Conrads Chief Preoccupation in his Stories is the Effects of Social and Economic Forces on Human Individuals Essay Example For Students

Conrads Chief Preoccupation in his Stories is the Effects of Social and Economic Forces on Human Individuals Essay Joseph Conrad, or should I say Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine in 1857. His parents were Polish patriots and died when he was a child. As a result he was raised by his uncle. At the age of seventeen, Conrad left his uncle to begin his maritime career with the French navy. In 1878 he joined a British ship and he became a British citizen in 1886. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to his writing, in English his third language. Conrad describes himself as being concerned with the ideal value of things, events and people, and he defined his task as a writer as by the power of the written word before all, to make you see. But what is it that Conrad wants us to see? His work is full of references to fate, destiny and the unexplainable mysterious, but because they are so transparent and obvious maybe we should look harder at the stories and the way in which the stories are told, and we should try to read the subtext, the underlying story, to find what the ideal value of the each story is and what Conrad wants to make us see. In his introduction to Typhoon, Paul Kirschner quotes from many of Conrads letters, to his friends, publishers and agents, and in these letters Conrad speaks constantly of his ever-mounting debts. While writing Tomorrow he wrote to his agent J. B. Pinter of his anguish as his familys breadwinner and the weariness of having to write for money, and according to Kirschner he must have looked back on his sea-life as the very essence of freedom. So clearly economic difficulty was not far from his thoughts, as obviously being an Eastern European living in England social issues were also important to him. It is to the sea that we go for the setting of Typhoon, a book which has been praised as a masterpiece of clarity and good sense .. it is without mystifying elements an obvious directness of language and point of view. The theme of Typhoon may be MacWhirrs failure to understand figure of speech so maybe Conrad is encouraging us to look beneath the text, to a possible sub-plot with another meaning cleverly hidden within the obvious sea yarn story. The story centres around the contrast between two very exaggerated characters MacWhirr the practical Captain and Jukes his highly imaginative Chief Mate. Both Captain and Chief Mate serve aboard the Nan-Shan, a steamer on its way to the port of Fu-Chau with cargo and 200 coolies chinese workers returning home to their villages. Conrad raises the issue of race/racism to emphasise the material reason for the journey. For example the Siamese flag incident, the Siamese flag represents all things un-english to Jukes which he distrusts and fears, an otherness seen as the coolies. Jukes questions its use to MacWhirr on the ship but does not say that he objects to it because the ship is crewed by British officers, but MacWhirr misses Jukes racist innuendo, and he simply refers to his flag book to ascertain that the flag is indeed the correct Siamese flag. Jukes raises the nationalistic meaning of the flag again later on in the book through his fear of the coolies who are described as a bulky mass and like bees on a branch, he says they will fly at our throats isnt a British ship now he damnd Siamese flag, however this is really an example of Jukes fear of the coolies, fear of the unknown, the incomprehensible, he used them again to hide his fear of the oncoming Typhoon, but is corrected by MacWhirr for calling them passengers, not because they are coolies but because they are not on board as fee-paying passengers, and therefore should be regarded as cargo. Charles Dickens Great Expectations EssayAmy doesnt mean to harm Yanko, after all she was the only person to show Yanko compassion apart from Swaffer who gave Yanko an acre of land after Yanko saved his grandchild from drowning, which prompted Dr. Kennedy to comment no power on earth could prevent them from getting married, and it was his exoticism which attracted her to him in the first place. But Amy cannot break with the norms and traditions of her society and this leads her to distrust Yanko, especially with the arrival of their child, to whom Yanko taught songs from his homeland. But why did she desert him when he most needed her. Earlier in the book we see a formidable forewarning of events to come, when Amy who was very fond of a talking parrot which belonged to the house where she worked, ran out of the house and blocked her ears, when the parrot was attacked by the cat and screamed for help. Amy was fascinated by and loved that exotic bird, but she did not fully understand it and therefore deserted it and allowed it to die. In the throws of death Yanko called out for water, but delirious from his fever he calls out in his native tongue, Amy did not understand, so she took the baby and ran away, leaving him to die. Dr. Kennedys inability to understand Amys actions leads him to describe their domestic tragedy as akin to a Greek tragedy. But it need not be exaggerated so, Amy is simply a product of her community, she is conditioned by the norms and values of her community which she cannot give up, just as Yanko cannot give up his. According to Lawrence Graver this is another theme of the story, the inability of simple minded altruism to calms the basic fear of the unfamiliar or to heal the rift arising from irreconcilable differences between people. Dr. Kennedy asks why Yanko was cast out mysteriously by the sea to perish in the supreme disaster of loneliness and despair. According to Paul Kirschner the great irony of Amy Foster is that Yankos heart failure was not the cause of his death; it was the failure of the hearts of all those with whom he associated, including Dr. Kennedy, who certifying heart failure, cannot see the real cause. Conrad is a foreigner in England by birth, and debt-ridden whilst writing these stories it is clear that he had something he wanted to say regarding the economic and social world he now found himself in. The references to fate and destiny only serve to make the unbelievable social and economic conditions even more appalling than they already are, when people involved in events especially when characters like the scientific Dr. Kennedy cannot comprehend what his own society has become and the detrimental effects it had on human individuals like Yanko.