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The Lagoon: review
The Lagoon: analisis
Presentation, by Natalia Huertas
Biography
Jozef Teodor Konrad
Nałęcz-Korzeniowski was born on December 3, 1857, in Berdychiv, Podolia, back
then Poland occupied by the Russians, now Ukraine.
His father was
dedicated to writing and translating Shakespeare and Victor Hugo and at the
same time was a political activist in the service of the Polish nationalist
movement, for this reason he suffered a sentence to forced labour in Siberia.
His mother died of tuberculosis during the years of exile and four years later
his father died.
At the age of 17 he travelled
to Italy and then to Marseille where he enlisted as a sailor aboard the Mont
Blanc ship. By this experience, he found his passion for adventure, travel, the
marine world and boats.
In 1878, he moved to England to escape military conscription, there he worked as a crewman on ships iin the ports of Lowestof and Newcastle, he spended his free time reading Shakespeare and because of that at the age of 21 years he mastered English and writing all his work in this language.
After obtaining
English citizenship, he changed his name to Joseph Conrad.
When he was 40, he
settled in an English country house and wrote regularly. What he had experienced
until then had given him enough material to write several biographies. He has
been one of the best English writers of all time.
But he was not loved
by everyone, in 1975 a Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe called him a racist; he
said that his book Heart of Darkness was an offensive book full
of degrading stereotypes about Africa and Africans.
He died in
Bishopsbourne, England, on August 3, 1924, at the age of 66.
The Story
This story is full of
symbolisms and reflects the reality of the world we live, a constant struggle
of our thoughts and the moral ambiguity that exists when we have to make
transcendental decisions for our life.
In this story the
author reflects the conflict he felt between, reality and illusion, betrayal
and guilt, and guilt versus honour and heroism.
- Reality versus illusion:
through a narrator we can see the difference between what characters believe
themselves and what they actually are.
- Betrayal versus guilt:
when Arsat's brother had fallen and Arsat didn't help him, he ran away with his
love, and because of that his brother was murdered.
- Guilt versus honour
and heroism: after Arsat's love died, he decided to get some kind of revenge,
this way he could regain his honour and his loyalty to his brother.
Literary Figure
Conrad said that his
aspiration had always been "a meticulous narration of the truth of
thoughts and deeds"
In this story I found many words that define a contrast
- black / white
- heroism / cowardice
- reality / illusion
- light / darkness
which is a typical
characteristic in the stories that Conrad has written.
Conrad's descriptions
of the high seas, the Malay Archipelago, and South America were based on his experiences
and observations. For everything else that he couldn't delve into, he used
literary sources.
In his novels he represented
singular universes, he strove to create a sense of place, his characters often
represented his destiny in isolated circumstances.
Fun Facts
One of the most
watched films of the last decades, Apocalypse Now, is based on Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness.
THEMES / QUESTIONS
Characters, plot, scenery.
Do you think possible writing well in a language
that isn't your mother tongue?
Exiled writers: to write about your country, is
it better to be an exile?
Some say that all the literary works are
autobiographical. Is it possible to write something completely
non-autobiographical?
According to Sebald, Conrad said he felt his
only presence in the Congo was already a crime. Do you feel guilty of the world
problems? That is, if you are a man, do you feel guilty of injustices against women? If you are white, do you feel
guilty of injustices against black people?
Is it possible a friendship between opressors
and opressed ones?
Is exotism a kind of colonialism?
In some of Conrad books, the protagonist tries
to get redemption for some past guilty deeds doing some kind of heroicity. Do
you think is it possible to redeem completely our past mistakes? How?
VOCABULARY
wake, astern, pile, demeanor, squat, gnaw, sow, ember, withstand, mournful, leap, fitful, wreath, ripple
W.G. Sebald, in his book The Rings of Saturn, writes a chapter about a period of Conrad’s life and about the singular meeting of Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement. Roger Casement was a British diplomat and an Irish conspirator who worked for the independence of Ireland. There’s a novel by Vargas Llosa, El sueño del celta, where he relates the life of this fighter for the freedom of his country. Well, it’s curious to see how we can understand better situations that don’t have any effect on us or that are very far away from us than situations that are nearer in space or time. But, to go back to our topic: Casement denounced the atrocities committed by the Belgian companies and colons under the rule of king Leopold II during the Congo conquest, and Conrad meet Casement in his travel up the river Congo at the end of the 19th century, and they agreed completely about this point. There’s a book about this horror: El fantasma del rey Leopoldo. Now, when you consider why Belgium or other countries became all of a sudden very rich, you have to suspect...
In his book, Sebald explains that Conrad had to live a very adventurous life. When he was five years old, his father left his business to dedicate entirely to the cause of the independence of Poland, at this moment under the Russian Empire. So, very young already, he saw conspirators, secret conversations, mysterious people, intellectuals, poets, writers trying to overthrow a foreign government imposed upon their country. In this period, the supporters of the nationalist party wore black clothes (that was forbidden by the tsar) as a sign of mourning for the repressed people. In Ireland, in the past, the British government also forbade the green colour. And you know already about yellow. But Conrad’s father (a writer, poet and translator) was arrested and exiled to a very cold town. In consequence of the conditions of this exile, his mother died (she was 32) and four years later his father (he was 49). So Conrad was an early orphan and lived under the tuition of his uncle. However, he got a very good education in languages (e.g. French) and sciences.
When he was 17 he expressed his desire to go to sea, to be a seaman. This was the most extraordinary calling for a member of the Polish gentry and for somebody who had never seen the sea. So she went to Marseilles and worked as a sailor. But, when he wasn’t at sea, he stayed at Marseilles and meet very peculiar people: bohemians, adventures, etc., and... Spanish Legitimists! There were machinations, conspirators, illegal trade, smuggling, etc. Conrad was involved in many of these things and even had an affair with a woman called Doña Rita, an ex-goat shepherd from the mountains of Catalonia, or perhaps Paula, an ex-goose girl from Hungary, (at the present we still ignore if she was the same person); she was Prince Don Carlos’s lover. At the crisis of this love affair, in 1877, Conrad was shot by a rival, or shot himself, in the chest, but he survived.
He went aboard again, now to Constantinople, and then to England, where he lived and learn English for 12 years. At this moment he went back to Poland to visit his family and there he applied for a job with the Société Anonyme Belgue pour le Commerce du Haut Congo. They offered the command of a steamer to go up the Congo River. At the time the Congo was a vast unmapped land. The Société established there a slavery system of work where 500.000 people died every year for exhaustion and cruelties; however, in 10 years, the value of the company shares was ten times higher.
Conrad realized then that, by his mere presence in the Congo, he was guilty of that horror.
After some months, he went back to Europe completely down because of what he had witnessed.
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