature that Jim longed
for. He was the captain of "the crack ship of the Blue
69-
tar line.,." he "had never in his life made a mistake, never
had an accident, never a mishap," he had "saved lives at
sea, had rescued ships in distress," and was "acutely aware
of his merits and of his rewards." Why did such a heroic
figure suddenly commit suicide? Marlow makes his connec
tion with Jim clear when he says that Brierly while examin
ing Jim was "probably holding silent inquiry into his own
case." (XXI, 58) Brierly saw himself in Jim's failure and
couldn't bear the knowledge that he had that possibility
within himself. Marlow's reversing of the chronological
sequence, telling of Brierly's suicide and then shifting to
Brierly's remarks to him at the Inquiry, makes clear the
meaning of Brierly's statements. Brierly was agitated at
the hearing and said to Marlow: "I feel like a fool all
the time." (XXI, 66) His words show his identification
with Jim and the great shock to his self-conception that
such an identification causes. He wants to buy Jim off,
to get him to run away because he sees Jim's public ex
posure of his failure as an exposure of himself. Brierly's
words about Jim's case disclose his own fears about him
self: "Such an affair destroys one's confidence. A man
may go pretty near through his whole sea-life without any
call to show a stiff upper lip. But when the call comes
. . . Ahai . . . If I. . . ." (XXI, 68) Brierly can't
face the possibility of his own failure; he can't face the
truth that Jim is "one of us," so he "committed his reality
______________________________________ ____________________________________U 1
and his sham together to the keeping of the sea." (XXI,
68)
Marlow spends a good deal of time recreating his en
counter with Brierly's first mate, Jones, and in dramatiz
ing Jones' telling his story of Brierly's suicide. Jones
is totally removed from any connection with Jim and the
Patna. Yet Marlow makes his seemingly unconnected remarks
about Brierly a dramatic revelation about Jim. Jones gives
a detailed account of Brierly's carefully planned jump into
the sea and expresses the oracular truth about human be
havior: "We never know what a man is made of." (XXI, 59)
What a man is made of is indeed mysterious because even
the meaning of Brierly's suicide is enigmatic. After hear
ing the details Marlow wonders whether Brierly's suicide
was his way of facing the terrors of the self presented
to him in Jim or a means of escaping such self-knowledge.
Marlow reflects: "Who can tell what flattering view he
had induced himself to take of his own suicide?" (XXI, 64)
With this question the point of Marlow's story about
Brierly becomes clear because it is the same question that
must later be asked about Jim's death at the hands of
Doramin. Jones ends his reflections on Brierly by stating
a central truth about him: "And then, as if a light had
been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones
found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his
nose, nodding at me dolefully: 'Ay, ay! Neither you nor
I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves!" (XXI, 65)
Such an insight into Brierly will become an important piece
of evidence in understanding "Lord" Jim.
Marlow finally encounters Jim directly as the result
of a verbal misunderstanding— a mistake which is a sudden
exposure of Jim's soul. At the end of the Inquiry Marlow
leaves the courtroom with a companion. Out in the street
Marlow's friend stumbles over a dog and says to Marlow:
"Look at that wretched cur." (XXI, 70) Suddenly Jim who
had been walking by them spins around and says to Marlow:
"Did you speak to me?" This dramatic misunderstanding pro
vides a sudden insight into Jim's consciousness. Marlow
comments on the power of the word to reveal: "a single
word had stripped him of his discretion— of that discretion
which is more necessary to the decencies of our inner being
than clothing is to the decorum of our body." (XXI, 74)
Like the misunderstandings of "Wait!" in The Nigger of the
"Narcissus" and "Nostromo" in Nostromo, this verbal mistake
becomes a dramatic symbol of a major issue in the novel,
the power of words either to reveal or to mask the truth.
In Jim's case, his response to the words about the dog
reveal two crucial facts. His response shows his deep
sense of guilt. That he should even think that the words
about a "wretched cur" might have been spoken about him
indicates he feels the words accurately describe him. His
readiness to attack.Marlow physically about the words, and
___________________________________, _____________________________ 72
his vigorous denial of their validity reveals what becomes
the central truth that Marlow discovers about Jim: his
refusal to accept the truth about his guilt and his per
sistent self-deception.
After Marlow clears up the misunderstanding about the
cur, Jim indicates that he wants to tell him his story be
cause he "would like somebody to understand." (XXI, 81)
In Marlow's room begins an evening of dialogue in which
Jim tries to explain what happened on the Patna. Jim's
long story is essentially ironic. That is, the way in
which he tells his story reveals the truth about him
which he cannot see. The words he chooses to describe the
events become windows which allow the hearers to see into
his soul. What Jim's story reveals is his own abuse of
words. Jim is obsessed with explaining his actions to
Marlow, but he hides their significance in rationalization
and euphemism. His constant verbalizing is essentially a
flight from the truth. Jim tells his stories, but they
are just so many "artful dodges to escape from the grim
shadow of self-knowledge."
One of Jim's first words to Marlow about the Patna
incident offers a revealing glimpse into his soul. What
Jim says about the incident is: "Ah! What a chance
missed! My God! What a chance missed!" (XXI, 83) What
these words disclose is Jim's exalted egotism. His primary
concern is not about the horror of what might have happened
73
to those abandoned pilgrims, or about his own betrayal,
but about how he had missed a chance to be a hero. Marlow
who is sensitive to what this statement demonstrates about
Jim, calls him back from his heroic imaginings by bluntly
stating the reality of what he had done: "I whisked him
back by saying, 'If you had stuck to the ship, you mean!'"
(XXI, 84) Marlow further tries to deflate Jim's preten
sions by a bit of sarcasm: "It is unfortunate you didn't
know beforehand!" (XXI, 84) But Jim is so caught in his
own ego that he misses the meaning of Marlow's words, and
"the perfidious shaft fell harmless." (XXI, 84)
Jim recreates the events on the Patna and what is
clear from his telling of the story is his sense of being
a passive victim and not an actor. When the squall comes
up to add another dimension of terror to the scene Jim
expresses his anger that he was so victimized by the situa
tion: "It had sneaked upon us from behind. The infernal
thing! I suppose there had been at the back of my head
some hope yet. I don't know. But that was all over any
how. It maddened me to see myself caught like this. I
was angry, as though I had been trapped. I was trapped!"
(XXI, 102) As Marlow suggests, Jim "preserved through it
all a strange illusion of passiveness, as though he had
not .acted but had suffered himself to be handled by the
infernal powers who had selected him for the victim of
their practical joke." (XXI, 108) This inability to ac-
___________________________ 74.
"cept his own actions, his persistent rationaXizatlon of
what he had done, culminates in his dramatic statement
about the moment of leaving the ship. He graphically
describes the chaos of the moment, the screaming of the
crew in the life boat, and then he says: "I had jumped
. . . It seems." (XXI, 111)
Even in the boat Jim maintains his illusions. He
makes clear to Marlow that although he was in the boat
with the rest of the crew, he was not one of them. He
has nothing but hostility and contempt for them and in a
powerfully ironic statement he blames them for his jump,
revealing the depths of his self-deception: "What more
could they have done? Oh, yes, I know very well— I jumped.
Certainly. I jumped! I told you I jumped; but I tell you
they were too much for any man. It was their doing as
plainly as if they had reached up with a boat-hook and
pulled me over. Can’t you see it? You must see it!"
(XXI, 123) Of course Marlow does not see it, but he is
not able to puncture Jim's illusions. Jim is pathetic in
his expressions of bewilderment in being caught in a situa
tion he wasn't able to handle. Unlike the rest of the
crew he does see the moral dilemma but persists in trying
to rationalize his role. He tries to excuse his behavior
by defining it as a morally ambiguous situation in which
he had a terrible choice to make. He says: "There was
not the thickness of a sheet of paper between the right
75
and wrong of this affair." (XXI, 130) Marlow counters
this with irony: "How much more did you want?" But he
says it so low that Jim doesn't hear, which is just as well
because he wouldn't have understood. Jim tries to con
vince Marlow that staying with the ship would have done
no good1 , that it was a difficult decision. He repeats
again his lie: "Not the breadth of a hair between this
and that. And at the time . . . i" (XXI, 131) Marlow
again uses an ironic reply to indicate the falseness of
such a view: "It is difficult to see a hair at midnight."
(XXI, 131) Marlow follows this jab with a blunt statement
of the truth: "And so you cleared out— at once." But
Jim can't face it and returns to the cover of his euphemism
"1Jumped,' he corrected me incisively. 'Jumped— mind!'"
(XXI, 131)
The first section of Marlow's encounter with Jim ends
with Jim's angry affirmation that he was ready to commit
suicide by leaving the life-boat but that he thought that
would be running away from facing the truth that victimized
him. He says: "I wasnit going to give in to such a
beastly unfair thing." (XXI, 132) Instead he tells
Marlow that "the proper thing was to face it out— alone for
myself— wait for another chance— . . . ." (XXI, 132)
Such is the story Jim tells about the Patna. Marlow speaks
the truth about Jim's words: ". . . it is my belief no
man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape
76
from the grim shadow of self-knowledge(XXI, 80)
While Jim is waiting for another chance Marlow shifts
to telling another story— the story of the French Lieuten
ant who spent thirty hours on the Patna after Jim left.
Marlow recreates his encounter with the Lieutenant in a
cafe in Sydney, Australia a long time after the event. The
Lieutenant's story is important because it fills in the
interesting information about how the Patna was rescued
and safely taken into port after being deserted by her crew.
But more important than his story is the Lieutenant him
self. The Lieutenant is another double of Jim and hearing
him speak right after hearing Jim's explanation provides
a context for evaluating Jim's words. Jim and the Lieu
tenant were both on the damaged Patna. Jim jumps and the
Lieutenant stays on board for thirty hours. Jim imagines
himself engaging in heroic action; the Lieutenant actually
does it.
Not only are their actions contrasting, but their
mode of speech about their actions. Jim conceives of
himself in heroic terms, constantly looking for oppor
tunities to be courageous and brave, and rationalizing
his failure to be so. The French Lieutenant uses the mode
of understatement,'saying that he had only done what "was
judged proper" and that "one has done one's possible."
(XXI, 141) His stance is anti-heroic and his only expres
sion of feeling about his thirty hours of danger was to
77
express disgust about not having any wine: "I— you know—
when it comes to eating without any glass of wine— I am no
where." (XXI, 141)
Because Marlow perceives that the Frenchman is "one
of those steady reliable men who are the raw material of
great reputations ..." (XXI, 143) he decides to tell
him Jim's story in order to get his reaction to it. Since
he had taken Jim's place he deserved to hear his story.
So Marlow tells him what happened. The Lieutenant's
response to the incident is a simple, direct statement of
the truth— the truth which Jim tries so desperately to
evade: "And so that poor young man ran away along with
the others." (XXI, 145) In contrast to Jim, he can
directly express the reality of fear and acknowledge his
own capacity for failure: "'One is always afraid. One
may talk, but . . . The fear, the fear--look you--it is
always there. . . . 1 He touched his breast on the very
spot where Jim had given a thump to his own when protest
ing that there was nothing the matter with his heart."
(XXI, 146) The Lieutenant, unlike Jim, knows the weakness
of his own heart and by articulating in clear, simple
words the reality of his own capacity for cowardice, he
is able to face and live with the truth. He refuses the
grand heroic rhetoric because he knows: "--there is a
point— for the best of us^-there is somewhere a point when
you let go everything (vous lachez tout). And you have to
78
live with that truth— do you see? Given a certain combina-
ioneof circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable
funk (un trac epouvantable). And even for those who do not
believe this truth there is fear all the same— the fear of
themselves." (XXI, 146-47) Knowing this truth, unlike
Jim, he strives to do "his possible."
Marlow's final witness in his inquiry into the Patna
incident is Stein, rich merchant, renowned naturalist,
and adventurer. Stein is a pivotal figure in assessing
Jim, and his words about Jim often have been taken out of
context and used as Conrad's generalizations about life.
Such an approach misses the carefully elaborated context
of Stein's words and the interplay between Stein's state
ments and Marlow's replies.
Stein's diagnosis of Jim's case is intriguing because
he is the witness who uses Jim in order to make large
generalizations about the nature of man. The French Lieu
tenant's analysis was anti-rhetorical, a simple realism
that talked about doing "one's possible." Stein is the
philosopher who employs large philosophical categories to
define the significance of Jim's behavior. But all Stein's
reflections about Jim need to be seen in the context of
Marlow's story about Stein himself. Marlow goes to great
length to establish Stein as a double figure for Jim.
Stein is a successful Jim. Like Brierly he has had great
adventures and done heroic deeds. In addition, an
_________________________________79
extremely important fact about Stein is that he is a
naturalist, a collector of butterflies and beetles. His
passionate absorption in butterflies is an expression of
his quest for a kind of perfection that does not exist in
the human world. Stein's words reveal the significance of
butterflies for him: n" Look! The beauty— but that is
nothing— look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so
fragile! And so strong! And so exact! 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 wonder; this
masterpiece of Nature— the great artist." (XXI, 20 8)
But man, according to Stein, cannot accept his imperfec
tion and longs for the perfection of the natural world.
Stein defines Jim in the following way: "I under
stand very well. He is romantic." (XXI, 212) What he
means by this rather cryptic statement becomes clear as he
elaborates on the nature of man in contrast to the butter
fly. The beautiful butterfly is content to sit still on
his little heap of dirt, but man is never content to sit
still. The butterfly is in harmony with his world, but
man is not. Man wants to be what he cannot be: "he wants
to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil— and every time
he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow—
so fine as he can never be . . . In a dream. . . ." (XXI,
213) The human dilemma is that man longs to be perfect
: ______________________________________________________________ 8H
and has a difficult time facing the discrepancy between his
imaginings about himself and what he is actually capable of
doing. The pain comes at discovering "you cannot make
your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong
enough are, or not clever enough." (XXI, 213) Man doesn't
want to face his limitations and longs to see himself as
a "very fine fellow."
Marlow agrees with Stein's diagnosis. When Stein,
however, offers his remedy for Jim's situation Marlow
does not simply accept it, but rather views it skeptically
and finally questions its adequacy. This is an important
point because Stein's "cure" for Jim is his famous state
ment which is frequently taken as Conrad's own central
statement about the nature of man: "a man that is born
falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If
he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people
endeavour to do, he drowns— nicht war? . . . No! I tell
you! The way is to the destructive element submit your
self, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the
water make the deep, deep sea keep you up." (XXI, 2]4)
There seems to be a fundamental ambiguity in Stein's
statement which has provoked critical controversy about the
exact meaning of the phrase, "the destructive element."
Does it mean the dream or does it mean reality? To make
the precise meaning even less sure, the central metaphor
of a man drowning by trying to climb out of the water into
_______________________________________________________________________ 8JL
the air is mixed. Although the precise meaning of Stein's
advice, "In the destructive element immerse ..." may
be impossible finally to pin down, the rest of this particu
lar speech and Stein's actual practical suggestions seem
to make his general intention clear. A crucial clue for
how to take Stein's remarks is given by the careful way
Marlow describes Stein's physical actions while he is
giving his famous speech. He proclaims the first part
about man being born into a dream while he is in shadows,
outside the lamp light. Marlow describes him as being
"inspired by some whisper of knowledge." (XXI, 214) But
then he moves into the light and "the light had destroyed
the assurance which had inspired him in the distant
shadows." (XXI, 214) This change in Stein's reactions
already qualifies the adequacy of what he has just said.
Stein sits down and doesn't really address his words to
Marlow, but seems to be reflecting on his own past, on his
own way of "how to be": "He spoke in a subdued tone, with
out looking at me, one hand on each side of his face.
'That was the way. To follow the dream, and again to
follow the dream— and so— ewig-usque ad finem. . . .'"
(XXI, 215) Stein is here speaking not directly of Jim but
of his own life and he is defending the positive value of
dreaming— of "following the dream . . . usque ad finem."
He clearly is not advising Marlow to try to destroy Jim's
dreams by forcing him to face reality, and his "practical"
82
solution for Jim's case will be to send him into the dream
world of Patusan.
Marlow's reflections on Stein's words show that he
sees that they have revealed as much about Stein as they
have about Jim, and he is skeptical about their adequacy
as a "cure." Marlow sees that Stein has been justifying
his own life— his life of adventure and "enthusiasm for
generous ideas." He thinks that for Stein such a following
of the dream was all right: "he had travelled very far,
on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed
it had been without faltering, and therefore without shame
and without regret. In so far he was right. That was
the way, no doubt." (XXI, 215) But these last two sen
tences express Marlow's skepticism. Maybe such a way is
all right for an exceptional person like Stein. But
Marlow expresses his sense of the inadequacy of such a
following of the dream in a kind of nightmare vision
which Stein's affirmation ironically conjures up for him:
". . . yet for all that the great plain on which men wander
amongst graves and pitfalls remained very desolate under
the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular light, over
shadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if
surrounded by an abyss full of flames." (XXI, 215)
Stein's advice simply isn't adequate for dealing with what
Marlow knows about the harsh human world, that desolate
plain of graves and pitfalls where human beings struggle to
______________________________ 83
find how to be. Marlow's final ironic response to Stein's
advice show his sense of its inadequacy: "When at last I
broke the silence it was to express the opinion that no
one could be more romantic than himself." (XXI, 215)
Stein is a romantic like Jim. But unlike Jim he knows
that truth about himself. Marlow attempts to praise Stein
for achieving his dreams in contrast to Jim's failure:
". . . and amongst other things you dreamed foolishly of
a certain butterfly; but when one fine morning your dream
came in your way you did not let the splendid opportunity
escape. Did you? Whereas he. ..." (XXI, 217) But
Stein rejects this praise and admits his failures: "'And
do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many
dreams I had lost that had come in my way?' He shook his
head regretfully. 'It seems to me that some would have
been very fine— if I had made them come true. Do you know
how many? Perhaps I myself don't know.'" (XXI, 217)
Although Stein goes back to his butterflies at the end of
their conversation, he knows of man's dark possibilities
because he also has in his collection black beetles,
"horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in death
and immobility." (XXI, 203)
Through Marlow's careful re-creation of the key testi
monies about Jim and the Patna, through his meticulous
precision of statement, what is revealed about Jim is pre
cisely his failure to know about his own dark possibilities.
_________________________________________________________84_
What is disclosed about Jim is not simple cowardice. All
men, as the French Lieutenant and Stein make clear, are
cowards and constantly fail the tests to which they are
put. They both can speak this simple truth about them
selves. What makes Jim's case so fascinating and so threat
ening is his refusal to acknowledge his failure, and his
torturous struggle to evade self-knowledge. He constantly
speaks, but he uses the power of the word to construct
elaborate stories to hide from the truth. His words are
all "artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-
knowledge . "
Court of Inquiry II: Patusan
"I don't suppose any of you had ever heard of
Patusan?" (XXI, 218) This is the way Marlow opens his
narrative about the second episode in Jim's case, his ad
ventures in Patusan. Marlow immediately tells his hearers
that Jim achieved a new life in Patusan: "He left his
earthly failings behind him and that sort of reputation he
had, and there was a totally new set of conditions for his
imaginative faculty to work upon. Entirely new, entirely
remarkable. And he got hold of them in a remarkable way."
(XXI, 218) Before he explains how it all happened, he
suggests that Jim had achieved something extraordinary in
Patusan. Or had he? Marlow is not quite sure that Jim's
success story is really that successful. And the reader is
85
even less sure in the light of all the evidence about Jim
that Marlow has previously presented. Marlow admits that
his audience might have more perspective on Jim than he
does because of his sympathetic involvement: "you may be
able to tell better, since the proverb has it that the on
lookers see most of the game." (XXI, 224) To the onlooker
Jim's new life does indeed seem suspect. In fact the whole
Patusan adventure finally seems an illusion, a flight from
the truth into a dream world.
The first piece of evidence that reveals the meaning
of the Patusan episode is the way Jim responds to the sug
gestion that he go to Patusan. Stein mentioned Patusan
to Marlow as a way of burying Jim, as an extreme solution
to his desperate situation. Jim takes the graveyard of
Patusan and in his imagination turns it into the birth
place of a grand adventure story. He transforms going to
desolate Patusan into the great chance he has been waiting
for: "'Slam the door' he shouted. 'I've been waiting
for that. I'll show yet . . . I'll . . .I'm ready for any
confounded thing. . . . I've been dreaming of it. . . .
Jove I Get out of this. JoveI This is luck at last. . . .
You wait. I'll. . . .'" (XXI, 235) These words reveal
his persistent inability to face the truth about himself
and his need to tell himself grandiose lies. His very act
of going off to Patusan is a flight from the truth and not
in any way an actual "second chance." His own perception
86
that what he needs is "another chance" is a false analysis
of his situation. Jim misconceives the nature of the test
he needs to face. He thinks he needs another chance to
act heroically saving people in distress, acting courage
ously and bravely, when in fact the real test is the test
of self-knowledge. And so he eagerly looks forward to
Patusan telling Marlow: "I feel as if nothing could touch
me. WhyI this is luck from the word Go. I wouldn't spoil
such a magnificent chance!'" (XXI, 241) What Jim needs
is to be touched, to have his lies about himself exposed
so he can face his own dark possibilities and know his own
vulnerability.
The most powerful irony about Jim's experience in
Patusan is that he completely succeeds in realizing his
wildest dreams. He succeeds in fulfilling his own defini
tions of his situation. He doesn't spoil his "magnificent
chance," but achieves "the conquest of love, honour, men's
confidence— the pride of it, the power of it. . ." which
are "fit materials for a heroic tale." (XXI, 22 6) Just
plain Jim who left the white world in shame and dishonor
because of the Patna incident becomes "Lord" Jim, the
savior of a whole people. As Jim expresses his achievement
to Marlow when he comes for a visit: "It was . . . it was
immense!" (XXI, 272) To all appearances Jim's achieve
ment was indeed immense. But in reality it was all a sham,
hollow at the core.
_______________________________ 87
Two years after Marlow as a last desperate measure
sends Jim off to Patusan, he goes there to see for himself
what Jim has accomplished. Before he even reaches Patusan
he encounters a significant story about Jim. As he is
about to go upstream to Patusan he meets the headman of
the fishing village who tells him about Jim. From this
native Marlow hears for the first time Jim's new name:
"Tuan." Such a word is revealing because it is a synonym
for God. The headman "called him Tuan Jim, and the tone of
his references was made remarkable by a strange mixture of
familiarity and awe." (XXI, 242) The natives view him as
a god figure and Marlow discovers that he has become the
object of myth and legend, performing miracles to save the
people: "there was already a story that the tide had turned,
two hours before its time to help him on his journey up
the river. The talkative old man himself had steered the
canoe and had marvelled at the phenomenon." (XXI, 242-43)
Naming Jim "Lord," naive misconception that it is, is
ironically appropriate. Jim does actually act courageously
to save the exploited people of Patusan. In a sense he
does play God for the people— he delivers them from their
oppressors and creates a world of safety and peace. But
the crucial issue is how he understands the meaning of his
action. He accepts the definition "Tuan" as accurate and
thereby reveals his self-deceiving illusions of grandeur.
Jim tells Marlow about all the myths and legends that have
88-
sprung up around his actions. He expresses irritation at
the stories but Marlow sees that Jim needs to hear these
stories and tries a bit of sarcasm on him: "The earnest
ness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said: 'My
dear fellow, you don't suppose I believe this.'" (XXI,
266-67) Marlow's ironic point is clear: Jim does in fact
believe in his own Lordship. That he has actually created
a world in Patusan where he is worshipped and adored by
human beings as Lord only provides an effective escape from
confronting his own vulnerable humanity. Any world where
a man can in fact be Lord is by definition a world of
illusion and is bound eventually to be shattered by the
truth.
When Marlow gets to Patusan he has a long conversation
with Jim in which Jim tells him all his glorious adven
tures. The evening in which Marlow listens to Jim's story
is a repetition of the evening in which he listened to Jim
tell his story of the Patna incident. The stories are
superficially different, but in essence the same. Jim's
first story was a story of shame and confusion as he tried
to make sense out of the trouble that had come to him. His
second story is a story of adventure, success, and love.
And yet both stories are alike in that they are evasions
of the truth.
Jim's story of capture, escape, victory, and the
creation of a world of order and peace in Patusan is im-
89
pressive. It is no wonder that Lord Jim is often read as
an adventure story, and that the film version focuses on
this section of the novel. But to be caught up in Jim's
exciting adventures or to see them as redeeming him after
his fall on the Patna is to miss the meaning of the Patusan
story. What Marlow probes is the significance of the ac
tions to Jim himself, how he understands the meaning of
Patusan. Marlow comments on how the words Jim uses to
describe Patusan reveal its meaning for him: "Now and then,
though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed
how deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had
given him the certitude of rehabilitation." (XXI, 248)
The evening of Marlow's arrival, in the silence of
the night, Jim and Marlow go out in front of Jim's house
and Jim tells his story. Jim surveys his kingdom and says:
"'Look at these houses; there's not one where I am not
trusted. Jovei I told you I would hang on. Ask any man,
woman, or child . . .' He paused. 'Well, I am all right
anyhow.'" (XXI, 246-47) Jim's words betray him. He does
not essentially care about the people, but interprets
everything in terms of his own ego. The importance of the
people is that they confirm his own heroic self-conception--
they make him feel that he is "all right anyhow."
But he is not all right. His story about Patusan is
an illusion. All his words are ironic. He has verbalized
for himself an heroic story with himself as the Savior of
90
the people. He is safe and secure in his self-created
world, but the depth of his self-deception is revealed when
he says to Marlow as Marlow is about to leave: "My dear
Marlow, . . . I feel that if I go straight nothing can
touch me. Indeed I do. Now you have been long enough here
to have a good look around— and frankly, don't you think I
am pretty safe? It all depends upon me, and, by Jove! I
have lots of confidence in myself." (XXI, 325) Such words
are ironic and the words of a childish perception of the
world. Jim's feelings of safety and peace are exactly the
same as he felt on the Patna just before that illusion was
shattered.
Marlow ends his story of Lord Jim with telling of his
final vision of Jim on the seashore soberly performing his
duty as Lord by settling some native squabble about turtle
eggs. He leaves Jim apparently having realized his heroic
dreams, having at last mastered his fate. But Marlow dis
turbs this serene vision with his usual qualifications and
doubts about the clearness of what he sees: "He was white
from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with
the stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his
feet, the opportunity by his side— still veiled. What do
you say? Was it still veiled? I don't know. For me that
white figure in the stillness of coast and sea seemed to
stand at the heart of a vast enigma." (XXI, 336) Thus
ends Marlow's long story and all the listeners go home to
__________________________________________________________________________
make what they can of such an inconclusive tale.
The Final Verdict
The final pieces of evidence concerning Jim's case
come two years after Marlow's story in the form of several
written documents sent to only one man out of the original
group of listeners. Marlow in his role of investigator
refuses to pass judgment on Jim and turns it over to his
jury— the readers. He says: "I affirm nothing. Perhaps
you may pronounce— after you've read.1 ' (XXI, 339)
Marlow has three major pieces of evidence to present:
a few words that Jim scratched out; an old letter to Jim
from his father; and finally, a coherent story of the last
events that he constructed out of his investigations into
those events. The structure of the presentation of these
fragments of information is a repetition of the order of
presentation of the Patna incident. The reader is intro
duced to a series of enigmatic words and actions which re
main puzzling until Marlow makes sense of them by construct
ing a coherent narrative. The chronological sequence is
reversed so that the reader encounters the results of the
action and then has the reasons for the action gradually
explained.
The first fragmentary piece of information that Marlow
comments on is the strange attempt at a letter by Jim which
stops after a few words. Marlow speculates that the event
92
Jim was addressing himself to might have been at last "that
supreme opportunity, that last and satisfying test for
which I had always suspected him to be waiting, before he
could frame a message to the impeccable world." (XXI, 339)
What the precise nature of that test was is not clear at
this point. Marlow doesn’t fill in the details. What he
gives is Jim's words which reveal that something terrible
has happened. The few words Jim wrote are incomplete:
"The Fort, Patusan." "An awful thing has happened ..."
"I must now at once ..." (XXI, 340) His words at this
point convey only that something "awful" has happened?
something so awful that he cannot find adequate words to
express his responses. Only later when he reads Marlow's
story does the reader understand Marlow's remark about what
rendered Jim inarticulate and caused him to throw the pen
aside: "He was overwhelmed by the inexplicable; he was
overwhelmed by his own personality— the gift of that des
tiny which he had done his best to master." (XXI, 341)
When the test of the Patna— the test of self-knowledge—
comes again a second time in Patusan Jim once again can't
face himself and therefore can't articulate any meaning
out of the event. He is overwhelmed by his own personality.
He can't understand his own failure in the tragic events
of Patusan and therefore what has happened remains inex
plicable. His incomplete "message" is the "aimless startled
cry of a solitary man confronted by his fate" (XXI, 340)
__________________________ ______________________________ 9_ 3_
who can't comprehend it and therefore has nothing to say.
The second piece of information is an old letter from
Jim's father which Jim had received shortly before the
Patna incident which he had since carried with him. In a
rather conventional letter of "easy morality and family
news" there is an extremely important statement which offers
a sudden insight into Jim. His father is speaking of
virtue and morality and says: "who once gives way to temp
tation, in the very instant hazards his total depravity and
everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve fixedly never, through
any possible motives, to do anything which you believe to
be wrong." (XXI, 342) Such glib words are tremendously
ironic juxtaposed to Jim's inarticulate and desperate
utterances of his inability to comprehend his own moral
failure. Such words are distortions of the nature of temp
tation and self-righteous lies which mask the dark possi
bilities of the self. These words which Jim carried with
him must have helped to shape his own simplistic understand
ing of the nature and possibility of heroism, and then when
he failed his tests, must have intensified his deep sense
of guilt which he could only handle through denial.
The final piece of evidence is Marlow's reconstructed
narrative of the last events in Patusan. Through his
meticulous precision of statement he gives a glimpse into
the soul of Jim— a glimpse that makes a final judgment
about him possible. "It all begins, as I've told you, with
94
the man called Brown. I ! r~ . ” (XXI, 352) This is the way
Marlow's story opens. He gives a long account of Brown's
personal history to establish his character as a double.
Brown is an egotist like Jim but his egotism has moved in
the opposite direction from Jim's. If Jim is caught up in
playing God, in being "Lord" Jim, then Brown strives to
play the exalted role of the Devil. Marlow carefully de
scribes the demonic quality of Brown's criminal activity:
"... but what distinguished him from his contemporary
brother Ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the mellifluous Pease,
or that perfilmed Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel
known as Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his mis
deeds and a vehement scorn for mankind at large and for
his victims in particular. The others were merely vulgar
and greedy brutes, but he seemed moved by some complex
intention. He would rob a man as if only to demonstrate
his poor opinion of the creature, and he would bring to
the shooting or maiming of some quiet, unoffending stranger
a savage and vengeful earnestness fit to terrify the most
reckless of desperadoes." (XXI, 353)
Brown, in desperate straits, is in need of provisions
for his ship so he comes to Patusan to plunder a defense
less village. Brown gets into Patusan easily enough, but
finds himself trapped by the natives who are well organized.
Although Brown is surrounded by the natives he discovers
that he is in the middle of various intrigues as Cornelius
95
comes to him as an emissary. He hears that there is a
strange white man in control of Patusan by the name of Lord
Jim. Brown's response to this news is an ironically accu
rate assessment. He immediately sees a kinship between
himself and this Lord Jim. He envisions not simple escape
now, but sharing this other white man's plunder. Brown
cannot imagine any white man in such a place who is not
exploiting the situation. He reflects: "Of course they
would share. The idea of there being a fort— all ready to
his hand— a real fort, with artillery (he knew this from
Cornelius, excited him. Let him only once get in and . . .
He would impose modest conditions. Not too low, though.
The man was no fool, it seemed. They would work like
brothers till . . . till the time came for a quarrel and a
shot that would settle all accounts." (XXI, 369)
Brown's wild imaginings about sharing with Jim are
shattered in the dramatic confrontation between them "not
very far from the place, perhaps on the very spot, where
Jim took the second desperate leap of his life--the leap
that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust,
the love, the confidence of the people." (XXI, 380)
Brown and Jim face each other silently for a few
moments across the creek. Their appearance is strikingly
opposite. The desperate, dirty, ragged, grey-bearded old
man with a "sunken, sun-blackened face" looks at the
handsome, blond, young man dressed in immaculate white,
________________________________________________________________96
with his "assurance, his clear eyes and his untroubled
bearing." (XXI, 380) And then begins a verbal exchange
that dramatically reveals the demonic power of words to
strip a man bare, "to get in and shake his twopenny soul
around and inside out and upside down ..." (XXI, 384)
and blind him to the truth. Brown speaks with demonic
eloquence and Jim is rendered almost speechless by Brown's
verbal assaults.
Jim begins the interview by asking some simple ques
tions: "Who are you?" "What made you come here?" But
Brown does not give simple answers. Instead he uses the
questions as a springboard for his attack. He answers:
"It's easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?" Im
mediately Brown thrusts home as he forces Jim to see him
self in him. Brown already is lying to Jim about his
motives but he succeeds in forcing Jim to see their subtle
kinship. Once Brown sees Jim's reaction of recognition he
moves on to exploit Jim's vulnerability to the full.
Brown continues to question Jim's own motives. Jim sug
gests that they might just starve them out. Brown rebels
against such a terrible death. Jim counters that they don’ t:
deserve a better fate. Suddenly Brown turns this phrase
against Jim and attacks his motives: "And what do you
deserve, . . . you that I find skulking here with your
mouth full of your responsibility, of innocent lives, of
your infernal duty? What do you know more of me than I
97
know of you? I came here for food. 'ye hear?— food to
fill our bellies. And what did you come for? What did you
ask for when you came here?" (XXI, 3 82) Brown accuses Jim
of hypocrisy— of masking his real motives behind the fine
words about responsibility and duty. He pretends to state
his own motive honestly: "I came here for food" and then
asks Jim to stop lying and admit his real motives. Brown's
accusations are ironically true and Jim is stunned and has
nothing to say.
Brown further shakes Jim by creating a picture of
himself as a courageous man who is heroically concerned
about the well-being of his crew: "There are my men in the
same boat— and, by God, I am not the sort to jump out of
trouble and leave them in a d— d lurch." (XXI, 382)
Brown offers himself as the exact reverse of Jim on the
Patna and Jim is taken in by his lie. Brown's final appeal
and his most effective lie to Jim is his eloquent portrayal
of himself as a good man who is a victim of circumstance.
He suggests that he had done some illegal things like run
ning guns, but only because he was driven to it by bad
luck. As for coming to Patusan they had only come to beg
for food and were attacked by the people before they had a
chance to speak. Brown, the actor, calls forth his men to
show Jim how pitiful they were after all the hardships and
the starvation they had gone through. It was true they had
killed one man but they were driven to it— and when it
_________________________________________________________________98
came to saving one's life in the dark, one didn't care who
else went— three, thirty, three hundred people." (XXI,
386)
Jim believes Brown's lies and tells him that he will
guarantee a safe passage out of Patusan. Jim goes back
to the villagers and informs them of his decision. He
tells Doramin, the chief, that he is acting for the safety
of the people and that he has "no thought but for the
people's good." (XXI, 389) The people are stunned by
such a decision and one old woman cries out the truth:
"Are they not cruel, bloodthirsty robbers bent on killing?"
(XXI, 391) But Lord Jim carefully explains to his people
that these men were only "erring men whom suffering had
made blind to right and wrong." (XXI, 391) Jim is so
blind to the truth about Brown because he cannot face that
truth about himself. Jim can't see the obvious evil pres
ent in Brown because he can't admit thatppossibility in
himself. Instead of being able to accept his real kinship
with Brown in moral failure he refuses that knowledge and
transforms Brown into a monstrous version of himself as a
misunderstood victim. Lord Jim who has no "thought but
for the people's good" excuses Brown's behavior: "Men
act badly sometimes without being much worse than others
. . ." (XXI, 394) as a way of excusing his own behavior.
In letting Brown go he is in reality letting himself go.
Jim believes Brown's lies because they are lies that he
_________________________________________________________________99
needs to believe in order to mask the truth from himself.
But Gentleman Brown is in fact evil, and masking that
truth results in destruction. Such a refusal of self-
knowledge, such persistence in self-deception ends in self-
destruction. Brown does not honor his word to Jim and in
an act of base betrayal kills Dain Waris and his men and
brings Jim's Patusan, the world of his creation, crashing
down on his head. Jim is utterly overwhelmed and totally
unable to comprehend what has happened. He pathetically
tries to articulate the meaning of the events but all he
can do is scrawl a few incomplete phrases on a sheet of
paper: "An awful thing has happened . . . I must now at
once. ..." (XXI, 340) He has nothing to say because he
still can't understand the one truth about himself that
would explain it all. Marlow's earlier words are true:
"He was overwhelmed by the inexplicable; he was overwhelmed
by his own personality...... " (XXI, 341)
Jim's final response to the tragic events is one per
fectly in keeping with his terrible lack of self-knowledge.
He creates a tragic story of martyrdom, with himself as the
scapegoat hero who will offer his life to Doramin because
he had given his word that he would be responsible, and he
would be true to his Lordly word. Jewel confronts him
and attempts to persuade him to fight for her and his life
and escape. But Jim is beyond responding to the claims of
someone who loves him. His words to her reveal how he lies
100
himself and demonstrate that he has won no new self-knowl-
edge by the experience because they are the same words he
has used before: "Nothing can touch me. ..." (XXI, 413)
So Jim goes to Doramin with confidence and serenity
of soul to be the tragic hero. When he confronts the Chief
a voice from the people says: "He hath taken it upon his
own head. ..." (XXI, 415) Jim hears this and confirms
its truth: "Yes. Upon my head." (XXI, 415) He takes
it upon his head and as he dies, the crowd who watched re
ported that "the white man sent right and left at all those
faces a proud and unflinching glance." (XXI, 416) Jim has
realized his heroic dream at last in proudly sacrificing
himself for "his people." But it is hollow at the core.
Jim is a pathetic victim of his own self-deception who
dies not for the people but to preserve his own lies about
himself. As Marlow comments: "But we can see him an ob
scure conqueror of fame, tearing himself out of the arms of
a jealous love at the sign, at the call of his exalted
egoism. He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his
pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct." (XXI,
416)
So Jim uses his gift of expression to mask the truth
and evade self-knowledge even at death. His self-assured
voice telling Marlow that nothing can touch him is finally
silenced. What remains is Marlow's reluctant voice con
tinually telling the story of Lord Jim, reminding his
101
hearers that in Jim's "artful dodges to escape from the grin
shadow of self-knowledge," he was "one of us."
102
5. Typhoon: The Literal Captain MacWhirr
He tried to bring all these things into a definite
relation to himself, and ended by becoming contemp
tuously angry with such a lot of words and with so
much advice, all head-work and supposition, without
a glimmer of certitude.
Many interpretations of Typhoon have seen Captain
MacWhirr as an embodiment of attributes that Conrad ad
mired and affirmed. Morton Zabel, in his introduction to
Typhoon says of Conrad: "Into MacWhirr he put his secret
envy and a humbler admiration— his knowledge of 'the work
to be done,' his 'sense of the fitness of things,' his
recognition of the courage in duty that merits the seaman's
proudest reward: 'Well done.' MacWhirr too is 'one of
us.1 F. R. Leavis regards the actions of MacWhirr and
his men during the typhoon as a "triumph of the spirit."
He says, "Without any symbolic portentousness the Captain
2
stands there as the embodiment of a tradition." These
laudatory views of MacWhirr seem to ignore two crucial
aspects of Conrad's characterization of MacWhirr: the
comic mode of presentation, and the fact that the focus of
^ Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line and Two Other Tales,
ed. by Morton Dauwen Zabel (Garden City, New York: Double
day Anchor Books, 1959), p. 21.
o
The Great Tradition (Garden City, New York: Double
day Anchor Books, 1954), p. 227.
103
the story is not only on what MacWhirr does, but also on
what he is able to understand about his experience in the
typhoon.
From the opening lines of the novel, Captain MacWhirr
is presented as a limited person. His physiognomy is the
counterpart of his mind: "It was simply ordinary, irre
sponsive, and unruffled." (XX, 3) He is described as
"Having just enough imagination to carry him through each
successive day, and no more. ..." (XX, 4) His lack of
imagination is revealed in his limited verbal ability.
He is essentially a comic figure both in his limited
ability to express himself and in his constant misunder
standing of words. He can only express himself in cliches
and cannot comprehend metaphor. He is the literal Captain
MacWhirr.
The main humor of the novel arises out of MacWhirr1s
naive literalism. For him words have only a strict denota
tive meaning. Through a series of conversations with Jukes,
his first mate, MacWhirr is presented as a humorous figure
in his failure to comprehend the nature of language. Jukes
doesn't like sailing under the Siamese flag instead of the
British, so he says to MacWhirr: "Queer flag for a man to
sail under, sir." (XX, 10) MacWhirr totally misunderr
stands Jukes' point and thinks he is saying that there is
some defect in the physical composition of the flag.
MacWhirr goes to his cabin and checks the flag in a book
___________________________________________________104
and then tells Jukes that there is nothing wrong with the
flag: "I looked up the book. Length twice the breadth
and the elephant exactly in the middle. I thought the
people ashore would know how to make the local flag.
Stands to reason. You were wrong, Jukes. . . . " (XX, 10)
There is nothing "queer" about the flag that MacWhirr
sees. MacWhirr is a literalist par excellence who cannot
comprehend the connotative meanings of words. As the ty
phoon approaches and the swells get higher and swifter,
Jukes begins to be apprehensive about what is happening
and he says: "I wonder where that beastly swell comes
from. ..." ".'North-east,' grunted the literal MacWhirr
. . . ." (XX, 22)
Perhaps the funniest scene in the novel occurs when
MacWhirr misapprehends Jukes' use of a figure of speech.
MacWhirr doesn't like the profane language of the second
engineer and tells Jukes that if the engineer keeps using
such language, he will have to be dismissed. Jukes de
fends the engineer: "'It's the heat,1 said Jukes. 'The
weather's awful. It would make a saint swear. Even up
here I feel exactly as if I had my head tied up in a
woolen blanket.'" MacWhirr the literalist, answers:
"D'ye mean to say, Mr. Jukes, you ever had your head tied
up in a blanket? What was that for?" (XX, 25) Jukes
tries to explain that "It’s a manner of speaking," but
MacWhirr cannot understand. He says: "Some of you fellows
105
do go on! What's that about saints swearing? I wish you
wouldn't talk so wild. What sort of saint would that be
that would swear? . . . And what's a blanket got to do with
it-'-or the weather either. . . . And what's the good of
your talking like this?" (XX, 25) The irony is that
MacWhirr cannot see the "good of talking like this." He
is unable either to use or to understand language that ex
presses feeling or insight beyond the literal surface
facts. MacWhirr, the literalist, is presented as such a
comic figure, that he hardly seems a character in whom
Conrad has put "his secret envy and a humbler admiration."
The fact that MacWhirr is insensitive to certain kinds
of language is not just humorous, but central to the mean
ing of the story. The critics who assume that MacWhirr is
the "embodiment of a tradition," believe the story to be
about the "unheroic" man who matter-of-factly does the
right thing in a situation of testing. But this approach
misses the fact that Conrad early in the story set up the
typhoon primarily as a test, not of MacWhirr's actions,
but of his understanding. The crucial passage that makes
the terms of the test clear occurs at the end of the first
section: "... he had never been given a glimpse of
immeasurable strength and of immoderate wrath, the wrath
that passes exhausted but never appeased— the wrath and
fury of the passionate sea. . . . Captain MacWhirr had
sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skim-
1_Ql6l
Wing over the years of existence to sink gently into~a
placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever
having been made to see all it may contain of perfidy,
of violence, and of terror." (XX, 18t:19) What is to be
tested is whether or not MacWhirr will move from ignorance
to knowledge through his experience in the typhoon, whether
he will "see" beneath the surface of life and catch a
glimpse of "all it may contain of perfidy, of violence,
and of terror."
MacWhirr does act courageously and does do the right
thing in giving Jukes courage, and in bringing order to the
chaos in the hold of the ship. He is admirable in the
manner in which he finds a just solution to the problem
of restoring the money to the coolies. But the significance
of his actions is qualified by the fact that they are done
out of a basic ignorance of the larger meaning of the
typhoon. MacWhirr never really understands that he is
being tested. It is doubtful that he learned much from
his experience. His concept of "dirty weather" may have
been expanded a bit, but that is all. To see MacWhirr's
contempt for Wilson's "storm-strategy," and his heading
directly into the center of the typhoon as a "triumph of
the spirit," as Leavis does, is to ignore the way Conrad
presents MacWhirr's action. MacWhirr's decision to go into
the typhoon is an act of naive ignorance. Because MacWhirr
has little capacity for having his experience enlarged
107
through word~s, he decides to go into the typhoon. He con-
sults Wilson's book on storms and all the book does is
confuse him: "He tried to bring all these things into a
definite relation to himself, and ended by becoming con
temptuously angry with such a lot of words and with so
much advice, all head-work and supposition, without a
glimmer of certitude." (XX, 33) This passage is ironic.
MacWhirr does not have a seaman's wisdom which is more pro
found than any book wisdom. Rather he is contemptuously
angry at what he does not understand. His inability to
understand the words of a book leads him to a mocking re
jection of their meaning: "Running to get behind the
weather! Do you understand that, Mr. Jukes? It's the
maddest thing!" (XX, 33) Conrad wants the reader to be
sure to see MacWhirr's blind ignorance when he describes
him as looking up to speak to Jukes, in "his unseeing, un
imaginative way." (XX, 34) MacWhirr finally puts into
words his perception of the coming storm: '"A gale is a
gale, Mr. Jukes,' resumed the Captain, "and a full-powered
steamship has got to face it. There's just so much dirty
weather knocking about the world, and the proper thing is
to go through it with none of what old Captain Wilson of
■ k * 1® Melita calls ' storm-strategy.' " (XX, 34) So MacWhirr
enters an experience that could have been avoided if he
had been able to understand and respect words. He puts his
ship and his crew into unnecessary danger. He reacts to
108
the experience with courage and tenacity” , but that doesn't
change the fact that his initial decision to go into the
center of the typhoon is a foolish, ignorant act.
MacWhirr also learns little from his experience of the
typhoon. Before it hits, MacWhirr understands a typhoon to
be only a "gale" and "dirty weather." There is little
evidence to suggest that his experience in the typhoon
changes this understanding. He has the experience, but
misses the meaning. During the storm he does realize that
the typhoon was more than he had thought it would be, and
he is shaken by his experience. He is dismayed by the vast
powers he has encountered, but he is unable to articulate
any kind of significant meaning in the experience. All
he can say is: "I shouldn't like to lose her." (XX, 86)
Conrad's view of the results of MacWhirr's testing is made
clear in the closing passage of the fifth section: "The
hurricane, with its power to madden the seas, to sink ships,
to uproot trees, to overturn strong walls and dash the very
birds of the air to the ground, had found this taciturn,
man in its path, and, doing its utmost, had managed to
wring out a few words. Before the renewed wrath of winds
swooped on his ship, Captain MacWhirr was moved to de
clare, in a tone of vexation, as it were: 'I wouldn't like
to lose her.' He was spared that annoyance." (XX, 90)
In this superbly ironic passage, Conrad presents the
typhoon as a powerful giant who is able to "madden the
109
seas, to sink ships, to uproot trees," but who can do
nothing with this uncomprehending, "taciturn" man. The
giant had unleashed all its power against this man and had
only "managed to wring out a few words." His unflinching
endurance in the face of the assault of such a giant is
admirable, but admiration for such courage is qualified be
cause he didn't know that he was being assaulted. All
MacWhirr is capable of comprehending and articulating is
vexation. He is so unaware of what he has encountered in
the typhoon that he can only see it as an inconvenience.
This response is inappropriate to the magnitude of the
occasion. To see a typhoon as an irritation is to trivial
ize the experience; to have the experience, but to miss
the meaning. Conrad renders judgment on MacWhirr's vexa
tion in a marvelous bit of sarcasm: "He was spared that
annoyance." MacWhirr is not going to lose his ship, but
neither is he to gain much understanding of the meaning of
his experience. He remains an ignorant man to the end.
Marlow's reflection in Heart of Darkness seems an appro
priate comment about MacWhirr: "Of course you may be too
much of a fool to go wrong--too dull even to know you are
being assaulted by the powers of darkness."
One of the central ironies of the novel is the fact
that even though MacWhirr has limited verbal ability, his
voice imposes order on the chaos of the ship. The man who
distrusts words saves the ship by his voice of command.
110
Jukes, the first mate, has enough imagination to realize
that the typhoon is more than simply "dirty weather."
After being tossed around the deck and almost drowned,
"Jukes came out of it rather horrified, as though he had
escaped some unparalleled outrage directed at his feelings."
(XX, 42) But Jukes who is young and inexperienced is not
able to handle the assault. He begins to withdraw, be
coming paralyzed by the shrieking fury of the storm. It
is MacWhirr's voice of command that saves Jukes from dis
integration: "And Jukes heard the voice of his commander
hardly any louder than before, but nearer, as though,
starting to march athwart the prodigious rush of the hur
ricane, it had approached him, bearing that strange effect
of quietness like the serene glow of a halo." (XX, 46)
MacWhirr utters no profound thoughts which overcome Jukes'
fear. But simply the sound of the human voice, that "frail
indomitable sound," has a restoring effect on Jukes. This
small voice which can form meaningful sounds is pitted
against the moans, the shrieks, the terrible dissonant
sounds of the typhoon, and the "frail and resisting voice"
. . . "the dwarf sound ..." remains "unconquered in the
giant tumult." (XX, 47)
MacWhirr's voice uttering elementary commands enables
Jukes to withstand the assault of the storm and to do his
job in restoring order. His command to stop the fighting
below deck, does not come out of any understanding of the
111
moral issue or out of compassion for the coolies. Earlier
in the story MacWhirr wouldn't hear of changing course for
the sake of the coolies who were having a rough ride down
in the hold. He did not regard them as "passengers." He
wants order restored simply because: "Can't have . . .
fighting . . . board ship. ..." (XX, 60) Yet this
primitive statement saves Jukes and the coolies and brings
order to the ship. The typhoon has shrieked its loudest,
but the mumbling voice of the literal Captain MacWhirr
has the last word.
The last section of the novel is largely composed of
letters in which MacWhirr, Rout, and Jukes try to ver
balize the meaning of their experience in the typhoon.
They each try to express to their family or friends what
they have learned from their experience, but in each case
there is a failure of communication. There is a fine comic
irony in MacWhirr's attempt to tell his wife what he has
learned from the typhoon. The usually taciturn Captain
finally is moved to verbalize his experience, and when he
does, no one understands his words. There had never been
any significant verbal communication between MacWhirr and
his wife and she reads his letter with boredom and without
comprehension. She reads a section in which he attempts
to define the typhoon experience: "They are called typhoons
. . . not in books. . . ." She reads the words, but misses
their meaning. She further glances over the letter and
112
another fragment momentarily registers: " . . . see you
and the children again. ..." She ironically misunder
stands the words and thinks they are simply another cliched
expression of MacWhirr1s desire to come home, which she
views with some uneasiness. She has not bothered to read
the first part of the sentence which would tell her that
his words are an expression of his sense of being close to
death and that he felt he would never see her and his
children again. The final irony of her insensitive mis
understanding of his attempt to communicate is when she
tells her daughter how he is: "He's well. . . . At least
I think so. He never says."
Rout's letter home is also ironic. He has a sympa
thetic audience in his wife and mother, but his message
only puzzles them. He says two important things that con
fuse his family, but convey important insights to the
reader. He says that the captain had done "something
rather clever," but doesn't explain what it is. This pro
vokes his wife, but is an amusing revelation to the reader
who knows his comment refers to MacWhirr's clever yet comic
solution to the problem of justice posed by the disarray
of the coolies in the hold. Rout only mentions the typhoon
in a word or two, but expresses a desire to have his wife
come out and live with him. His wife only gets the idea
that he is well, but the reader perceives that he is de
liberately understating the significance of the typhoon
112.
because he doesn't want to frighten his wife by describing
the experience that had brought him so near death.
Jukes' letter to his friend was "really animated and
very full." The letter is important because it recreates
the "something rather clever" that MacWhirr did which Rout
alluded to in his letter. In vivid language, Jukes recalls
the comic scene of MacWhirr solemnly presiding over the
distribution of the money: "It was rather a sight: the
sea running high, the ship a wreck to look at, the China
men staggering on the bridge one by one for their share,
and the old man, still booted and in his shirt-sleeves,
solemnly busy paying out, perspiring like anything, and
now and then coming down sharp on myself or Father Rout a**
bout one thing or another quite to his mind." (XX, 102)
Jukes' letter also ironically reveals his own lack of
understanding. He is articulate in his ability to derr
scribe the events. But he uses his gift of expression to
conceal rather than reveal the truth about himself. His
account is filled with "phrases in it calculated to give
the impression of light-hearted indomitable resolution."
(XX, 97) But these phrases falsify his role in the events
and he remains condescending in his attitude to Captain
MacWhirr. As his words reveal, Jukes has learned nothing
about himself in the typhoon.
Typhoon is a comic treatment of one of Conrad's major
themes— the theme of man as articulator, man as "a voice."
)
114
MacWhirr is a comic figure because of his restricted sensi
bility to language. To view MacWhirr as a Conradian hero
is to miss the irony of his characterization. Conrad, who
as a writer is preeminently "a voice" and committed to the
central importance of "the gift of expression," is not
offering the unimaginative and literal Captain MacWhirr
as an ideal. Conrad affirms MacWhirr's solid courage, his
sense of duty, and his voice of command, but he is critical
of MacWhirr's literalness, his inability to understand
words that leads him into foolish action and prevents him
from coming to much real understanding of his experience.
The last sentence of the novel seems to express the mixed
attitude of admiration and amusement that Conrad wishes
the reader to have towards the literal Captain MacWhirr's
experience with the typhoon: "I think that he got out of
it very well for such a stupid man." (XX, 102)
115
III. THE PUBLIC VOICE
Articulating Social and Political Reality
The words one knows so well have a nightmarish
meaning in this country. Liberty— democracy—
patriotism— government. All of them have a flavor
of folly and murder. — Nostromo
1. Nostromo; What's in a Name?
Words are the great foes of reality.
— Under Western Eyes
"'This is our Nostromo!' She laughed ominously.
'What a name! What is that? Nostromo? He would take a
name that is properly no word from them." (IX, 23) Why
title the novel Nostromo? Why not The Birth of a Nation?
Or The Treasure House of the World? Or The Porvenir?
All of these titles would have been appropriate for the
novel's ironic analysis of the revolution of Sulaco, but
Nostromo is perfect. "Nostromo" is Captain Joe Mitchell's
misunderstanding of the Italian, nostro uomo, "our man,"
and the name becomes symbolic of the way words function in
the Republic of Sulaco. A word that is "properly no word,"
is an appropriate title for a novel that examines and ex
poses the violation of a people and a culture, because
116
violation of people is accompanied by a corruption of
words. Murder and exploitation mask themselves as "prog
ress" and "enlightenment."
Conrad creates an imaginary country in the midst of a
revolution in which he exposes the reality of exploitation
hidden under the euphemisms, "revolution," "democracy,"
"patriotism," and "material interests," the words the
participants use to explain the meaning of the events
which give birth to the new nation, The Republic of Sulaco.
With marvellous complexity, Conrad examines the inter
relationship between individual lives and public events,
the interplay and conflict of private motives that issue
in public action. He exposes politics as the fine art of
hiding private motive in public language. "Nostromo," a
word that is no word, a name that hides rather than re
veals, is indeed a fitting title for a novel about the de
ceitful flow of words.
The Interpretation of History: Joe Mitchell and "The
Treasure House of the World"
Nostromo is an attempt to tell the truth about an
historical event, the birth of the Republic of Sulaco.
The problem is how to tell the truth about events that are
cloaked in words. Lord Jim explored the problem of telling
the truth about a single person. Through Marlow's search
for truth about Jim in the midst of the bewildering array
111
of words about him and from him, the reader is made aware
of the power of lies and the way words can mask the truth.
Marlow is one who is aware of the ambiguity of the testi
mony he hears and the deceptive power of words, and he con
stantly confronts his listeners with the problem of giving
full utterance to the meaning of human action. His method
of trying to get at the truth about Jim is to assemble
various stories about Jim and juxtapose them to each other.
Out of the clash of stories a glimpse of the truth appears.
Nostromo goes beyond the attempt to reveal the meaning
of a private life, to exploring the meaning of a complex
public event, the birth of a nation. The difficulty of
the task is increased because the public event grows out
of the interaction of many different people with their
private motives and histories. What were the real forces
that brought Sulaco into being, who made it happen? And
what does such an event mean? These are the tough, elusive
questions that Nostromo tries to answer.
One of the most effective devices Conrad uses to make
the reader see the truth about the public event is the
presentation of an "unofficial" history of Sulaco by the
eyewitness "historian" Captain Joe Mitchell. His oral
history of "The Treasure House of the World" is juxtaposed
to the private stories of the major people involved in
those events. His History of Sulaco is a dramatic reve
lation of the truth that "words are the great foes of
118
reality," because his words totally obscure the truth of
what happened. Mitchell is an "unreliable narrator,"
an inverse Marlow, totally insensitive to the ambiguities
of language, with no sense of the difficulties of telling
the truth, with a naive belief that his words capture the
truth of what happened in Sulaco. He is a self-conscious
interpreter of events, a man who "prided himself on his
profound knowledge of men and things in the country— cosas
de Costaguana." (IX, 11) His first words are: "We never
make mistakes." (IX, 10) Such a statement is the exact
opposite of the truth. Mitchell who continually defines
the significance of events, is totally mistaken; there is
no correspondence between his words and reality. His
history is a complete misunderstanding of the events and
the people involved. He is thus, the perfect spokesman
for the foreign interests in Sulaco: a decent enough man
but so blind that he calls exploitation, "progress," and
cultural destruction, "enlightenment." The constant juxta
posing of his distorted interpretations with other points
of view is one of Conrad's chief means of making a devastat
ing judgment on the blindness of the foreign powers to the
truth of their own motives and actions.
Mitchell as a good historian, is preoccupied with
definitions, with finding words that will capture the truth
of the situation. He is always calling a particular happen-’
ing an "historic occasion," or a "mistake" or a "fatality"
____________________________________________________ 119
or the "Dawn of a new Era." Of course his definitions of
events are false and obscure the real meaning. Symbolic
of his total mis-definition of people and events, is his
naming of Nostromo.
Nostromo is the great hero of the Republic of Sulaco.
He is the "incorruptible" capataz de cargadores who saved
the silver from Montero1s men and made the daring ride
that brought General Barrios' troops back to save Sulaco.
He is, in Mitchell's words, "a man above reproach." This
is Nostromo as the world knows him and as Mitchell defines
him in his garrulous accounts of the "New Era" in Sulaco.
The name Nostromo, however, hides rather than reveals this
man whose real name is Gian' Battista.
Nostromo is a name that is no name, Mitchell's mis
pronunciation of the Italian, nostro uomo. The fact that
this mispronunciation becomes Gian' Battista's name is not
a trivial mistake, but symbolic of the way Mitchellls
definitions obscure the truth about people and events in
Sulaco. Such a mistake on Mitchell's part reveals his own
cultural insensitivity and condescension. He thinks of
Gian' Battista as "our man," and uses him as a tool to
further the material interests of the O.S.N. and those
of the other European powers. Naturally enough, all the
other Europeans in Sulaco accepted Mitchell's mispronuncia
tion and joined in calling Gian' Battista, "Nostromo."
But Teresa Viola perceives that such a "mistake" with
120
words is not insignificant but is a revelation about the
Europeans and their real relationship of exploitation to
Gian' Battista. She attacks Gian' for his willingness to
accept their definition of him. She views his acceptance
of the name "Nostromo" as an indication that his essential
motive for action is his need for flattery, and that he
is willing to be exploited for a reward of fine words.
She says with bitter sarcasm: "What a name I What is
that? Nostromo? He would take a name that is properly
no word from them." (IX, 23) That Mitchell is so unaware
that he is using "no word," is symbolic of his blindness
and the absolute discrepancy between his words and the
truth. Mitchell constantly defines Nostromo as heroic,
incorruptible, above reproach, and never does know the
truth about his real motives for his "wonderful" actions.
He recognizes that Nostromo1s involvement with the loss of
the silver lighter brought some change in him. Mitchell
defines that event as a "fatality." Ironically, his defini
tion is accurate, but not in the way he means it. All of
Mitchell's words are words which hide rather than reveal
the truth about the birth of Sulaco. It is perfectly
appropriate that his misunderstanding of a key person in
the events should be embodied in a misnomer-— "Nostromo,"
"a name that is properly no word."
Mitchell's role as historical commentator culminates
in Chapter 10 of the third section, "The Lighthouse,"
121
which jlamps in time from the "three days of the Sulaco
Revolution" to the future "regenerated Sulaco, the capital
of the Occidental Republic." Mitchell is now an old man,
living out his last years of service to the O.S.N. Company
in "ease and dignity at the head of the enormously extended
service." (IX, 473) His major function in "regenerated
Sulaco" is to take foreign visitors on a grand tour of the
city and give them a historical review of the people and
events that brought the new republic into being. This
sudden chronological shift to Mitchell's dramatic mono
logue is a brilliant ironic disclosure of the truth about
modern Sulaco. Captain Joe Mitchell, "Inflexible, proud
of his experience, penetrated by the sense of historical
importance of men, events, and buildings," (IX, 475) inun
dates his silent visitors with words, but there is an utter
discrepancy between those words and the truth. His every
word as he moves through the city is an ironic commentary
on events because his interpretation clashes with what the
reader already knows about the private histories of the
people he comments on.
The central truth that Mitchell's rambling commentary
makes clear is the complete triumph of "material interests.1
His offhand remarks about the clubs he belongs to, "the
Anglo-American— mining-engineers and business men, don't
you know— and to the Mirliflores as well, a new club—
English, French, Italians, all sorts— . . . ," his point-
12_2_
ing out the physical transformation of Sulaco as a result
of the booming building industry, reveal that the real
forces in modern Sulaco are the forces of foreign exploita
tion. The separation of the Occidental Republic came
about because it was advantageous for foreign investments.
Mitchell remembers back to the time of the fighting and
comments on how the miners of San Tome had marched on the
town and saved Gould who was about to be shot by Pedrito
Montero. He casually recalls a statement by General
Barrios about the importance of that action: "Sulaco would
not have been worth fighting for." (IX, 477) Mitchell
elaborates on this: "Sulaco without the Concession was
nothing. ..." His naive remarks are a dramatic revela
tion of the truth about the birth of the nation. Without
Gould and the wealth of the mine, Sulaco would have been
worthless— and would have missed the grand opportunity of
being economically and culturally exploited. But Gould
was saved and the San Tome mine became the Consolidated
San Tome mines, raping the land not only of its silver, but
of all the other valuable minerals.
Mitchell finds just the right words to describe this
new Republic. He quotes the words of the Times special
correspondent who was sent to do a series of articles on
this new country which suddenly became so important to
the rest of the world. In his rambling account of the
past, Mitchell recalls the momentous time when Barrios'
________________________________________________________________123.
transports entered the harbor, and "the "Treasure House of
the World," as the Times man calls Sulaco in his book, was
saved intact for civilization— for a great future, sir."
(IX, 483) The "Treasure House of the World" is indeed a
perfect definition of Sulaco. Mitchell's words recall
Decoud's explanation of what those words really mean about
Sulaco. At the time of the Montero revolt Decoud gave
his own interpretation of the history of Sulaco and its
contribution to "civilization:" "I have read somewhere
that Drake, who was the greatest of these men, used to
dine alone in his cabin on board ship to the sound of
trumpets. In those days this town was full of wealth.
Those men came to take it. Now the whole land is like a
treasure-house, and all these people are breaking into it,
while we are cutting each other's throats." (IX, 174)
Mitchell comments that the'United States was the first
great power to recognize the "Treasure House of the World"
as a new nation. He recalls how "an international naval
demonstration" put an end to the Costaguana-Su-laco War
and how "the United States cruiser Powhatan was the first
to salute the Occidental flag. ..." (IX, 487) Such a
generous act of recognizing the aspirations of a people
fighting for freedom and self-determination! Suddenly in
Mitchell's naive remarks, the power of Holroyd and "ma
terial interests" in protecting their Treasure House is
revealed.
124
Mitchell's history of Sulaco not only is a beautifully
ironic revelation of the forces of exploitation that lay
hidden beneath the surface of his naive rhetoric of the
grand New Era, but his interpretation of the major public
figures in the events dramatizes the problem of under
standing the complexity of human motivation. Mitchell
articulates the public understanding of Avellanos, Decoud,
and Nostromo, and defines for the future their significance
in the history of the Occidental Republic. But his account
is totally false.
Mitchell guides his visitor into the cathedral where
he points out the memorials to two of the national heros
of Sulaco: Don Jose Avellanos and Martin Decoud. He reads
the inscription on the bust of Avellanos: "Patriot and
Statesman . . . who died in the woods of Los Hatos, worn
out with his life-long struggle for Right and Justice, at
the dawn of the New Era." (IX, 477) These words obscure
the truth about Avellanos' actual involvement in the
Occidental Republic. Avellanos died in total despair, a
broken man crushed by the failure of his struggle for Right
and Justice. Mitchell's account clashes with Decoud's
description of Avellanos in his interpretation of the revo
lution in his letter to his sister during the time of the
actual events. Decoud records the truth about the effec
tiveness of Avellanos' idealism and his efforts to make
the grand words, "Right" and "Justice" a reality: "But as
________________________________________________ 125
I looked at him, it seemed to me that I could have blown
him away with my breath, he looked so frail, so weak, so
worn out. Whatever happens, he will not survive. The
deception is too great for a man of his age; and hasn't he
seen the sheets of Fifty Years of Misrule, which we have
begun printing on the presses of the Porvenir, littering
the Plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for
traburos loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the wind,
trampled in the mud? I have seen pages floating upon the
very waters of the harbor. It would be unreasonable to
expect him to survive. It would be cruel." (IX, 235)
This is the sad truth about the effectiveness of the elo
quent Avellanos. His humane, compassionate history, in
tended, by the power of the word, to inspire a new era of
justice and good rule, ends up as gun fodder. So much for
words.
The further irony of the inscription is that Avellanos
abhorred the idea of the separation of Sulaco from Costa-
guana. The Separation was a defeat of his whole life's
commitment to Costaguana. Only when he is broken and near
death does he assent to Decoud's plan of separation. When
Decoud tells Antonia of her father's agreement, she ex
presses the realrmeaning of his action: "She averted her
face, and in a pained voice: 'He has?' she cried. 'Then,
indeed, I fear he will never speak again.'" (IX, 239)
The eloquent voice of Right and Justice is silenced. The
126
“ "Tatriot andnStatesman" dies a pathetic death", "vanquished
in a life-long struggle with the powers of moral darkness,
whose stagnant depths breed monstrous crimes and monstrous
illusions." (IX, 362) The Republic of Sulaco brought into
being by the forces of greed and expediency, masks its
reality by claiming the idealistic Avellanos as its most
illustrious "Patriot and Statesman" who gave his life for
the dawning of the New Era.
Mitchell also points out the memorial to Martin Decoud
the architect of the Separation. Decoud is the real father
of the Republic, but his motives are totally misunder
stood by Mitchell. In Mitchell's public record of Decoud,
he dies a heroic death for his new country. Mitchell tells
of that scene filled with pathos when Nostromo tells
Antonia Decoud1s last words before his death, that his plan
of separation would be a "glorious success." Mitchell then
confirms the truth of Decoud's prediction. "And there's
no doubt, sir, that it is. It is a success." (IX, 489)
There is a double irony in Mitchell's words. First, De
coud 's last words to Nostromo were an ironic mocking of the
rhetoric of patriotism: "'Your wonderful reputation will
make them attach great value to your words; therefore, be
careful what you say. I am looking forward,' he continued,
feeling the fatal touch of contempt for himself to which
his complex nature was subject--'I am looking forward to a
glorious and successful ending to my mission. Do you hear,
127
capataz? Use the words glorious and successful when you
speak to the senorita. Your own mission is accomplished
gloriously and successfully." (XX, 300) The further
irony is that Decoud's plan, which was motivated by his
private love for Antonia and enacted by his cynical appeal
to the forces of material interest masked as patriotism,
was a glorious success. The scathing critic of patriotism
and political rhetoric becomes a national hero who made the
ultimate sacrifice for his country.
Mitchell, of course, is the expert on the most famous
hero in the New Republic, Nostromo. He tells Nostromo's
story when he points out the place where the equestrian
statue of Charles IV had been removed. Mitchell says that
the statue had been removed because it was "an anachronism,'
and that it was going to be replaced by a symbol appropriate:
to the new Sulaco: "There is some talk of replacing it by
a marble shaft commemorative of Separation, with angels of
peace at the four corners, and a bronze Justice holding an
even balance, all gilt, on the top. Cavaliere Parrochetti
was asked to make a design, which you can see framed under
glass in the municipal sala. Names are to be engraved
all round the base. Well, they could do no better than
begin with the name of Nostromo. He has done for Separation
as much as anybody else, and, added Captain Mitchell, 'has
got less than many others by it— when it comes to thatI"
(IX, 482) Mitchell's remarks about the statue are a
128
beautiful commentary on the history of exploitation in
Sulaco. The statue of Charles IV of Spain which symbolized
the earliest violation of the country by foreign greed is
truly an 'hnachronisnu" That king has been replaced by a new
horseman: Charles Gould, El Rey of Sulaco. The fitting
symbol of the new exploitation is the marble shaft. Such
a monument with a bronze Justice holding a balance is the
embodiment of Gould's dream that material interests bring
justice and peace.- And such a monument is the perfect
symbol of his deception. At least the meaning of the old
statue was clear— the new statue hides exploitation in the
language of "peace" and "justice."
Mitchell mentions that the names of all the national
heros are to be engraved on the monument. He thinks that
the first name should be that of Nostromo. He then tells
his listener about Nostromo1 s famous ;400-mile ride to
Cayta: "The history of that ride, sir, would make a most
exciting book. He carried all our lives in his pocket.
Devotion, courage, fidelity, intelligence were not enough.
Of course, he was perfectly fearless and incorruptible."
(IX, 482-83) Of course, all these grand words mask Gian'
Battista's real motives. At the time of the patriotic ride
to save Sulaco, he had just returned from the Isabels a
bitterly disillusioned man who had discovered the hollow
ness of words like devotion, fidelity, and incorruptible.
He made his famous ride, not because of any concern for
C '•
________________________________________________________________12SL
Sulaco, but out of a purely personal motive. He went be
cause of his burden of guilt towards Teresa Viola and the
fear of her curse. He went because of her dying words
to him to save her children: "And she herself may not have
a roof over her head before many days are out unless I . . .
What do you say? Am I to keep a roof over her head? Am
I to try— and save all the Blancos together with her?"
(IX, 471)
Mitchell suggests that the only blemish on his
Nostromo's record is his loss of the lighter of silver.
He tries to comfort Nostromo by telling him: "It was no
mistake, 1 . . It was a fatality. A thing that could not
be helped." (IX, 488) Mitchell has found the right words
but again the meaning is different than he intends. The
silver is indeed a fatality for Battista issuing in his
eventual destruction. To Mitchell, however, and in the
annals of the history of the Republic of Sulaco, Gian'
Battista will always be Nostromo, the incorruptible capa-
taz: de cargadores, whose courage and fidelity were so
important at the dawn of the New Era. Nostromo indeed de
serves to be the first name enscribed on the monument
commemorating the Separation of the Occidental Republic.
Mitchell ends his history of Sulaco for his visitor,
with a return to his favorite definition: "you had a
glimpse of the 'Treasure House of the World.' A very good
name that." (IX, 489) Yes, indeed. A very good name.
130
Charles and Emilia Gould; "Material Interests" and the
Tragedy of Euphemism
The successful birth of the Occidental Republic seems
a vindication of Charles Gould's faith in the power of
"material interests" to bring order and justice. But such
an apparent victory is as deceptive as Mitchell's trium
phant history of the Treasure House of the World. Gould's
faith in "material interests" is a false faith which leads
to the tragedy of his own self-deception and the aliena
tion and loneliness of his wife. The central irony about
Gould is that he is suspicious of rhetoric, a taciturn man
who thinks of himself as a realist. Yet he puts his trust
in a euphemism— which by definition is that use of words
which obscures, masks, and evades the truth. Gould who
perceives the gap between the idealistic rhetoric of the
politicians and the reality of their own personal greed, is
appalled at the prostitution of the great words: "Liber
als! The words one knows so well have a nightmarish mean
ing in this country. Liberty— democracy— patriotism—
government. All of them have a flavor of folly and murder."
(IX, 408) Yet he is betrayed by the failure of his own
words to be true. He never does see the reality hidden
beneath his "material interests."
The key scene for understanding Gould's attitude
towards language, and where he makes his own credal
________________________________________________________________131
statement, is a conversation with Emilia just after Holroyd
has made a visit to Sulaco at the time when the mine is
about to be reopened. Emilia is disturbed by Holroyd"s
visit because of the language the men used in talking about
the mine: "Mrs. Gould . . . wondered aloud why the talk of
these wealthy and enterprising men discussing the prospects,
the working, and the safety of the mine rendered her so im
patient and uneasy, whereas she could talk of the mine by
the hour with her husband with— unwearied interest and
satisfaction." (IX, 70) This is an important response
for Emilia because this is the beginning of her awareness
that her version of the mine is not the only one possible.
Her uneasiness provokes her into confronting Charles with
her perception. The confrontation becomes the occasion
for the usually reserved Charles to expound his under
standing of the meaning of his involvement with the mine.
Charles tells her rather matter-of-factly that "the
great silver and iron interests shall survive, and some
day shall get hold of Costaguana along with the rest of
the world." Emilia is duly shocked by this: "This seems
to me most awful materialism. . . ." (IX, 83) Charles"
next statement reveals the depth of his moral blindness.
He says: "My dear, itis nothing to me . . . I make use of
what I see. What's it to me whether his [Holroyd's] talk
is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap elo
quence? There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort or
_________________ : ______ 132
another produced in both Americas. The air of the New
World seems favorable to the art of declamation. Have you
forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours
here?" (IX, 83) Charles thinks that he can use immoral
means for moral ends. He thinks he can use other people's
greed to achieve his own moral dream. He also discloses a
fatal inability to distinguish the meaning of words. He
thinks he is simply being bluntly realistic in his critique
of empty rhetoric. The fact is, however, that he can't
distinguish between language that masks exploitation and
destruction, and naive, idealistic eloquence which springs
(
out of genuine moral goodness. Emilia, who has moral
sensitivity, is shocked by his comparison because she knows
the difference: "How can you compare them, Charles? . . .
He has suffered— and yet he hopes." (IX, 83) In response
to her criticism Charles indulges in a little rhetoric
of his own, articulating his faith in a definitive form.
He says: "What is wanted here is law, good faith, order,
security. Any one 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 to
impose the conditions on which alone they can continue to
exist. That's how your money-making is justified here in
the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified
because the security which it demands must be shared with
an oppressed people. A better justice will come after
___________________: _________________________ : __________________ 1_ 3_3_
wards. That's your ray of hope." (IX, 84) In spite of
his attack on rhetoric, Charles is eloquent in defense of
his faith in the development of "material interests" as a
means of achieving moral good. His argument seems reason
able in suggesting that economic power creates the possi
bility of a stable social order because stability is neces
sary for material interests to develop. It is a persuasive
point to argue that wealth will automatically produce at
least a minimal kind of justice and social stability. It
is an eminently rational view of human action, and eminent
ly blind to the depths of the human heart of darkness.
Such a view ignores the simple fact that it is possible to
have order and stability without law, and justice, and
morality, and that there are many more kinds of oppression
than simply political and economic. At the very heart of
Charles' argument is a euphemism that reveals his inability
to confront reality: "material interests." "Material
interests" sounds harmless enough. It is an abstraction
whose very vagueness and generality obscures rather than
reveals. What lies beneath this euphemism is the blunt
reality of human greed for money and power that is abso
lutely immoral. The development of "material interests"
in fact means gouging the earth, exploiting people, and
violating whole cultures by any means necessary. The
development of "material interests" in fact means feeding
whole Indian tribes into the San Tome mine, hiring poor
134
natives at slave wages, and destroying a whole way of life
to make the silver flow. Such are the realities Gould hides
beneath his phrase, "material interests."
Gould's faith in such a euphemism, his inability to
perceive that "material interests" means greed, exploita
tion and violation, has destructive consequences both for
Sulaco and for himself and his wife.
Gould comes to Sulaco to reopen his father's silver
mine, not out of a simple desire for money and power, but
because of his faith in "material interests" to bring
order and justice. He constructs a moral drama of redemp
tion in which the development of material interests will
regenerate the land. Each stage in the development of the
mine seems a vindication of Gould's faith. The mine does
bring some measure of stability to the land. However,
such order is illusory. What the development of the mine
really brings is the violation of Sulaco and its domination
by European and American money and culture. Sulaco which
had been protected by the natural barriers of the mountains
and the Golfo Placido from foreign exploitation, now be
comes the focal point of local and foreign'greed. Gould
«
thought he could buy peace for the land by financing the
Ribierist liberal government which would establish demo
cratic reform for the people. But the Ribierist govern
ment becomes only a pawn for the foreign capitalists who
are eager to bring "progress" to this backward country.
135
Sir John, the English Railroad magnate wants to join
forces with Gould in "developing" Sulaco. His conversation
with Emilia at the time Ribiera visited Sulaco to make a
speech about the construction of the railroad as a "pro
gressive and patriotic undertaking," reveals the real
meaning of the development of "material interests."
Sir John in his conversation with Mrs. Gould eloquently
expresses the rationale for the presence of European com
mercial interests all over the world. He is shocked that
Sulaco is so underdeveloped: "What an out-of-the-way
place Sulaco is I--and for a harbor, too! Astonishing!"
(IX, 35) Mrs. Gould reacts defensively and points out
that Sulaco has historical importance because it was the
"highest ecclesiastical court for two viceroyalties."
(IX, 35) Sir John then names the great benefits of the
European presence: "We can’t give you your ecclesiastical
court back again; but you shall have more steamers, a
railway, a telegraph-cable— a future in the great world
which is wroth infinitely more than any amount of ecclesi
astical past. You shall be brought in touch with some
thing greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion
that a place on a sea-coast could remain so isolated from
the world. If it had been a thousand miles inland now-
most remarkable! Has anything ever happened here for a
hundred years before to-day?" (IX, 36) Here is private
lust for wealth and power masked in the public language of
_________________________________ 136
bringing progress to a backward, underdeveloped country.
Sulaco shall have a "future in the great world which is
worth infinitely more than any amount of ecclesiastical
past!" Such is the depth of cultural insensitivity and
self-deception that parades itself as benevolent concern
for the poor countries of the world.
Because of Gould's faith a whole host of foreign in
vestors comes swarming into Sulaco to have a share in
bringing "progress" to the land. One particular gathering
at his home indicates what Gould's commitment to "material
interests" means for Sulaco: "In the comparative peace of
the room the screaming 'Monsieur L'Administrateur' of the
frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire a preternatural
shrillness. The explorer of the capitalist syndicate was
still enthusiastic. 'Ten million dollars worth of copper
practically in sight! and a railway coming— a railway!
They will never believe my report. C'est trop beau.' He
fell a prey to a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely
nodding heads, before Charles Gould's imperturbable calm."
(IX, 199)
The further irony is that Gould's dream brings dis
ruption to Sulaco. Buying the Ribierist government failed
to bring peace, and instead plunges Sulaco into civil war.
General Montero revolts against the government, and his
revolt is a shocking revelation of the reality Gould's
euphemism hides. Montero, the minister of War in Ribiera's
137
government, is a caricature of the native military mentali
ty. He is an ignorant, uneducated peasant who by accident
was in the right place at the right time. He is semi
literate but can read well enough to know that he has per
formed the "greatest military exploit of modern times."
When he speaks at the celebration of the new railroad,
his speech is a jarring contrast to Ribiera's words about
honesty, peace, and political good faith. Montero is not
able to understand the fine rhetoric of the Blanco aristo
crats, but yet he ironically speaks the truth about the
real forces of order in Sulaco, which are not fine words,
but military power and money. He says: "The honor of the
country is in the hands of the army. I assure you I shall
be faithful to it." He then toasts Sir John: "I drink to
the health of the man who brings us a million and a half
of pounds." (IX, 120) In his crude way, in which he
doesn't even understand what an English pound is, Montero
has expressed the truth about Sir John. Beneath all the
rhetoric about peace, order, and national honor is the
blunt truth that Sir John brings money to invest for pro
fit. All the fine words don't obscure this simple truth
for Montero.
Montero who embarrasses the rest of the refined people
at the party by his mere presence, is living proof of the
flaw in Gould's belief in material interests. Montero
doesn't see the fine social and moral benefits of the mine
________________________________________________________________138
and the railroad. He sees only one reality: the reality
of immense wealth and power. And later he will think that
he should have it as well as the other exploiters. Material
interests, instead of creating order and security, attract
blind greed and the drive to make those interests serve
private needs.
The final irony of Montero1s revolt is that it turns
Gould’s words against Gould. Montero, of course, is pri
vately motivated by simple greed for money and power, but
he revolts publicly in the name of national honor and the
desire to establish real order and justice. Montero even
starts a press in order to use the power of the word to
tell the people the truth about Ribiera's government sell
ing the national honor to foreigners. Ironically, Montero': s
words are true. Even though they are a mask for his own
greed, they are still the truth about the Ribierist govern
ment's being a tool of foreign investors.
The successful birth of the Occidental Republic would
seem the ultimate vindication of Gould's faith in "material
interests." But as Mitchell's history of Sulaco ironically
discloses, the new nation represents the victory of ex
ploitation and cultural domination. Sulaco has achieved
peace and order at the price of becoming the "Treasure
House of the World."
Gould's failure to understand that "material interests"
is a euphemism, not only has disastrous consequences for
_____________________________________________________________119
the country, but also for him personally. Gould never
changes. He learns nothing from his experiences in develop
ing the mine. He persists in his euphemism, and it enables
him to rationalize and evade the brutal realities of cor
ruption and exploitation that go on before his eyes. Such
a faith blinds him to his own will to power and his in
creasingly obsessive involvement with the mine, which
gradually destroys his relationship to Emilia and trans
forms him into something like one of his mining machines
that gouges the silver from the earth.
Charles is like Lord Jim in successfully creating a
story about himself that shields him from the reality of
his own egotism. Like Jim, Charles becomes a Lord. Al
though he believes he is serving the ideal of order and
justice through developing the mine, he in fact becomes
what those around him name him: El Rey de Sulaco. He
does become the King, controlling and manipulating life
in Sulaco. Again and again Gould is associated with the
statue of Charles IV on a horse which guards the entrance
to the Alameda. The weather-beaten statue is a reminder
of that earlier.exploitation of Costaguana. The earlier
Charles exploited the land in the name of religion; the
latter-day King Charles surveying his kingdom on horse
back is no less a foreigner exploiting the land, but this
time in the name of law and order and social improvement.
The great revelation of how self-deceived Charles is
140
about the meaning of the mine for him occurs in a chance
discussion with Hirsch, the hide merchant, concerning the
possibility of Hirsch's selling him some dynamite for the
mine. This chance mentioning of dynamite causes Charles
to reveal to the chief-engineer who had just dropped in,
that he has planted dynamite around the mine site and is
prepared to blow up the mine rather than relinquish con
trol: "The Gould Concession has struck such deep roots
in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the
mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to
dislodge it from there. It's my choice. It's my last card
to play." (IX, 205-06) Such a statement reveals the deep
roots the mine has planted in Charles. He is willing to
blow his dream of moral progress for the land to pieces
rather than lose his control over it. This is what "ma
terial interests" finally means to El Rey de Sulaco.
Emilia Gould is the one person who comes to full
knowledge of the real meaning of "material interests."
In the beginning she shares Charles' moral romance about
the mine. But, unlike Charles, she is sensitive to words
and gradually comes to perceive the discrepancy between
their moral interpretation of the development of the mine,
and the brutal realities their idealism hides.
Emilia's awareness of other possible meanings of the
mine begins when she hears the way Holroyd and his asso
ciates talk. She is disturbed by their language which
________________________________________________________________1.41
clashes with the moral categories she and Charles use
in their discussion of the mine. She confronts Charles
with this discrepancy and asks him how he feels about the
Americans' view. Charles' response is defensive as he
points out that they are "considerable men." Emilia at
tacks: "I know. But have you listened to their conversa
tion? They don't seem to have understood anything they
have seen here." (IX, 70) She perceives that the words
the Americans used reveal a radically different under
standing of the mine. Charles' response to this statement
of truth is revealing, because he chooses to evade the
point she is making: "They have seen the mine. They have
understood that to some purpose." Charles wants to keep
his own moral view of the mine intact and yet he wants the
money of those who do not share his views. So he handles
the problem by evasion.
Emilia presses on to a devastating criticism of Mr.
Holroyd, the great financier. She sees the truth about
his insensitivity, and moral blindness which couches it
self in Protestant evangelical religious language. Emilia
recalls Holroyd's disgust at observing the people par
ticipating in Catholic religious rites that he felt were
the worship of "wood and tinsel." She observes the irony
in his speech because she sees that his own religious
views are self-deceptions in whihc God emerges as a crude
projection of himself. She says: "But it seemed to me
142
that he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential
partner, who gets his share of profits in the endowment
of churches." (IX, 71) Charles continues to defend
Holroyd because he doesn't want to understand Emilia's
point: "He's at the head of immense silver and iron
interests. ..." (IX, 71) Emilia responds to this by
articulating the truth about Holroyd: "Ah, yesl The
religion of silver and iron." (IX, 71) Emilia says it
precisely. Holroyd's real religious commitment is to
wealth and power which justifies itself in grandiose
religious language. Emilia is truly aghast at the immense
arrogance of power revealed in the way the Americans talk:
"My dear Charley, I heard those men talk among themselves.
Can it be that they really wish to become, for an immense
consideration, drawers of waters and hewers of wood to all
the countries and nations of the £arth?" (IX, 71)
Emilia's attack on rhetoric forces Charles into a
number of rationalizations and evasions, and then finally
calls forthihis own statement of his faith. At this point,
Emilia is carried away by her desire still to believe in
such idealistic rhetoric about the moral possibilities of
the mine, and is content to share the faith in Charles'
euphemism. But her perception of the masking function of
language will soon lead her into increasingly painful reve
lations about the meaning of "material interests."
Emilia's misgivings about the mine reach a climax
143
when the Montero revolt shatters the order and peace the
development of material interests was supposed to bring
with it. Emilia confronts Charles just after he has re
vealed to the engineer-in-chief that he is prepared to
destroy the mine rather than give it up to Montero. She
sees that the reality of the mine is failing to match their
moral dream about it, and she tries to raise this issue
with Charles: "But, my dear Charley, it is impossible for
me to close my eyes to our position, to this awful. ..."
(IX, 207) But Charles closes himself off from her and
refuses to see her point. They no longer share the same
feelings. Charles has become more and more obsessive a-
bout doing whatever needs to be done to preserve his con
trol. The mine which was supposed to bring them together
in a great moral romance, is increasingly alienating them
from each other. Emilia does not push her point, but
glances at her water-color of the San Tome gorge in its
Eden-like state, and wistfully sighs: "Ah, if we had left
it alone, Charley!" (IX, 209) She recalls Don Pepe's
words about the mine-site as a paradise of snakes: "We
have disturbed a good many snakes in that paradise, Char
ley, haven't we?" Emilia uses this language about the
mine as Eden to express her growing sense that their cul
tivation of the garden, instead of bringing forth good
fruits for the people, has instead brought disruption and
discord. Charles completes the image: "It is no longer a
______________________ 144
paradise of snakes. We have brought mankind into it, and
we cannot turn our backs upon them to go and begin a new
life elsewhere." (IX, 209) What Emilia articulates is
a new sense of the meaning of the mine that is radically
different from their naive vision of it as they first
stood, like Adam and Eve, looking at the "paradise of
snakes." She expresses a sense of the destructive dimen
sions of the mine in a reversal of the Genesis story of
the Fall. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are innocently at home
in Paradise until the snake enters and occasions their
fall. In her version, the mine-site is a natural paradise
of snakes until mankind enters and brings discord. At
this point neither Charles nor Emilia are fully aware of
how appropriate the words are. Their rather accidental
reflection becomes a perfect parable of what the silver
mine brings to Sulaco.
Immediately following this expression of regret and
insight into the negative aspects of the mine, Emilia en
counters Decoud who gives such a devastating criticism of
Charles that she finally comes to understand the truth about
the mine. Decoud wants to enlist Emilia's support for
his plan to save Sulaco. He reports that the Ribierists
have lost the battle and the Blanco government is finished.
Emilia is shocked, but then Decoud unfolds his plan for "a
Sulaco revolution." In the course of laying out his plans
for the Separation of Sulaco, he discloses the truth about
_______________________________________145
his own motives, and then tells her the truth about Charles.
Decoud makes it plain that his motive for political action
is purely self-interest: "Yes; separation of the whole
Occidental Province from the rest of the unquiet body.
But my true idea, the only one X care for, is not to be
separated from Antonia." (IX, 215) Since she won't give
up her patriotic idealism and leave with him, "Sulaco must
leave the rest of the Republic to its fate." (IX, 215)
Decoud asks Emilia's help in working out his plan by not
telling Charles about it. Emilia is puzzled by this and
her questioning becomes the occasion for his extended
analysis of Charles and his involvement with the mine.
Decoud says that the separation plan has to be put
in the right words in order to be acceptable to Charles
because he wouldn't be able to handle Decoud's straight
confession of his personal motives for separation. He
says to Emilia: "Mrs. Gould, are you aware to what point
he has idealized the existence, the worth, the meaning of
the San Tome mine? Are you aware of it?" (IX, 214)
Charles has pinned his faith on "material interests" to
bring moral and social good, he has articulated an under
standing of the mine that masks the truth about its ex
ploitive dimensions and his own ego-gratification in being
El Rey de Sulaco. Decoud states the blunt truth about
Charles: ". . .he cannot act or exist without idealizing
every simple feeling, desire, or achievement. He could not
146
believe his own motives if he did not make them first a
part of some fairy-tale. The earth is not quite good enough
for him, I fear." (IX, 214-15) This, of course, is a
frontal attack on Charles* self-deception but also on
Emilia's because she too has understood herself as sharing
in the moral drama of the mine. She too has transformed
the harsh realities of commercial exploitation into a
beautiful story of redemption and liberation.
Emilia hears the truth of Decoud's words and for her
the beautiful story is over. She begins to awaken from
her moral dream into the nightmare of the mine's reality.
She begins to understand that "material interests" is in
deed a euphemism that covers a brutal, destructive reality.
As she leaves Decoud she reflects on the meaning of the
mine:
The fate of the San Tome was lying heavy upon
her heart. It was a long time now since she had be
gun to fear it. It had been an idea. She had watched
it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now
the fetish had grown into a monstrous and crushing
weight. It was as if the inspiration of their early
years had left her heart to turn into a wall of sil
ver bricks, erected by the silent work of evil
spirits, between her and her husband. He seemed to
dwell alone within a circumvalation of precious
metal, leaving her outside with her school, her
hospital, the sick mothers and the feeble old men,
mere insignificant vestiges of the initial inspira
tion. "Those poor people!" she murmured to herself.
(IX, 221-222)
The final realization of the meaning of "material
interests" comes to Emilia many years after the birth of
the new nation of Sulaco. Long after Mitchell's glowing
147
account of the Treasure House of the World, Emilia and
Charles return to Sulaco from an eighteen-month visit to
Europe and America where Charles has been sharing the tri
umphs of the development of material interests with his
financial backers. Emilia engages Dr. Monygham in a con
versation in which they review the history of the Sulaco
revolution and Monygham brings her up to date on the
latest news. What becomes clear in their conversation as
various people such as Antonia and Cardinal-Archbishop
Corbelan join them, is that there are new troubles brew
ing in Sulaco which will very probably erupt into civil
disorder. Holroyd's Protestant missionaries are struggling
with Corbelan's Catholics over who shall dominate the
spirits of the people who are already being exploited
physically and economically by material interests. Antonia
maintains her father's idealism by insisting that the Oc
cidental Republic must not abandon the oppressed people of
the rest of Costaguana. When Monygham sarcastically sug
gests that Sulaco should annex the rest of Costaguana,
Antonia persists in the pathetic mistake that such an
idealistic vision was "from the first poor Martin's inten
tion." (IX, 509) Both Antonia and her uncle Corbelan are
dissatisfied with the existing order and both seem likely
to be disruptive forces in Sulaco. Emilia sees what this
new trouble means and cries out: "Will there be never any
peace? Will there be no rest? . . . I thought that we— "
________________________________ 148
(IX, 511) Before she can finish, Monygham answers with
the final powerful explication of the truth Gould's euphem
ism hides: "There is no peace and rest in the development
of material interests. They have their law and their jus
tice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it
is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force
that can be found only in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould,
the time approaches when all that the Gould Concession
stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the
barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back."
(IX, 511)
Monygham changes the subject, but later after he has
left, Emilia is alone and begins her final reflection on
the meaning of material interests. She picks up Monygham's
word about Nostromo, "incorrigible," and applies it to
her husband: "Incorrigible in his hard, determined ser
vice of the material interests to which he had pinned his
faith in the triumph of order and justice. Poor boy!"
(IX, 521) She sees the irony of his success, that he has
lost his soul to an inhuman force, and she is overwhelmed
by the vision of the mine as a monstrous machine crushing
lives, including his: "She saw the San Tome mountain hang
ing over the Campo, over the whole land, feared, hated,
wealthy, more souless than any tyrant, more pitiless and
autocratic than the worst government, ready to crush in
numerable lives in the expansion of its greatness. He
________________________________________________________________1A9-
did not see it. He could not see it." (IX, 521)
But Emilia does see it. In a state of desolate suffer
ing she stammers out the words which have shaped her hus
band1 s life and brought him his terrible success. She
utters the euphemism which has hidden the truth and which
has ironically left her so utterly alone in the Treasure
House of the World: "Material interests." Emilia finally
knows what these words mean.
Decoud: The Voice of Truth
In the midst of the deceitful flow of words that inun
dates Sulaco, there is one critical voice that tries to
speak the truth: Martin Decoud. He consistently exposes
the private motives cloaked in public language. His re
fusal to believe the words he hears alienates him from the
people who share those public lies. He speaks the truth
but his voice isn't heard. He plays a key role in a
political revolution he cares nothing about. He becomes a
national hero encased in public lies, his personal tragedy
permanently misunderstood in the Treasure House of the
World.
Decoud is deeply aware of the way words function. He
is a man especially sensitive to language as he aspires to
be a poet and frequently writes articles on Europe for the
Semenario, the chief newspaper in Costaguana. He becomes
the central voice of truth, constantly exposing the gap
150
between rhetoric and reality in Sulaco. He is a cynic who
mocks the self-deception of the idealists. Yet ironically
his cynicism is a kind of frustrated idealism. He sees
the futility of naive patriotism in Costaguana which serves
foreign commercial interests, yet he desperately wants
the great words to be true. While he was in Paris a com
mittee in the Ribiera government selected him to be the
executive member of the patriotic small-arms committee of
Sulaco, to help to secure newer guns from Europe. Decoud
sees the irony in the committee's perception of him as a
patriot and the action of the government trying to under
mine Montero, the War Minister. Yet his actions belie his
simple cynical words as his sister observes: "Afterwards
his sister was surprised at the earnestness and ability he
displayed in carrying out his mission. . . ." (IX, 154)
Decoud, "the idle boulevardier," also returns to Sulaco
shortly after the delivery of the guns. His primary mo
tive for returning is his attraction to Antonia, but a
large part of that attraction is to her own idealism which
has always-rebuked his cynicism.
Decoud returns to Sulaco to find himself in a deeply
ironic role. He is welcomed back by Don Jose Avellanos
who lauds him as a true son of Costaguana, as "the bril
liant defender of the country's regeneration, the worthy
expounder of the party's political faith before the world,"
and sees his return as "a public act of faith." (IX, 156)
151
Of course, Avellanos' words are a total misapprehension of
Decoud1s motives, yet in spite of himself, Decoud is moved
by the passion of this naive old man. He cannot simply re
ject Avellanos and tell him the truth, so he accepts Avel
lanos ' definition of him. The cynic who acts only out of
his private love for Antonia becomes a public patriotic
hero; the one who has utter contempt for politics becomes
the great political strategist and architect of the new
Republic of Sulaco; the one who is aware of the utter cor
ruption of political language becomes the Journalist of
Sulaco, writing political propaganda for the Ribierist
cause.
One of Decoud's assignments as the editor of The Por-
venir is to cover the troop departure from Sulaco. General
Barrios and his men are off, at the instigation of Avellanos
to fight for the Ribierist cause against Montero. Barrios
is an interesting figure because he is a truth-teller like
Decoud. He is not caught up in militaristic rhetoric but
is an anti-heroic general. He is not fighting in the name
of any great words, but simply because he gets paid to
fight. He is unpretentious and honest and speaks the truth
about the people for whom he is fighting. At the departure
ceremony he says to the Europeans present: "Senores, have
no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro Carril—
your railways, your telegraphs. Your— There's enough wealth
in Costaguana to pay for everything— or else you would not
152
be here." (IX, 164)
The truth of Barrios' insight into the real forces at
work in Sulaco is dramatically illustrated in Decoud's en
counter with Scarfe, a young engineer, at the celebration.
Scarfe is a young Joe Mitchell totally in the dark as to
the significance of events. He expresses naive self-
interest and total cultural insensitivity in his wish that
Montero would be defeated: "'You know, it's one of their
so-called national things,' he ran on, wrinkling up his
nose as if the word had a suspicious flavor to his profound
experience of South American affairs. And, of course, he
chatted with animation, it had been such an immense piece
of luck for him at his age to get appointed on the staff,
'of a big thing like that--don't you know.' It would give
him the pull over a lot of chaps all through life, he
asserted. 'Therefore down with Montero.'" (IX, 169)
Decoud uses Scarfe's naive self-revelation as an occasion
to expose the truth about why the Europeans are so inter
ested in supporting an "enlightened, democratic" govern
ment like Ribiera's: "But here we have the naked truth
from the mouth of that child. You are right, Don Jose.
The natural treasures of Costaguana are of importance to
the progressive Europe represented by this youth, just as
three hundred years ago the wealth of our Spanish fathers
was a serious object to the rest of Europe— as represented
by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of futility upon
_____________ 153
our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and
materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morali
ty, violent efforts for an idea and a sullen acquiescence
in every form of corruption." (IX, 170-71) Decoud puts
the truth bluntly— the foreigners are interested in one
thing only— treasure and not law and order and a healthy
country. He also exposes the disjunction between the
political rhetoric of grand ideals and the actual reality
of corruption and exploitation. The irony of Decoud's
analysis is that it is totally missed by the Quixotic
Avellanos, who launches into a "great flow of speech" about
General Barrios and the chances for the victory of the
Ribierist forces. Avellanos lives in a world of words
that never touch the earth.
The final irony of their conversation is that it is
drowned out by the sound of a locomotive. The piercing,
inhuman shriek of a machine bearing progress dominates and
drowns out Avellanos' eloquent voice. Decoud articulates
the significance of this experience: "This sound puts a
new edge on a very old truth." (IX, 173) The old truth
is the truth of exploitation. Decoud gives a short history
of Sulaco which is in direct contrast to the interpretation
of that other historian of Sulaco, Joe Mitchell. Decoud
sees the earlier European expeditions as violations of the
country. In those days the sound outside the city walls
was the "sound of trumpets" announcing the splendid European
_____________________________________154
presence. Now the sound is that of the railroad, but the
meaning is the same: "'In those days this town was full of
wealth. Those men came to take it. Now the whole land is
like a treasure-house, and all these people are breaking
into it, while we are cutting each others' throats. The
only thing that keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But
they'll come to an agreement someday— and by the time we've
settled our quarrels and become decent and honorable,
there'll be nothing left for us. It has always been the
same. We are a wonderful people, but it has always been
our fate to be,'— he did not say 'robbed,' but added, after
a pause— 'exploited!'" (IX, 174) Decoud speaks the simple
truth in blunt, direct words, and Emilia Gould is shocked
and reacts defensively: "Oh, this is unjust!" With lovely
irony Decoud answers: "You surely do not think I was
attacking Don Carlos!"
Decoud continues his unmasking function in a conversa
tion with Antonia at Casa Gould, exposing the range of
private interests that disguise themselves in public lan
guage. He first of all reveals to Antonia, the irony of
his own role as Journalist of Sulaco who fires off volleys
of patriotic insults at Montero. He employs his gift of
expression in the service of "inciting poor ignorant fools
to kill and to die," because of his love for her. This is
his real motive which lies underneath his patriotic rhetoric
He says to Antonia who carries on her father's belief in
_______________________________________________ 15JL
the power of fine words, that all of the forces at work in
Sulaco are forces of self-interest disguised as social
rhetoric. He points out that the Gould Concession has
always bought its survival without regard to politics and
accuses the Ribierists of being stupid for not buying
Montero off. What he uncovers by this suggestion is the
truth behind the Monterist revolt against foreign inter
vention: that Montero's greed was so great that he couldn't
be bought off, but wanted the whole Gould concession.
Decoud launches a withering attack on patriotism which
he sees is at best a notion which restricts men's visions
and sensibilities and at worst is a mask that hides their
greed: "First of all, the word has no sense for cultured
minds, to whom the narrowness of every belief is odious;
and secondly, in connection with the everlasting troubles
of this unhappy country it was hopelessly besmirched; it
had been the cry of dark barbarism, the cloak of lawless
ness, of crimes, of rapacity, of simple thieving." (IX,
186-87) The truth of Decoud's words is made dramatically
clear by the juxtaposing of his speech with the political
meeting going on in the next room. All the major political
forces are gathered to consider how to deal with the Mon
terist proclamation which has called for the surrender of
Sulaco in the name of "a justly incensed democracy."
Avellanos is leading the speech-making about Sulaco's pa
triotic resistance and the mood is optimistic. Suddenly
156
Decoud sticks his head in the room and“shouts” ~out HTs
great patriotic slogan about Montero: "Gran1 bestial"
What Decoud intends as a mockery of their rhetoric is re
ceived approvingly as a straight statement of truth. He
says bitterly to Antonia: "This is the quintessence of
my journalism? that is the supreme argument. . . . I
have invented this definition, this last word on a great
question." (IX, 191)
Decoud not only voices the truth about the reality of
exploitation and greed that masks itself in political
language, he also is the one who speaks the truth about the
two key people in Sulaco, Charles Gould and Nostromo. In
his central encounter with Emilia Gould when he goes to
her to enlist her support for his Separation plan, he re
veals the truth about Charles' self-deception and her own.
In blunt language he exposes the way in which Charles
idealizes the mine, transforming the reality of commercial
exploitation into a beautiful story of redemption, hiding
that brutal reality beneath the euphemism, "Material in
terests." He states the truth about Charles: ". . .he
cannot act or exist without idealizing every simple feeling,
desire, or achievement. He could not believe his own mo
tives if he did not make them first a part of some fairy
tale. The earth is not quite good enough forh im, I fear."
(IX, 214-15) His direct speech to Emilia is the beginning
of her realization of the ultimate meaning of the mine.
157
Decoud also perceives the truth about Nostromo. He is
suspicious of the extravagant words that are used to de
scribe Nostromo. He hears the words about Nostromo's fi
delity, courage, and incorruptibility, but questions their
meaning: "H'ml incorruptible? It is indeed a name of honor
for the capataz of the cargadores of Sulaco. IncorruptibleJ
Fine, but vague." (IX, 221) Decoud is the only one who is
not deceived by the fine words about Nostromo. He sees that
Nostromo is not motivated by concepts like fidelity but by
a simple vanity that feeds on the praise of others. In
his letter to his sister he articulates the truth about
Nostromo*s real motives: "The only thing he seems to care
for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well
spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls, but also a
profitable one for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel.
Yes. His very words, 'To be well spoken of. Si, Senor.1"
(IX, 246) Decoud pierces to the truth that Nostromo is
made "incorruptible by his enormous vanity, that finest
form of egoism which can take on the aspect of every vir
tue." (IX, 300)
Decoud, who consistently is the voice of truth and
who tries to be honest about his own motives rather than
transforming them into a moral fairy-tale, ends by commit
ting suicide, dying "from solitude and want of faith in
himself and others." (IX, 49 6) The narrator judges him
harshly: "The brilliant 'Son Decoud,' the spoiled darling
158
of the family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of
Sulaco, was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed."
(IX, 497) He further declares: "The vague consciousness
of a misdirected life given up to impulses, whose memory
left a bitter taste in his mouth, was the first moral
sentiment of his manhood." (IX, 498) To suggest that
Decoud has lived a "misdirected life," and that only at his
death did he have his first "moral sentiments," is indeed
a severe judgment on him.
Such a negative evaluation of Decoud seems hard to
reconcile with Decoud's role as the central voice of truth
in the novel. Conrad critics have rightly seen that the
attitude toward Decoud in the novel is problematic and
have given various explanations of his character. Leavis
states the dominant feeling about the significance of
Decoud: "In fact, though Decoud is so decisively dealt
with in the action, he remains at the centre of the book,
in the sense that his consciousness seems to permeate it,
even to dominate it. That consciousness is clearly very
closely related to the author's own personal timbre. . . .
If this is the case, why is Decoud criticized so
harshly, especially in the suicide scene? Leavis says:
"About the judgment on Decoud1s skepticism we can have no
doubt." His resolution of the problem is to suggest that
^ Leavis, p. 199.
159
Nostromo was written by a Decoud-Conrad who had a less
skeptical attitude towards idealism and euphemism than the
Decoud of the novel: "In fact, Decoud may be said to have
had a considerable part in the writing of Nostromo; or one
might say that Nostromo was written by a Decoud who wasn't
a complacent dilettante, but was positively drawn towards
those capable of 'investing their activities with spiritual
value'— Monygham, Giorgio Viola, Senor Avellanos, Charles
Gould."'*' This ingenious transformation of Decoud, the
radical critic of the illusions of idealism, into the ad
mirer of those idealists he attacked and exposed, is the
kind of ironic masking of the truth that only Decoud, the
journalist of Sulaco, could appreciate.
Albert Guerard's view does more justice to the problem.
Guerard suggests that the severe judgment of Decoud grows
out of Conrad's rejection of the Decoud-part of himself.
He says: "The characterization obviously belongs with those
in which a writer attempts to separate out and demolish a
2
facet of himself; attempts to condemn himself by proxy."
Guerard goes on to the even more radical suggestion that
there are really two Decouds in the novel, the one who
takes part in the action, and the Decoud who is character
ized by the ironic epithets, narrator summaries, and in the
" * ■ Ibid.
2
Guerard, p. 199.
160
suicide scene. Whatever the merits of~his extended argu-
ment, Guerard's locating the problem of Decoud's character
in Conrad himself seems more plausible than Robert Penn
Warren's assertion that Conrad "repudiates the Decouds of
this world,"'*' or Leavis' metamorphosis of Decoud.
Decoud does seem to be, of all Conrad's characters,
the one closest to himself. Conrad surely shares Decoud1s
perception that idealism can be primarily a destructive
escape from the truth. He shares Decoud's sense that words
can be the great foes of reality, that men disguise their
motives in public language and deceive themselves and
others by euphemism and fine words. Why then does Conrad
judge Decoud so harshly?
What is disturbing about Decoud's suicide is the
criticism of him for such an act. Decoud is criticized
for his skepticism, for his want of faith, but such quali
ties seem to be precisely what is admirable about him.
Decoud tries to live honestly, without false ideals; he
attempts to be truthful about his own motives, rejecting
lies and refusing to transform his desires into moral fairy
tales. That he should die a despairing death overwhelmed
by the silence and the indifference of the universe is,
however terrifying, logically consistent with his radical
honesty. Decoud, who had such a strong sense of the nega-
■ * ■ "Introduction," Nostromo (New York: The Modern
Library, 1951), p. xxvi.
161
tive function of words, their power to mask, deceive, and
destroy, had no positive words to sustain him in the
silence. It is consistent that one who is unable to find
any ideals that are not lies, would end by dying "from
solitude and want of faith in himself and others." But
Conrad seems to make his death a judgment on him, the re
sult of some inner failure. He somehow was "not fit to
grapple with himself single-handed." Such an interpreta
tion of Decoud's death has the effect of tempering the
force of his dark vision of the role of ideas and the power
of words in human life. The implication is that there are
some ideals, some words somewhere that would have sustained
Decoud if he had only known them. Thus many critics have
drawn the conclusion that Conrad repudiates Decoud and that
he has a positive attitude towards those capable of "in
vesting their action with spiritual value."
Making Decoud's death a judgment of him;;seems rooted
finally in Conrad's need to reject the logic of his own
skepticism which is voiced so powerfully in Decoud. Con
rad, the radical skeptic, had a desperate need to believe
in the truth of certain ideas. His essays are filled with
optimistic statements about the power of a few simple
ideas. He writes in A Personal Record: "Those who read
me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world
rests on a few very simple ideas, so simple that they must
be as old as the hills. It rests notably, among others,
_____________________________________________________________ L62 .
on the idea of Fidelity." (VI, xxi) Decoud would have
laughed roundly at such a pious belief. But perhaps Conrad
couldn1t bear such laughter because what he saw in his crea
tion of Decoud was a secret self that was "too dark— too
dark altogether."
In spite of Conrad's ambivalence about Decoud's skep
ticism, Decoud's final role in the history of Sulaco seems
a vindication of the truth of his dark vision of the power
of lies. The truth about Decoud's suicide is not only
never known, but transformed into a great public lie.
Martin Decoud, the powerful voice of truth, is permanently
enshrined in the fairy-tale of the Father of Sulaco who
gave the last full measure of devotion to his country.
Nostromo; What's in a Name?
A name is supposed to reveal and not conceal. But
the reality of Gian' Battista remains hidden forever in
the name, Nostromo. Gian' Battista likes the name Nostromo.
He lets Mitchell give him that name that is no name, be
cause he lives for a reward of fine words. That is, he
does until in the silence and darkness of the Gulfo Placido
he discovers what is in a name.
Mitchell creates Nostromo and uses the power of words
to manipulate him to serve the cause of progress in Sulaco.
Gian' Battista enjoys his name because it gives him dis
tinction and status. He shows leadership and courage and
___________________________________________ 163
fidelity— he is seemingly incorruptible in his loyalty to
Mitchell and the O.S.N. He does great heroic acts that
save Sulaco and bring the new Republic into being: he
saves Ribiera from the mob, he saves the -■silver lighter
from Montero, and he tops off his achievements with his
famous 400-mile ride to Cayta. The legend of Nostromo,
the Savior of Sulaco, will live forever in history. But
such public words about him completely obscure his real
motives and the meaning of his heroic actions. There is
an absolute discrepancy between his reputation and his
reality. His public virtues are not enactments of inner,
personal convictions. Nostromo has no private self; he
lives on the words of others. Decoud who knows about the
masking function of words sees the truth about Nostromo's
motivation which is so completely hidden by his marvelous
reputation. Nostromo is made "incorruptible by his enor
mous vanity, that finest form of egoism which can take on
the aspect of every virtue." (IX, 300) So Nostromo does
his virtuous public deeds, allowing himself to be used by
Mitchell out of a simple and almost child-like satisfaction
in public praise. What's in a name? For Nostromo, every
thing. The words of others are his life; he is what they
say.
Nostromo is made incorruptible by finding his reward
in words rather than in wealth. That is why he is un
touched by material interests. His fundamental attitude to
164
wealth is demonstrated in his romantic encounter with
Morenita. The dramatic gesture of allowing her to cut off
all his silver buttons shows his only concern with wealth
is as it serves to enhance his reputation as a great and
generous lover in the eyes of the people. His last act
in Sulaco before he leaves on the silver lighter reveals
why he is incorruptible in the midst of the corruption and
greedy struggle for wealth in Sulaco. He gives his last
quarter-dollar to an old broken woman looking for her son.
He explains to Decoud the significance of his action:
"Caramba! I could tell by her voice that death had for
gotten her. But old or young, they like money, and will
speak well of the man who gives it to them." (IX, 247)
Nostromo is dramatically free with his money not because
he is really generous and sensitive to human suffering,
but because he knows such acts will get him the pay-off he
values more than all the silver in Sulaco: the fine words
of others. It is for such a reward that Nostromo engages
in "the most famous and desperate affair" of his life—
sailing the lighter of silver out of Sulaco. The loyal,
devoted Nostromo cares nothing about the politics of the
revolution, but realizes that such an adventure will dra
matically extend his reputation: "I shall float along
with a spell upon my life til I meet somewhere the north
bound steamer of the company, and.*then indeed they will
talk about the capataz of the Sulaco cargadores from one
________________________________________________________________165
end of America to another." (IX, 259)
Because Nostromo values words so highly, there is one
person in Sulaco who disturbs him: Teresa Viola. She has
great power over him, because she does not speak well of
him. She constantly attacks his one vulnerable point, his
reputation. She scornfully exposes the real meaning of
his name and why he accepts it: "'That's all he cares for.
To be first somewhere— somehow— to be first with those
English. They will be showing him to everybody. "This is
our Nostromo!"' She laughed ominously. 'What a name!
What is that? Nostromo? He would take a name that is
properly no word from them.'" (IX, 23) She constantly
makes him uncomfortable because she tells the truth about
his motives: "Always thinking of yourself and taking your
pay out in fine words from those who care nothing about
you." (IX, 253) Because of his vulnerability to words,
Teresa's dying words exercise an extraordinary power over
him. "'They have turned your head with their praises,'
gasped the sick woman. 'They have been paying you with
words. Your folly shall betray you into poverty, misery,
starvation. The very leperos shall laugh at you— the great
Capataz.'" (IX, 257) These words become a curse that
haunts Nostromo throughout his dark night of the soul ex
perience on the Gulfo Placido. Finally he comes to realize
their truth, and when he does he changes his name.
In the silence and isolation of the Gulfo Placido far
166
from the flattery of others, Nostromo comes to understand
the meaning of words. When he wakes up from his fourteen-
hour sleep after leaving Decoud and swimming to shore, he
is described as awakening "with the lost air of a man just
born into the world." (IX, 411) He is indeed a new man;
he has experienced a new birth. The old naive Nostromo
is dead, and the new Gian' Battista Fidanza is born.
Nostromo wakes up to the bitter knowledge that in isolation,
the fine words of others are empty. When he is suddenly
forced into concealment and can no longer be a public
figure, his identity is shattered. Since his self had
been dependent on the words of others, when those words
are gone, that self crumbles. He is born into a new aware
ness of the meaning of words and he suddenly feels that he
has been betrayed. He realizes that Teresa's words were
true— that all the praise and admiration of the rich had
been a means of controlling him. He says to himself:
"There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage us as if
wev^were dogs born to fight and hunt for them." (IX, 418)
With this new sensitivity to language, Nostromo makes
his way to the O.S.N. office where he suddenly encounters
Dr. Monygham. This meeting reveals his new awareness be
cause he rejects his name. When Monygham asks who he is,
he hesitates in answering: "An inexplicable repugnance to
pronounce the name by which he was known kept him silent a
little longer. At last he said, in a low voice: 'A Carga-
_____________________ LfiuL
dor.1" (IX, 425) This encounter discloses the truth of
his new insight and becomes for him the final revelation of
his betrayal. Monygham doesn't even ask him about his
glorious mission which confirms his perception that no one
really cared about him: "To Nostromo the doctor represented
all these people. . . . And he had never even asked after
it. Not a word of inquiry about the most desperate under
taking of his life." (IX, 426) Monygham also reveals the
essential unimportancecof the silver lighter which Nostromo
had been led to believe was so significant. Monygham shocks
him by saying he wished that the silver had never left or
that it had been given over to Sotillo. Nostromo realizes
how he has been exploited and sees in the dead Hirsch an
image of himself betrayed: "And the capataz, listening
as if in a dream, felt himself of as little account as the
indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man whom he saw
upright under the beam, with his air of listening also,
disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of neglect."
(IX, 435) Completely disillusioned, Nostromo rejects his
old identity. When Monygham addresses him as Capataz, he
says: "What Capataz? . . . The Capataz is undone, de
stroyed. There is no Capataz. Oh nol You will find the
Capataz no more." (IX, 435-36)
Monygham, of course, does not understand the meaning
of Nostromo's words and his continual mutterings about be
ing betrayed. He is so intent on using him to save the
168
mine for Emilia's sake, that he doesn't see that his words
of praise suggesting that Nostromo is the only one who can
save Sulaco, only reinforce Nostromo's new sense of the
meaning of such fine words. Nostromo has no intention of
going after Barrios for the sake of his betrayers. He is
obsessed by the power of Teresa's words which echo in his
mind as he moves to Viola's house. He feels her prophecy
of disaster is the truth about his life: "They reigned
over Nostromo's mind with the force of a potent maledic
tion. And what a curse it was, that which her words had
laid upon him!" When he meets Giorgio he hears some more
words from Teresa that will make him do what all Monygham1s
fine words could not. He hears that her dying words were
a cry to Gian' Battista to save her children. He knows
that the girls are with Emilia Gould and he reflects:
"And she herself [Emilia] may not have a roof over her
head before many days are out unless I . . . What do you
say? Am I to keep a roof over her head? Am I to try--and
save all the Blancos together with her?" (IX, 471) So
Nostromo makes his famous ride to Cayta to save Sulaco not
for political reasons or even for a reward of fine words,
but as a desperate attempt to expiate his guilt towards a
dying woman and to escape the truth of her powerful curse.
Nostromo's discovery of the meaning of words leads
him into deception. He learns that he too can use words
to conceal rather than to reveal his true motives. When
________________________________________________________________169
he returns to the silver only to find that Decoud has dis
appeared, he is a bitter, disillusioned man who realizes
that he has been betrayed by material interests into an
action that has been paid for "by a soul lost and by a
vanished life." As an act of revenge against all those
who had betrayed him with deceitful words, Nostromo decides
to take the silver as his reward. As he sits on the island
with the silver contemplating his betrayal with hatred, he
plans his strategy of deception: "I must grow rich very
slowly. ..." (IX, 503)
Nostromo becomes once again a great public figure in
Sulaco. The people sing his praise and his reputation is
even greater than before. He again basks in the glory of
public adoration. But all is changed for Gian" Battista
Fidanza who allows others to think he is still Nostromo.
He now knows the meaning of such a name and exploits his
reputation to conceal his real motives. In the first
meeting with Charles Gould after Sulaco and the silver
mine have been saved, Gould asks him what reward he wants
for his heroic service. Nostromo responds with the perfect
masking statement: "My name is known from one end of Sulacc
to the other. . . . What more can you do for me?" (IX, 4 89)
Nostromo grows rich slowly by carefully manipulating
his good name and masking his real motives with his own
fine words. When in danger of having his true actions re
vealed by the lighthouse on the Great Isabel, he persuades
________________________________________ 170
the authorities to put the Violas in charge of the light
house. He then hides his need to go to the island by de
ceiving Giorgio with a confession of love for Linda. He
moves further and further into deception by really falling
in love with Giselle and concealing it from Linda and
Giorgio. The final consequence of his deception is his
death when he is ironically mistaken by Giorgio for some
one who is trying to steal the treasure of his daughter.
Nostromo*s dying wish is to tell the truth and he
calls Emilia Gould to reveal to her the truth about the
silver. But Emilia, in her bitter disillusionment about
the meaning of "material interests," rejects Nostromo1s
revelation and refuses to expose his deception. She allows
his reputation to remain intact in the Treasure House of
the World. The truth about Gian’ Battista Fidanza is never
to be known, remaining permanently hidden in the legend of
Nostromo, the magnificent, incorruptible capataz de carga-
dores. Such a triumph for Nostromo is the final ironic
commentary on the power of words to conceal the truth.
What's in a name? Everything. Nostromo is the per
fect title for the novel. A name that hides rather than
reveals; a word that is no word. Nostromo is the perfect
name for a man who is never known, and for a book about
the corruption of words.
171
2. The Secret Agent: The Failure of the Word
Estragon: All the dead voices.
Vladimir: They make a noise like wings.
Estragon: Like leaves.
Vladimir: Like sand.
Estragon: Like leaves.
Vladimir: They all speak at Once.
Estragon: Each one to itself.
— Waiting for Godot
It was as if her voice was talking on the other
side of a very thick wall.
Much of the critical debate about The Secret Agent
has focused on its accuracy as a portrayal of the world of
secret political agents and revolutionaries. Such an ap
proach to the novel in terms of Conrad's political and
social views, or as a reflection of actual historical
events, may be illuminating biographically or historically,
but does not come to terms with the central theme of the
book. The novel is not primarily a study of political
intrigue, an expose of the lurid world of secret agents
engaged in political machinations, nor a detective story
dramatizing the solving of political crime. Conrad is
interested in the world of secret agents, of political
revolutionaries and the police, because he saw that such a
world had intriguing possibilities for exploring a more
universally human issue— the issue of duplicity, secrecy,
and isolation. Every man is a secret agent--moving in his
172
own private world, driven by his own personal desires and
motives which he hides from others.
The chief means men use to mask themselves is lan
guage. By means of words men deceive, manipulate, and dis
guise the meaning of their actions from one another, pre
serving the secrecy of their private worlds. They dis
guise their personal desires in the public language of
political and social rhetoric while they are at heart
anarchists-— anarchists of the word, who use the very means
of human contact, the word, to obstruct that contact, to
preserve the privacy of their individual world from being
understood and shared.
The Secret Agent is, thus, essentially a novel about
human communication, and not political action. It is a
drama of human misunderstanding, of deliberate non-communi
cation. It is a story of the failure of the word to make
people known to each other. It explores a world where
everyone is a "perfect anarchist" enclosed in his separate
world using public words with private meaning— speaking
but not revealing, remaining always unknown to the other—
a secret agents moving among secret agents. Stevie's mad
art of innumerable circles imposed on each other, "a
coruscating whirl of circles," is an appropriate visual
image for the relationships that exist between the charac
ters. Each is enclosed within the secret circle of himself,
entangled in a confusion of intersecting lines, touching
173
but never communicating.
Such a mad whirl of circles is also an appropriate
image for the structure of the novel. There are three
circles of action that revolve around Verloc: the politi
cal action of the revolutionaries and anarchists; the ac
tion of the police in solving the mystery of the bombing;
and the domestic drama involving Stevie, Winnie, and her
mother. These three self-enclosed circles all intersect
in Verloc. Within these three worlds, the novel explores
the comic-tragic possibilities of being secret agents.
Both the world of the revolutionaries and of the police
are treated in essentially comic terms, focusing on the
comic possibilities of the discrepancy between rhetoric
and reality, the incongruity between public speech and
private motive. The destructive dimensions of the failure
of the word are focused in the domestic tragedy of the
Verloc household..
A frequent criticism of The Secret Agent is that
the political figures are caricatures— that Conrad isn't
being fair to "real" anarchists and social revolutionaries.
Of course, this is obviously true. Conrad isn't being fair.
But the point is his purpose is not to give an accurate
historical portrait of actual political agents, but to use
them to explore the comic possibilities of the failure of
communication. The political figures are all comic figures
because it is precisely one of Conrad's main intentions to
174
satirize a world of human action and speech which usually
believes with utmost seriousness its own inflated rhetoric.
All the anarchists are word-men. That is, they are
all speakers and not actors, and the force of Conrad's
satire is focused on exposing the absolute discrepancy
between what they say they are and what they are in reali
ty. They define themselves as "anarchists," as those com
mitted to the actual destruction of the oppressive bour-
geoise social order. Yet each in his own way is the exact
opposite— essentially middle-class, and totally impotent
in effecting any kind of political action.
Verloc, the Secret Agent, is, of course, the central
comic figure. The great second chapter which centers on
Verloc's interview with Vladimir at the Russian Embassy,
is a classic comic exposure scene. Verloc is exposed as
the absolute opposite of the anarchist he says he is.
Vladimir is shocked and amused by Verloc. The great agent
provocateur is a fat, passive, middle-class man who loves
stability and order, and, to top it off, is married.
Vladimir comments on this shocking contradiction: "'What
do you mean by getting out of condition like this? You
haven't got even the physique of your profession. You—
a member of a starving proletariat— never! You— a desper
ate socialist or anarchist— which is it?' 'Anarchist,'
stated Mr. Verloc in a deadened tone." (XIII, 21)
The crowning comic irony that Vladimir perceives
175
about Verloc is that his great reputation as a secret agent
is built on misunderstanding. The "famous and trusty
secret agent, so secret that he was never designated but by
the symbol A i n the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim' s official,
seni-official, and confidential correspondence . . .," in
reality never knew any important secret information at all.
The "celebrated agent A" was the product of Baron Stott-
Wartenheim' s own personal needs to believe that he was in
volved in the great social revolution. Baron Stott-Warten
heim took whatever piece of banal information Verloc
passed on to him and transformed it into secret informa
tion of great revolutionary significance.
The final truth about Verloc as secret agent is seen
when Inspector Heat reveals that Verloc is a double agent,
working for Heat. The irony is that Verloc knows no more
important information for the police than he does for the
Russians. Heat views him as valuable because he serves
Heat's own needs for secrecy and duplicity. Secret Agent
Verloc is famous and trusty and effective precisely be
cause he has no significant secrets, but conveniently
allows himself to be misunderstood according to the secret
needs of those around him.
The second chapter is humorous because in it Vladimir
exposes the banal reality of the secret agent. He totally
disrupts Verloc's comfortable world by suggesting that what
is needed from the anarchists is some anarchy. Verloc
176
squirms under such an attack and tries to defend himself
by suggesting that his primary usefulness lay in his ex
cellent voice. Verloc tells Vladimir that his voice was
famous at "open-air meetings and at workmen's assemblies
in large halls." He says, "I was always put up to speak
by the leaders at a critical moment. ..." (XIII, 23)
Then, to demonstrate his talent he opens a window and
quietly addresses a constable standing way on the other
side of the courtyard, making him spin around in response
to his clear bass voice. With great self-satisfaction he
then says: "With a voice like that . . . I was naturally
trusted. And I knew what to say, too." (XIII, 24) Such
is the contribution of Agent A to social revolution— a
great voice. Vladimir stuns Verloc by his deflating sar
casm about his great gift: "Well, I am going to speak
plain English to you. Voice won't do. We have no use
for your voice. We don't want a voice. We want facts—
startling facts— damn youI" (XIII, 25) Vladimir's words
expose Verloc's impotence, the comic gap between his
rhetoric and his reality. But his demand also initiates
the tragic action that will grow out of Verloc's bungling
attempt to become in action what he is only in words: an
anarchist.
Voices— that is essentially what the other anarchists
are too. Voices, making noises like wings,?; speaking all
at once, but each one to itself. Michaelis, Yundt, and
177
Ossipon are all socialists engaged in literary propaganda.
Each engages in his own brand of revolutionary rhetoric,
which is contradicted by the actuality of his life. The
third chapter centers on examining these three in action.
Immediately after Vladimir1s demand for action, the scene
shifts to Verloc's place where the revolutionaries are
engaged in their usual radical conversation. This is a
highly comic scene because they are all ineffectual talk.
The great literary propagandists not only are totally in
effective in propagandizing the masses, but they can't even
communicate with each other. They are voices speaking all
at once, but each one to itself. Each is isolated in the
little sphere of his verbal world and cannot even make
sense to the other revolutionaries.
Michaelis, who has spent a number of years isolated in
prison, remains isolated within his own verbal world of
Marxist rhetoric. The third chapter opens with his wonder
ful speech: ". . . all idealization makes life poorer.
To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity
— it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my
boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in
their heads." (XIII, 41) The irony is that Michaelis
lives in a world made out of his head, completely removed
from other human beings. He rests sublimely confident and
at peace in his world, believing that his rhetoric is
reality, and that the transformation of the world into the
178
great classless society is imminent. Any attempt by Yundt
or Ossipon to question Michaelis' optimism is ineffective
because he "talked to himself, indifferent to the sympathy
or hostility of his hearers, indifferent indeed to their
presence. ..." (XIII, 44) Any attempt at discussion,
at any kind of verbal exchange, only confuses him because
he is used to hearing only his own voice: "He was no good
in discussion, not because any amount of argument could
shake his faith, but because the mere fact of hearing
another voice disconcerted him painfully, confusing his
thoughts at once— these thoughts that for so many years,
in a mental solitude more barren than a waterless desert,
no living voice had even combatted, commented, or approved."
(XIII, 45)
Karl Yundt, who defines himself as a "terrorist," is
an equally ludicrous figure. Like Michaelis, he is en
closed in the circle of his fantastic rhetoric. He carries
on his monologue too: "I have always dreamed, . . . of a
band of men absolute in their resolve to discard all
scruples in the choice of means, strong enough to give
themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from
the taint of that resigned pessimism which rots the world.
No pity for anything on earth, including themselves, and
death enlisted for good and all in the service of humanity
— that’s what I would have liked to see." (XIII, 42)
This fierce rhetoric of death in "the service of humanity"
179
moves only_Stevie, the poor half-wit who takes all words to
be literally true. Yundt in reality is a repulsive,
toothless, dried-up, little old man, totally dependent on
a woman to take care of him, a "terrorist" in word only—
who "had never in his life raised personally as much as
his little finger against the social edifice." (XIII, 48)
The third participant in the "discussion" at Verloc's
is Comrade Ossipon. He has nothing but scorn and sarcasm
for the monologues of the other two, but he is also locked
into the world of his own pseudo-scientific rhetoric, from
his brief and unsuccessful experience as a medical student.
He is a lecturer to working-men's associations on "the
socialist aspects of hygiene," and has served the cause
of socialist propaganda with a pamphlet entitled: "The
Corroding Vices of the Middle Classes." He assumes a role
of condescending superiority because of his great scientific
knowledge: "I am speaking to you scientifically— scientif^
ically--. ..." Neither Michaelis nor Yundt pays any at
tention to his profundities, and his talk only triggers
off Verloc's memories of disagreeable experiences of the
morning with "science" and Mr. Vladimir. All that the
three revolutionaries have in common is that they are
parasites on the existing social structure.' They are all
dependent on women to take care of them, from Michaelis'
wealthy widow who kindly supports his rhetoric that attacks
everything she is, to Ossipon who literally lives off "the
180
corroding vices" of middle class working girls.
The Professor, of course, doesn't participate in even
the semblance of a group activity. He has made himself in
to a living bomb and is fanatically devoted to a new world
which will be created by destruction. He is the "perfect
anarchist" for he lives in a private world complete in
itself. In his megalomania, he identifies the whole world
with his private world so when he destroys his world he
will destroy the world and pave the way for a new social
order. He moves in his hermetic world of being a living
bomb and sees himself as a great moral agent. But the
Professor, like the others, is all talk. Like Yundt his
rhetoric is violent: "Exterminate, exterminate! That is
the only way of progress." (XIII, 303) And like Yundt,
he has never acted out his words. Ironically it is only
Stevie who accomplishes what the Professor talks about do*:
ing: the perfect anarchic act of self-destruction. The
Professor, instead, wanders the streets with his hand on
his detonator convinced of his great importance and power
to regenerate the world through his mighty act of destruc
tion. And— "Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected
and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men." (XIII,
311)
All the revolutionaries are comic embodiments of the
discrepancy between rhetoric and reality. Each moves as
a secret agent, living in an enclosed world of his own
181
private motives, and masking such motives in public lan
guage. They share the public language of revolutionary
rhetoric, but the words mean something different to each
one, according to his needs. They speak the same language
but the words hide rather than reveal. They are comic in
their impotence and in the isolation of their small worlds.
Their words are neither effective as propaganda nor as a
means of sharing among themselves. They all remain secret
agents whose creeds disguise petty personal impulses. All
the dead voices, each one speaking to itself.
Strangely enough, many Conrad critics seem to misunder
stand the function of the police action in the novel.
Guerard thinks that "Such slight author-identification as
exists in The Secret Agent is clearly with the Assistant
Commissioner. ..." He says that the Assistant Commis
sioner is "committed to British respect for legality, order.,
liberty," and that "This may well be the author in a suc
cinct if unconscious self-portrait."1 Avrom Fleishman
says: "The Assistant Commissioner is rendered as a moral
2
ideal, though he engages with the world's secrecy."
Tillyard in "The Secret Agent Reconsidered," follows
Guerard and suggests that Conrad "suspends his ironic
method when dealing with the Assistant Commissioner," be-
1 Guerard, p. 223.
2 Conrad's Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1967), p. 192.
182
cause he is a man pretty close to Conrad himself."1 But
such views fail to see that the Assistant Commissioner and
Heat and the whole world of the police action is as much a
butt of Conrad's ironic wit as the world of the revolution
aries. The world of the police is also a world of secrecy,
deception and duplicity— a world of secret agents. The
police and the revolutionaries are the same under the
skin— or rather, under the disguise. Conrad uses the
police as part of his comic treatment of the problem of
misunderstanding and non-communication.
The principal figures, Chief Inspector Heat and the
Assistant Commissioner of Police, are secret agents who
mask their own private motives in the public language of
law, order and justice. The great comic irony of the whole
police action in solving the mystery of the bombing is
that the truth is discovered by accident and not by any
cpmmitment to justice and truth. The truth is uncovered
as a result of the interaction between Heat and the
Assistant Commissioner as they deliberately try to mislead
each other. They are both motivated by the desire to
maintain their private worlds and to keep others from un
derstanding their real motives. These secret agents do
their work in the great comic interrogation scene in chap
ters five and six, where their artful dodges finally lead
1 "The Secret Agent Reconsidered," Conrad (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1966), p. 107.
183
to the revelation of the truth. Chief Inspector Heat
comes to the Assistant Commissioner to make a preliminary
report on the bombing. They are both upset because such a
surprise event is an attack upon their competence. Neither
one cares for the political meaning of the event, but only
what it means for his private world.
The bombing was a real shock and embarrassment to
Chief Inspector Heat, "principal expert in anarchist pro
cedure." It was embarrassing to him because he had just
boasted to his superiors that he had his finger on all
the anarchist activity in London and had everything under
control. He is a fine comic figure because he is so smug
and self-assured about his magnificent performance as Chief
Inspector, and is ripe for a comic fall when the Assistant
Commissioner decides to shake his tightrope. Heat's re
sponse to the bombing is to want to pin it on Michaelis.
Even though he discovered Stevie's address tag, Heat de
liberately withholds this crucial information from the
Assistant Commissioner because he does not care about
solving the crime so much as he cares about protecting his
own reputation. Pinning the crime on the well-known ex
convict Michaelis would get him off the hook, so he dis
guises his motives by arguing eloquently that it must have
been Michaelis because: "I can answer for all the others."
(XIII, 133)
The fine comic irony is that what Heat thinks is the
_____________________________________________________________18A
perfect solution for protecting his secret world, is the
very action that threatens to disrupt the Assistant Com
missioner's world. The Assistant Commissioner is upset by
Heat's intention to get Michaelis, because arresting
Michaelis would alienate Michaelis' wealthy benefactress
who is a good friend of the Assistant Commissioner's wife.
Such an event would have a disastrous effect on the peace
and security of the Assistant Commissioner's private
world. While he sits silently pondering Heat's suggested
solution inwardly he is upset: "Damn it! If that infernal
Heat has his way the fellow'll die in prison smothered in
his fat, and she'll never forgive me." (XIII, 113) The
Assistant Commissioner cannot face such an eventuality, and
is determined to protect Michaelis not because he believes
him innocent, but because his safety is important to the
Assistant Commissioner. Such a desire to protect his
secret world becomes the motive for his marvelous attack
upon Heat in which he treats Heat as the criminal and
forces him to undergo an interrogation in an attempt to
throw him off Michaelis' track and onto some other explana
tion.
The Assistant Commissioner's interrogation of Heat is
a masterful comic deflation scene. Heat, "out of the full
ness of his heart," suggests that the Assistant Commiss
sioner can trust that "there will be no difficulty in
getting up sufficient evidence against him. . . ." (XIII,
185
114) These words produce the opposite effect from Heat's
intention. They irritate the Assistant Commissioner into
a sudden attack on Heat: "Now what is it you've got up
your sleeve?" (XIII, 115) This reaction ushers Heat into
a f.new and unexpected experience." His state is captured
in a fine comic metaphor: "He felt at the moment like a
tight-rope artist might feel if suddenly, in the middle of
the performance, the manager of the Music Hall were to rush
out of the proper managerial seclusion and begin to shake
the rope." (XIII, 116) The Assistant Commissioner is
indeed shaking his rope, and doing it with such good police
form that Heat is completely in the dark as to why he is
doing it. The Assistant Commissioner really warms to his
task because he relishes the exercise of his talent that
had been lying fallow in the midst ©f&his drab office work.
The Chief Inspector becomes the inspected, and the Assist
ant Commissioner does his detective work on his own sub
ordinate: "For the first time since he took up his appoint
ment the Assistant Commissioner felt as if hie were going
to do some real work for his salary. And that was a
pleasurable sensation. 'I'll turn him inside out like an
old glove.'" (XIII, 118-19) So stroke by stroke, the
Assistant Commissioner attacks Heat's story about Michaelis,
and shakes his tightrope until Heat decides it is time to
jump off the rope and "walk the path of unreserved open
ness." (XIII, 127)
186
The Assistant Commissioner does turn Heat inside out
like a glove because Heat is a secret agent who is de
ceiving him. He is vulnerable to interrogation. The
shaking ofUHeat's rope forces him to reveal his information
about the label and Verloc's house, his history with Verloc
and that he had been keeping such contacts secret for his
own private use. The Assistant Commissioner gleefully
turns the Chief Inspector inside out: "Your idea of
secrecy seems to consist in keeping the chief of your
department in the dark." (XIII, 132) The Assistant
Commissioner scores a double victory: he successfully de
flates Heat, exposing his secret world, and more important
ly, he discovers the key fact that will lead him to solving
the mystery of the bombing so that he can protect Michaelis
and maintain the security of his secret world.
So out of evasion, disguising, and lying to each other
to preserve their private worlds, the two guardians of law
and order stumble onto the one thing that neither cared
about: the truth about the bombing. The two protectors
of society against anarchy are the most secret of secret
agents— more deceptive and successfully secret than the
famous secret agent A!
While the comic possibilities of deception and mis
understanding are focused in the worlds of the revolution
aries and the police, the tragic dimensions of the failure
of communication centers in the domestic world of the
187
” Verloc household. The whole family Is destroyed by the
failure of the word. Stevie, Verloc, and Winnie all die
because they could not make genuine contact with one an
other, because they could not tell each other the truth.
Stevie is the tragic victim of secrecy and deception.
Stevie is the one character who is not a secret agent, but
is "frank and as open as the day himself." (XIII, 173)
He is the one person who is motivated by compassion for
others and not self-interest. He is the only one who cares
about words, who believes the words he hears. He is the
only one who does not lie but speaks the truth. But he
is destroyed by secrecy, selfishness, and lies. He is not
a secret agent because he doesn't seem able to perceive
duplicity and understand that human beings deliberately
use words to hide rather than reveal, to deceive rather
than tell the truth, and is himself incapable of such de
ception. Perhaps such inability to understand deception is
the essence of being mentally retarded. Only a half-wit
would trust the words he hears and try to tell the truth.
Stevie is extraordinarily sensitive to language.
Words have the power to unleash his feelings and stimulate
him to violent action. When he was fourteen and working
as an office-boy, he touched off a bunch of fire works on
the staircase because "two other office-boys in the building
had worked upon his feelings by tales of injustice and
oppression til they had wrought his compassion to the
188
pitch of that frenzy." (XII, 9-10) Stevie is continually
disturbed by listening to the conversations of the revolu
tionaries that take place at Verloc*s. He is the only one
who listens to and is moved by Karl Yundt*s fierce rhetoric.
When Yundt in one of his tirades uses a violent metaphor of
the law being a red-hot branding iron, Stevie is stunned
and moved to anger: "The sheet of paper covered with
circles dropped out of his fingers, and he remained staring
at the old terrorist, as if rooted suddenly to the spot
by his morbid horror and dread of physical pain. Stevie
knew very well that hot iron applied to one's skin hurt
very much. His scared eyes blazed with indignation: it
would hurt terribly. His mouth dropped open." (XIII, 49)
Ironically, only Stevie is affected by the literary propa
ganda of the Red Committee. He read a story in one of
their papers about a German soldier tearing the ear of a
recruit half-off and was so moved that "He would have
struck that officer like a pig if he had seen him then."
(XIII, 60) This capacity to trust and be moved by words
will become the means of Stevie's destruction.
Stevie not only trusts words, he is the only one who
speaks the truth. In spite of being a half-wit (or maybe
because of this), Stevie is the most Sensitive human being
in the novel. He is extraordinarily sensitive to all forms
of suffering including the suffering of animals. In the
powerful cab-ride scene, Stevie expresses the truth about
________________________________________________________________189
T^he situation. He stutters when confronted by experiences
which his mind is too limited to grasp. But when he is
upset by the sad condition of the old horse and the cabman,
he struggles to express it. A few phrases struggle out:
"Poor brute! . . . Poor! Poor!" Then he makes further
connections of his stammerings: "Poor brute, poor people!"
Finally, Stevie in his very struggle to find the words to
fit his experience, puts the words together in the most
eloquent and truthful statement in the whole novel: "Bad
world for poor people." (XIII, 171) Stevie alone has a
compassionate response to suffering and wants to take the
cabman and the horse into his bed of compassion in order
to give them comfort. He is the only true revolutionary
who is willing to act violently to overthrow the existing
order in order to bring about a more humane and just
world. And he is the only one who is concerned about law
and justice. With his basic trust in rhetoric, he be
lieves that the police are what they say they are. He sug
gests to Winnie that the police can help the cabman and
the horse. Winnie replies that "The police aren't for
that. ..." Stevie is bewildered and asks the haunting
question: "What are they for then, Winn? What are they
for? Tell me." This simple but penetrating question
elicits the most devastating judgment on the police action:
"Don't you know what the police are for, Stevie? They are
there so that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything
______________________ 190
away from them who have." (XIII, 173)
Stevie, who is not a secret agent, who speaks the
truth and trusts in words, is destroyed by secrecy, decep
tion and lies. He is destroyed by the secret agents,
Winnie, her mother, and Verloc. The terrible irony is that
Stevie is the innocent victim of Winnie1s and her mother's
love for him which they conceal from everyone, including
each other. It is their love for Stevie which they cannot
communicate either to Verloc or to each other, that makes
Stevie available for Verloc's use in his bombing plan.
Winnie's mother's decision to leave the Verloc house
hold is because of her love for Stevie. She doesn't want
to tax Verloc's good will by being an added burden. So
she sacrifices herself for Stevie by moving to the alms
house. But she keeps her purpose so secret that not even
Winnie can understand the meaning of her action. The
mother is not able to tell Winnie the truth and Winnie
misunderstands her actions. In fact Winnie accuses her
mother of cruelty to Stevie: "That poor boy will miss you
something cruel. I wish you had thought a little of that,
Mother." (XIII, 163) The secret agents are so hidden from
each other, that mother and daughter cannot even communi
cate their mutual love for Stevie.
Winnie's marriage to Verloc is based on a lie and
deliberate non-communication. She did not marry Verloc
because they shared a common world of feeling, but in order
______________________________________________________________ 191
to achieve her one secret desire, to provide a safe and
secure place for Stevie. She lives out her relationship to
Verloc secretly pursuing this one intention, and all her
words and actions with Verloc have this hidden purpose.
Because she is a secret agent pursuing her own private
goal, she never really knows Verloc and his motives and
intentions. He, of course, never tries to communicate
such things to Winnie and she doesn't really want to hear
them anyway. But because she doesn't communicate with
Verloc, she is anxious about his attitude toward Stevie,
and is afraid that he will one day get rid of him. Be
cause she doesn't know Verloc, she doesn't see that he is
absolutely indifferent to Stevie and that he has no inten
tion of getting rid of him.
But because Winnie and her mother deceive one another,
and Verloc, they believe that they need to create a rela
tionship between Verloc and Stevie. So they undertake to
establish the right relationship. They constantly talk
to Stevie exploiting his naive faith in words to create
for him an idealized conception of Verloc and his goodness.
Stevie, of course, believes the truth of their words:
". . . Mr. Verloc was good. His mother and his sister had
established that ethical fact on an unshakable foundation.
They had established, erected, consecrated it behind Mr.
Verloc's back, for reasons that had nothing to do with
abstract morality. And Mr. Verloc was not aware of it."
192
However well-intentioned their words to Stevie were, they
were lies that led to Stevie's destruction. Because he
believed Mr. Verloc was good, he became devoted to such
goodness and willing to do anything for him— even go walk
ing in the park,
Ironically, her mother's move to protect Stevie causes
Winnie to make Verloc aware of Stevie's devotion and will
ingness to serve him. Because the mother deceived Winnie,
Winnie becomes more anxious about Stevie's position in the
household instead of less. So she undertakes a campaign
to manipulate Verloc into an awareness of Stevie's useful
ness. When Verloc returns home after a visit to the Con
tinent, he is surprised by Stevie's helpfulness. Winnie
carries out her secret purpose: "You could do anything
with that boy, Adolf . . . He would go through fire for
you." {XIII, 184) Winnie&s deception is successful.
Verloc7 does indeed become interested in Stevie and begins
taking him along on his daily walks. Verloc even suggests
that he might "profit greatly by being sent out of town
for a while. ..." (XIII, 188) Winnie is ecstatic at
the success of her private design and says to herself:
"Might be father and son. . . ." (XIII, 187) The very
success of her deception of Verloc sends Stevie on the way
to his death.
Stevie is the perfect instrument for Verloc's bomb
plot. Once he has been made aware of Stevie's devotion to
____________________________________ 193
him, he exploits Stevie's openness to language in order to
make him useful. Since Stevie believes Winnie and his
mother's words about Verloc's goodness, he is ready to
believe the words of the good Mr. Verloc. Verloc's one
problem in using Stevie is to keep him from telling about
their relationship if he happens to get lost after the
bombing, and picked up by the police. So the function of
the long walks which Winnie thinks are such a wonderful
example of the new father-and-son relationship, is in
reality to give Stevie a certain interpretation of the
police. Verloc exploits Stevie's trust in words to create
a picture of the police for him which will insure his
silence: "He had foreseen Stevie arrested, and was not
afraid, because Mr. Verloc had a great opinion of Stevie's
loyalty, which had been carefully indoctrinated with the
necessity of silence in the course of many walks. Like
a peripatetic philosopher, Mr. Verloc, strolling along the
streets of London, had modified Stevie's view of the police
by conversations full of subtle reasonings. Never had a
sage a more attentive and admiring disciple." (XIII, 230)
Stevie trusts both Winnie's and Verloc's words. When
he stumbles in the park and is blown to pieces, he dies in
total ignorance of the meaning of his death. He dies a
tragic victim of the misuse of words.
Verloc, the Secret Agent, is finally destroyed by his
own secrecy and deception. The secret agent who made a
_____________________________________________________________194.
life's work out of never telling the truth is destroyed by
his own words; he talks himself into his own murder. Chap
ter eleven, the conversation between Winnie and Verloc
which culminates in Verloc's death, is perhaps one of the
most powerful scenes of the failure of the word in all of
literature. Two beings are talking to each other, but they
are totally isolated. The words never make contact. This
is the great confessional scene when Verloc attempts for
the first time to use words to reveal himself to Winnie.
He speaks the truth and discloses his real feelings. But
his confession is actually a monologue in which he speaks
only to himself. Winnie occasionally hears a word or two
to which she attaches her own private meanings. The irony
is that Verloc's words only communicate the opposite of
his intention. His every statement only further alienates
Winnie, until his talk finally incites her to kill him.
Verloc begins his conversation with magnaminity. He
does not intend to reproach Winnie for her stupid action
in putting a label in Stevie's coat.il He can even see that
she might be upset over his death. But they are each so
isolated in their secret worlds that Verloc has absolutely
no perception of the meaning of Stevie to Winnie. All
that he says to her assumes that she shares his feelings
that Stevie is relatively unimportant, so that everything
he says only shocks her more. After all, he says, "Do be
reasonable, Winnie. What would it have been if you had
_____________________________ , _________________________________195
lost me?" (XIII, 234) Verloc basically sees Stevie's
death as the positive accomplishment of his purpose which
was to create a certain "moral effect." The only thing
wrong with Stevie's death is his wife's mistake. But Ver
loc can resign himself to his fate and is ready not to
blame Winnie: "The position was gone through no one's
fault really. A small, tiny fact had done it. It was
like slipping on a bit of orange peel in the dark and
breaking your leg." (XIII, 236)
Verloc who has always moved in the world of deception
and lies, fancies that Winnie loves him for himself and
naively trusts her appearances. He feels the need for the
first time to tell her the truth about himself and what
drove him to his desperate action: "For the first time in
his life he was taking that incurious woman into his con
fidence." Ironically he is totally oblivious to the effect
of his words on Winnie. He gets so caught up in his mono
logue about his self-importance and his mistreatment at
the hands of Vladimir that he forgets about the central
fact of the event: Stevie's death. Winnie's response to
his great confession of the truth about himself is total
incomprehension: "What are you talking about?" (XIII,
240)
Winnie does not comprehend the flow of Verloc's words
because she is lost in the pain and outrage of her own
shattered world. She is caught up in reliving her history
________________________ X96
with Stevie and Verloc, culminating in recalling the chief
deception of her life when she thought Verloc cared for
Stevie. She utters her thoughts out loud: "Might have
been father and son." (XIII, 244) Verloc hears these
words which mean nothing to him. Since they fail to com
municate, he ignores them and goes on with his monologue
about the Embassy and how he is going to tell all. While
Verloc talks, Winnie lives in the isolation of her world
obsessed with the thought that Verloc "took the boy away
from me to murder him!" (XIII, 246) She reviews how Ver
loc had taken him away and come home that day after he
murdered Stevie. Her thoughts surface in words again and
she blurts out: "And I thought he had a cold." (XIII,
247) This time Verloc thinks these words carry meaning for
him and believing that her expression of hate is an expres
sion of concern, responds: "It was nothing . . . I was
upset. I was upset on your account." (XIII, 247)
Winnie continues to be absorbed in her thoughts of
Verloc taking Stevie away to kill him ahd the sound of
Verloc's optimistic talk about the future when he would
return from prison, passes over her without comprehension.
Occasionally she hears a few words: "Now and then, however,
the voice could make itself heard. Several connected words
emerged at times." (XIII, 249) But these connected words
that Winnie hears only trigger reactions which are the
opposite of Verloc1s intention. Verloc mentions going
____________________________________197
abroad after his release. Winnie appropriates these words
out of their context and puts them to use in her own
world. She says: "And what of Stevie?" These words are
meaningless to Verloc but express her fear about Stevie
when Verloc had earlier mentioned going abroad, and sud
denly create her awareness that since Stevie is dead she is
free to "go abroad"— far away from Verloc.
Winnie acts on her new consciousness stimulated by
Verloc's words and goes up to the bedroom to dress. When
she comes back down, Verloc interprets her action as that
of going to tell her mother about Stevie. Now Verloc
loses patience and confronts Winnie with her role in
Stevie's death: "I don't blame you— but it's your doing al]
the same. You'd better take this confounded hat off. I
can't let you go out, old girl." (XIII, 255) Winnie is
not capable of comprehending Verloc's point and only
responds to his words about not letting her go. Once again
disconnecting these words from their context, she hears
him saying that he will never let her go, that he will
keep her a prisoner. The words elicit a desperate sense
of fear and rebellion in her as she imagines herself run
ning away, being chased and seized by Verloc, and scratch
ing, kicking and even stabbing him in order to be free.
Outwardly Winnie meets Verloc1s words of self
disclosure with silence. Verloc becomes more frustrated
in his attempt to be open and honest and truthful, and be-
________________________________________________________________198
comes more harsh in his accusations against Winnie. He
attacks her silence and accuses her of being a secret
agent, hiding behind her "deaf-and-dumb sulks." Still no
response. Mr. Verloc is finally exhausted by his strenuous
efforts to communicate with his wife. He falls down on the
sofa for a little rest from the labors of speaking the
truth. He makes one last confession of feeling to Winnie:
"I wish to goodness . . . I had never seen Greenwich Park
or anything belonging to it." (XIII, 260) The narrator
comments on the effects of these words: "The veiled
sound filled the small room with its moderate volume, well
adapted to the modest nature of the wish. The waves of
air of the proper length, propagated in accordance with
correct mathematical formulas, flowed around all the in
animate things in the room, lapped against Mrs. Verloc1s
head as if it had been a head of stone." (XIII, 260)
Once again these words touch Winnie iji the opposite way
from their intention. The "audible wish of Mr. Verloc's
overflowing heart" causes Winnie to visualize the horror
of Stevie's destruction in Greenwich Park and becomes the
immediate stimulus for her decision to kill Verloc.
Now Winnie begins to listen to Verloc very carefully.
Verloc interprets her continued silence favorably and de
cides that he will make up with her in that most intimate
of all human acts of communication. He calls her name and
this time she hears his words and gives the appropriate
199
response. Verloc utters a sexual invitation: "Come here.
. . Winnie responds immediately to his call, and con-
sumates their act of communication by stabbing him in the
heart. Mr. Verloc, the Secret Agent, who has bared his
breast to his wife, only to receive a knife, dies encased
in the ignorance of his secret world. The failure of
communication is so great that Mr. Verloc talks himself
into his own death and never knows why.
Winnie dies the most horrible death of all. Winnie,
whose secrecy and lying grew out of her love for Stevie,
not only sees her secret world destroyed, but when she
tries to reveal herself to another, to genuinely tell her
secrets to Ossipon, she is brutally betrayed and abandoned,
and commits suicide in utter desolation. Winnie pays the
terrible price of her unwillingness to look beneath ap
pearances . Even though she herself moves as a secret agent,
she is unwilling to recognize this in others. Her attitude
is that "life does not bear much looking into." Yet it is
precisely this attitude which issues in such destructive
consequences for her.
Winnie's encounter with Ossipon after killing Verloc
is a macabre mixture of humor and horror as they both fail
to communicate with each other. They think they are about
to realize their secret desires in each other, and that they
are making genuine contact. At first their encounter is
comic in the way they lie to each other to create a perfect
200
misunderstanding of their relationship. They continually
talk past each other as each interprets the words of the
other in terms of his own needs. Ossipon thinks Verloc
was the one blown up and he tells Winnie that he has come
to help her. Winnie in the desperation of her isolation
wants to cling to some other human being so she tells
Ossipon that she was on her way to find him. Ossipon in
reality is interested in seducing her and begins to feed
her his usual romantic lies, and "in his heart of hearts
he was a little shocked at his success." (XIII, 274)
To Winnie, Ossipon is suddenly "like a radiant mes
senger of life." (XIII, 274) For the first time in her
life, like Verloc, she tries to use words to reveal her
self to another person. She tells Ossipon her life story,
her commitment to Stevie, her early romance, and her life
with Verloc, culminating in her judgment on Verloc— "He
was a devil!" She pours out all this to the uncomprehending
Ossipon who meets her self-disclosure with the stock lies
of false sympathy. He realizes that there is something
strange in her behavior, but he doesn't lose sight of his
ultimate goal: "'I understand,' he repeated, and then by
a sudden inspiration uttered an 'Unhappy woman!' of lofty
commiseration instead of the more familiar 'Poor darling!'
of his usual practice. This was no usual case. He felt
conscious of something abnormal going on, while he never
lost sight of the greatness of the stake. 'Unhappy, brave
201
woman!'" (XIII, 276-77) Absorbed in his goal of seducing
her, Ossipon favorably interprets all Winnie's incoherent
statements without really trying to understand what she is
saying: "He had the woman there, absolutely flinging her
self at him, and that was the principal consideration."
(XIII, 279) His complete misunderstanding of the situation
reaches its comic conclusion when she sends him into the
shop to shut the door and he is confronted by the silent
Mr. Verloc "reposing quietly on the sofa." The "robust
anarchist" becomes a comical coward, and is now terrified
at Winnie's passionate confessions of her willingness to
give herself to him.
Ossipon is too frightened to run, so he secretly
plots an escape from Winnie by maneuvering her onto the
train. Winnie interprets all Ossipon's gestures and words
as the action of her savior. On the train she once again
pours forth her feelings in a torrent of words. She finds
the right expression for her agonies of trying to commit
suicide but failing before her savior came: "I suppose
the cup of horrors was not full enough for such as me.
Then when you came. ..." (XIII, 298) Such an eloquent
expression of her inner-self is followed by her passionate
declaration of love: "I will live all my days for you,
Tom!" Ossipon hears her words and responds by jumping
out the door. The cup of horrors is finally full enough
for Winnie and she goes to her death a pathetic, isolated
202
secret agent to the end.
The newspaper account of Winnie's death declares that
an "Impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang forever
over this act of madness or despair." (XIII, 307) But
such words might well be said about the actions of all
the characters. They all remain secret agents isolated in
private worlds, hiding and deceiving each other. There is
an impenetrable mystery that hangs over their private
worlds because they are never able to share them with
each other. All of the characters either misuse or are
abused by words. They speak to each other, but the words
fail. They are all dead voices, each one speaking to it
self .
And yet there is one voice that is not dead— the voice
of Joseph Gonrad. For he gives us the words of the book.
The Secret Agent, which explores the failure of the word,
the isolation of secret agents unable to communicate with
each other, is itself a powerful act of communication.
The Secret Agent is words, but words which illuminate the
fragility of the word and create an awareness of the tragic
possibilities of human speech. By the power of the written
word, Conrad has given us a glimpse of such truth— at least
for a moment. The voice that makes us hear the sound of
dead voices, and perceive our world of secret agents,
is not yet dead. And he who has ears to hear, let him
hear.
________203
IV. THE RELUCTANT VOICE AND THE LIE
You know how I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie,
not because I am straighter than the rest of us,
but simply because it appals me. There is a taint
of death, a flavour of mortality in lies— which is
exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what
I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick,
like biting something rotten would do.
— Heart of Darkness
The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the
erection or demolition of theories any more than
with the defense of prejudices, has no random words
at its command. The words it pronounces have the
value of acts of integrity, tolerance, and compassion.
— Nostromo
Conrad speaks with a reluctant voice. Reluctant be
cause he is acutely sensitive to the ambivalent nature of
the gift of expression, "the bewildering, the illuminating,
the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating
stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of
an impenetrable darkness." He knows how hard it is to
speak the truth. He knows man's capacity to use the gift
of expression to conceal the darkness of his heart. And
that is why his own use of words is uneasy. He is particu
larly sensitive to the destructive function of language,
the power of lies to blind men to the truth, and to bring
about the destruction of people and even of whole cultures.
204
His fictions are centrally concerned with the power of the
lie.
A number of critics, however, have suggested recently
that although Conrad exposes the destructive consequences
of lies and illusions, he also sees that there is such a
thing as a benevolent lie. Conrad believes that the inner
truth about man is so dark that he needs saving illusions;
he needs to lie to himself and others to preserve himself
from the truth about the darkness that is too overwhelming
for him to bear. The work most often used to support this
contention is Heart of Darkness. The crux of the argument
is in the interpretation of the ending when Marlow lies to
Kurtz's Intended. Those critics who believe that Conrad
is advocating the benevolent lie, understand Marlow's lie
to the girl as a positive, even heroic act. Robert Evans
says: "The moral courage required to lie to Kurtz's In
tended at the end of the story, despite the moral lessons
Marlow has learned from Kurtz and despite his opinion of
a lie as the epitome of evil, is not inconsiderable.
Kenneth A. Bruffee argues that Marlow's lie is "a lie which
establishes a condition of truth." The lie saves the girl
from destructive knowledge of the darkness. He says:
"Preferring artifice to veracity, he establishes an ethic
^ "A Further Comment on Heart of Darkness," Heart of
Darkness (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1971) ed.
by Robert Kimbrough, pp. 230-31.
________________________________________________________ 205
of his own according to which man, having been made aware
of the truth, discovers also the necessity to cloak and
conceal it for the sake of humanity."'*' Ted.E. Boyle con
tinues this type of argument with the suggestion that
Marlow’s falsehood represents not deceit but the highest
type of truth. . . . " Marlow's lie is such a high type of
truth that it saves almost everyone: "Marlow saves his
own soul, he completes the salvation of Kurtz's soul, and
saves the soul of Kurtz's fiancee; in fact, when Marlow
'lies,' he keeps back the darkness for an entire community
of souls."2
This transformation of Marlow's lie into a higher
truth, and the implication drawn from it that Conrad is
advocating • the benevolent lie, is open to serious question.
Such a view seems to be a misunderstanding of Marlow's ac
tion, and more importantly, a misunderstanding of Conrad's
attitude toward language, especially as embodied in his
major fiction.
Conrad's attitude toward lying and truth-telling is
quite complex. There are certain passages in the fiction,
such as Marlow's famous words concerning "surface-truth,"
and statements Conrad made directly in critical writings
■ * ■ "The Lesser Nightmare," Heart of Darkness (New York:
W. W. Norton and Company, 1971), p. 234.
2
"Marlow's 'Lie,'" Heart of Darkness (New York: W.
W. Norton and Company, 1971), pp. 242-43.
206
and letters that support the argument that he did believe
in the benevolent lie. He does make statements that sug
gest man should not try to know the deep truth, but should
cling to the surface truth, the fiction he creates to pro
tect himself from the knowledge of the depths. In Notes
on Life and Letters, he says: "A man is a worker . . . If
he is not that he is nothing. . . . For the great mass of
mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady
fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short
moment of each human effort." (Ill, 190-91) This commit
ment to surface truth is seemingly supported by his famous
criticism of reflection, the attempt to get beyond the sur
face, in his Preface to Victory' : "The habit of profound
reflection is the most pernicious of all the habits formed
by the civilized man." Frequently during his life, Conrad
so questioned the capacity of words to bear the truth,
that he felt all words were lies and that his own writing
was an exercise in deception. The despairing note that
sounds in the following letter is one that occurs through
out his letters:
In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, im
provement for virtue, for knowledge, and even for
beauty is only a vain sticking up for appearances
as though one were anxious about the cut of one's
clothes in a community of blind men. Life knows
us not and we do not know life--we don't know even
our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no
meaning whatever and of the other half each man
understands each word after the fashionodf his own
folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs
shift like mists on the shore? thoughts vanish;
______ 207
words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of
yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow—
only the string of my platitudes seems to have no
end. As our [Polish] peasants say: "pray, brother,
forgive me for the love of God." And we don't know
what forgiveness is, nor what is love, nor where
God is. Assez. .
(January 14, 1898, Dartmouth University Library)
But two points need to be made about these statements
that seem to support the notion that Conrad believed in
benevolent lies and "saving" illusions. The first is that
there are many other statements which express his high
commitment to the power of the word to be a vehicle of
truth. Although Conrad frequently despaired about the
limits of language and the futility of trying to communi
cate through the word, the fact is that he continued to
write and did not become silent. His moving statement a-
bout the power and importance of the word in the "Preface
to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus,'" its power to make people
see, its power to give at least a glimpse of the truth,
must be set alongside his more despairing statements.
Secondly, a clear distinction needs to be made between
his personal statements in critical works and letters, and
the attitudes expressed in .the major fiction, because they
are not always the same. In this matter D. H. Lawrence's
critical dictum is the one to be followed: "Don't trust
the artist, trust the tale." Conrad does indeed say that
Fredrick Karl, A Reader's Guide to Joseph Conrad
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), pp. 143-44.
208
"the temporal world rests on a few very simple ideas; so
simple that they must be as old as the hills. It rests,
notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity." (VI, xxi)
His ideas embodied in his fiction are, however, anything
but simple. For all Marlowis talk about surface truth
and the restraint of work, the fact is that there are no
major characters in Conrad's fiction who are saved by
clinging to surface truth. Those who do are usually comic
in their ignorance, like McWhirr, or foolish, like the
accountant in Heart of Darkness who is too dull even to
know he is "being assaulted by the powers of darkness,"
or tragic in their attempts to avoid the inner truth, like
Winnie Verloc. Winnie is the central character in Conrad's
fiction who tries to live by surface truth. For Winnie,
"life doesn't bear much looking into." Her refusal to look
beneath the surface and her willingness to believe the lies
of appearances has destructive consequences. Marlow him
self does not follow his own advice. He"is not saved by
any refusal to hear what Kurtz has to say. He is saved be
cause he looks over the edge to see where Kurtz had gone
and he listens to the words of truth that Kurtz speaks
from the depths. His whole journey is a journey into the
depths of a kind of truth that exposes surface truth for
what it is— a lie. Although Conrad does make some state
ments that might suggest he supports the idea of man's need
for saving lies to protect himself from the power of the
209
darkness, the weight of the major fiction is against such
a notion.
The major positive characters in Conrad's works are
not those who cling to surface realities, or embrace
saving illusions, or who are content with benevolent lies.
The positive Characters are precisely those who try to con
front the darkness directly, who expose deception, and who
struggle to speak the truth. Conversely, the negative
characters are those who evade the truth, who hide behind
lies, or who use their gift of expression for destructive
purposes. Captain Allistoun's voice of truth cuts through
the lies the crew of the "Narcissus" tells itself to hide
from the knowledge of death brought by James Wait. Single
ton speaks the truth about Wait with the voice of a simple
and primitive wisdom. Decoud and Monygham are the voices
of truth in Nostromo, telling the truth about exploitation
that masks itself in the words of progress and the develop
ment of "material interests." Stevie stutters out the most
moving truth in The Secret Agent: "Bad world for poor
people." Marlow, who embodies Conrad's own ambivalent
feelings about the dual potentiality of language to illumi
nate or deceive, conducts an exhaustive inquiry into Lord
Jim's case in an attempt to get beneath the surface and
tell the truth about Jim. Marlow in Heart of Darkness
exposes the meaning of the great lies that Western Europe
uses to conceal its exploitation of Africa. Marlow
210
struggles to report the truth from the Inner regions and
reveals the heart of darkness. Even Kurtz, whose words
were for so long a deceitful flow, finally achieves a
moral victory because he cuts through his own lies and
renders a true judgment about his experience: "The
Horror i The Horror!”
The negative characters are the ones who tell them
selves lies or who use their gift of expression to destroy
others. Jim, who had his heroic self-understanding shaped
by reading sentimental romantic adventure stories, never
escapes those lies, and never is able to speak the truth
about his moral failure on the Patna. He tells Marlow
long and elaborate stories about the Patna and Patusan,
but the stories are finally lies, "artful dodges" to pro
tect himself against self-knowledge. Charles Gould, too,
is a victim of self-deception. He puts his faith in
"material interests" to bring about social justice and
order. He believes this euphemism that masks his own will
to power. His continued commitment to his lie about
economic exploitation issuing in moral good, blinds him to
his alienation from his wife and the truth that "material
interests" have destructive consequences.
The demonic characters in Conrad's fiction are
Donkin and Gentleman Brown, who are both masters of lan
guage, but whose eloquence serves the power of darkness.
Donkin's words bring chaos on board the "Narcissus," as
211
he tells the lies the men want to hear about themselves.
Through his "filthy eloquence" he is almost successful in
causing a mutiny. Gentleman Brown destroys Jim's world
with words. In his confrontation with Jim, he speaks with
demonic eloquence and uses his gift of expression to de
ceive and manipulate Jim into letting him go. Through the
power of the word he leads Jim into his most fatal act of
self-deception--believing the lie that Brown is an innocent
victim like himself.
If Marlow and Conrad both detest lies, then how is the
ending of Heart of Darkness to be understood? Marlow's
lie is not an act of "moral courage" or a "higher truth"
which saves the Intended and the rest of civilization. His
lie has in it exactly what he earlier says all lies have—
a "taint of death, a flavor of mortality." His lie is not
a benevolent lie which protects something good in the world,
but is an act of despair in the face of the overwhelming
darkness. Marlow knows he does something terrible in lying
and it makes him "miserable and sick, like biting something
rotten would do."
Marlow's lie must be seen in the context of his whole
way of reacting to his experience with Kurtz. When Marlow
returns to "the supulchral city" he sees people living lies,
and he does not attempt to tell them the dark truth he dis
covered through Kurtz. In fact, he engages in a kind of
lie when he gives the journalist Kurtz's pamphlet on "The
212
Suppression of Savage Customs" with the postscript torn off.
He allows Kurtz's eloquent masking of exploitation to go
off to inspire others to engage in the noble task of en
lightening the savages.
Why doesn’t he tell the truth? He doesn't even try
because his faith in man's ability to live by the truth
has been shattered by hearing Kurtz's truth about the
darkness of the human heart. He sees the pretenses and lies
that those in the sepulchral city live by and he despairs
of their ability to face the truth. Supporting their lies
is not benevolent, but a despairing comment on the depths
of their deception.
So Marlow's lie should be seen, not as an act which
"saves" the Intended, but an act which is a grim judgment
upon her inability to face the truth. The whole encounter
between Marlow and the Intended is a heavily ironic criti-'
cism of her limitations. She is innocent enough and pure
in her devotion to Kurtz, but she is so blind in her purity
that any challenge to her misconceptions would be totally
devastating for her. She is absolutely deceived in every
thing about Kurtz. She thinks she understood him "better
than anyone on earth." She believes all his eloquent lies
about his great work in the Congo, and she will treasure
those lies as the truth for the rest of her life. Such is
the depth of her blindness, and self-deception.
Marlow did not come to her intending to lie to her,
_______________________________________________________________ 213
but probably was going to try to tell her the truth. But
when he sees her ignorance, he is shocked. The nature of
the dialogue suggests that Marlow is struggling to be
truthful, but at the last moment can't bring himself to
speak the shattering truth. When she says she wants to
hear Kurtz's last words because she wants "something— to—
live with," Marlow is on the point of crying at her: "Don't
you hear them?" He calls up those words in his mind, but
actually says: "The last word he pronounced was— your name."-
He tries to tell the truth, but in the actual moment turns
it into a lie. Such a lost struggle is hardly an act of
moral courage. Marlow knows that he has tasted mortality
when he engages in the deeply despairing act of lying be
cause the Intended is too weak to bear the truth. Marlow's
explanation of why he lies is not his rather superficial
argument about the need for surface truth, but the simple,
devastating truth: "It would have been too dark--too dark
altogether. ..." Such a statement is his confession to
his listeners of his own sense of being overwhelmed by the
darkness of the human heart.
But the truth about the darkness is precisely the
truth that Marlow has been trying to convey to his listen
ers throughout his "inconclusive tale." He has tried to
expose the darkness underneath the words of light upon
which men build their worlds. The truth about Western
Europe's exploitation of other countries, the truth about
_______________________________________________________________ 214
Kurtz's eloquent concealing of evil in the name of good,
the truth about the Intended's blind innocence, are all
truths that are too dark— too dark altogether. But these
are the truths that need to be said, and Marlow says them.
As Seymour Gross points out, there is at least one listener
among the group who understands Marlow's tale, the first
narrator.'*' The rest of the group seems ready to settle
back into their comfortable lies. The Director doesn't
respond to Marlow's story, and shifts attention to the
sea: "We have lost the first of the ebb." But the nar
rator understands that the point of Marlow's tale is not
to save them by preserving their illusions, but by having
them confront the darkness. The narrator has gotten the
message because when he looks out i'at the sea what he sees
is not light, but darkness: "The offing was barred by a
black band of clouds, and the tranquil water way leading
to the uttermost ends of the earthfflowed sombre under an
overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense
darkness."
J. Hillis Miller suggests that "The aim of all
Conrad's fiction is to destroy in the reader his bondage
to illusion, and to give him a glimpse of the truth, how
ever dark and disquieting that truth may be. His work might
"A Further Note on the Function of the Frame in
'Heart of Darkness,'" Heart of Darkness (New York: W. W.
Norton and Company, 1971), p. 227.
__________ i___________________________________________________215
be called an effort of demystification.1,1 To change the
metaphor from the visual to the verbal: the aim of
Conrad's fiction is to attack the reader's bondage to lies,
to expose the abuse and misuse of language, to explore the
consequences of the failure &f communication and to offer
the reader a clear expression of truth however threatening
that truth may be. Conrad in his fiction makes lying a
destructive misuse of the uniquely human gift, and makes
the reader smell the stench of death that accompanies such
abuse of the power of the word.
Conrad is a reluctant voice because he knows the power
of the word. He knows that words can be a powerful means
of violation and destruction. He knows that words can be
the "great foes of reality," the means men use to protect
themselves and others from the truth. He is reluctant to
speak. But he does speak. He does believe that words
also have the power to illuminate the darkness, to reveal
at least a glimpse of the truth. Perhaps the most im
portant truth Conrad voices for us is the truth about our
capacity to abuse and misuse language, our use of words to
hide ourselves from the darkness of our hearts.
Throughout his life as a writer, a man committed to
the power of the word, Conrad struggled with his own use
of language and continually asked himself if he was telling
^ Poets of Reality (New York: Atheneum, 1969), pp.
18-19.
216
the truth. He was never sure. But his readers are sure.
His judgment about Emilia Gould's words is finally the
truth about his own: "The wisdom of the heart having no
concern with the erection or demolition of theories any
more than with the defense of prejudices, has no random
words at its command. The words it pronounces have the
value of acts of integrity, tolerance, and compassion."
217
LIST OF WORKS CITED
Boyle, Ted E. "Marlow's ’Lie.'" Heart of Darkness. Ed.
Robert Kimbrough. New York: W. W. Norton and Company,
1971.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. "The Lesser Nightmare." Heart of
Darkness. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: W. W.
Norton and Company, 1971.
Conrad, Joseph. Complete Works. 2 6 vols. Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1925.
Evans, Robert. "A Further Comment on Heart of Darkness."
Heart of Darkness. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York:
W. W. Norton and Company, 1971.
Fleishman, Avrom. Conrad1s Politics. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1967.
Gross, Seymour. "A Further Note on the Function of the
Frame in Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness. New
York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1971.
Guerard, Albert. Conrad the Novelist. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1965.
Karl, Fredrick. A Reader's Guide to Joseph Conrad. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
Leavis, F. R. The Great Tradition. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954.
Miller, J. Hillis. Poets of Reality. New York: Atheneum,
1969.
Palmer, John. "Introduction." Twentieth Century Interpre
tations of The Nigger of the "Narcissus." Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969.
Reid, Stephen. "The 'Unspeakable Rites1 in Heart of Dark-
ness." Modern Fiction Studies, IX, No. 4 (Winter,
1963-64), 347-56.
218
Tillyard, E. M. W. "The Secret Agent Reconsidered."
Conrad. Englewood Cliffs/-New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
1966.
Warren, Robert Penn. "Introduction." Hostromo. New York:
The Modern Library, 1951.
Zabel, Morton Dauwen. "Introduction.” The Shadow-Line and
Two Other Tales. Garden City, New York: Doubleday
Anchor Books, 1959.
219

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