The Theme Of Voyage In The Early 20th Century English Literature Joseph Conrad & E.m.forster

INTRODUCTION

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines the word, in our case the countable noun, “voyage” as being “a long journey in a ship or spacecraft”. This “long journey” usually meant—especially by mid-twentieth century—a trip by sea, passages through air or space being made possible in more recent times. Within this specific context it is possible, nowadays as it was back then, to talk about expeditions and voyages or journeys of discovery. Their aim is to bring to light and to public attention new findings and information about places, people, wildlife and so on. We can thus say this kind of voyages are establishing new frontiers of knowledge and understanding for the human race.

Given its innate nature of danger and uncertainty, the relation between “voyage” and literature was and remains a fruitful one. A voyage did not merely imply the simple crossing by sea between two or more points on the map. As it was previously stated, such an endeavour had its own high dose of risk—gales, tempests, the danger of sinking, the possibility of encountering pirates or of mutinies aboard the ship, and many other unforeseen occurrences. However, for a long period in our history this was one of the few, if not the only way of covering large geographical distances (a voyage by sea between Britain and India for instance used to take six months). Taking all this into consideration, we can safely say that every voyage was one of discovery—if it weren’t a strictly scientific one, then it was likely to be one of self-discovery.

Why self-discovery? What does it have to do with everything? The answer is to be found in the first part of the definition, i.e. “a long journey” and in the many dangers it implied. When having to deal with the unforeseen or with perilous situations, human beings sometimes manage to marshal their inner-resources in ways they didn’t even know they were capable of before. Also, the time interval spent between departure and destination allowed travellers to think about themselves and their own lives. They could thus take a more relaxed and more objective point of view on things, whether bygones, developing situations or things yet to come. If the final point of their voyage also meant a new beginning in life, this psychological inner-trip, taking place in parallel with the voyage per se, would acquire new depths and more profound connotations for those involved. The uncertainty raised by starting it all anew always puts one in battle with oneself—with one’s fears, possibilities and limitations.

If such was the case of passengers, what was that of a ship’s crew? Sailors and ship’s captains have generally been regarded as men of a special sort—fearless, intrepid and adventurous, their choice of a career elevated them in the eyes of most “common men” to the status of heroes and real masters of their destiny. It was them who had to actively face and overcome all dangers and obstacles in order to land the ship safely. The life of every single passenger on board was their responsibility, so each voyage they made came along with an inherent pressure upon their shoulders. If something went awfully wrong the captain would be held responsible. So, we can safely say that being a seaman was not to be very envied and that, in most cases, such a choice in somebody’s career meant a forfeiting of their safety to the whims of fate and nature.

There is also another fact that must not be overviewed: many sailors were in fact rogue elements—former convicts, men unable of social adaptation, individuals with a shady and obscure past, and the like. For them to be part of any ship’s crew improved the chances of things taking a turn for the worse. There were also those who had taken a conscientious choice for the “dark side” of life at sea, pirates and buccaneers. Seamen as their career-seeking counterparts, pirates were the embodiment of the chance given to the violent side of human character, to the rebellious and untamed best lurking inside each of us by the vast expanses of water. They were the nightmare of anybody engaged in a sea voyage, sailors and passengers alike.

It was in fact this dichotomy between the glorious image of sailors and their constantly-threatened existence, between the dreams of someone who had idealized life at sea and the every-day struggle for survival it implies, between high hopes and shattered illusions, between the brave and honest captain and the merciless raider—either as two separate individuals or as two identities coexisting in the same person—that has inspired poets, novelists, playwrights, musicians and painters in choosing voyages as a very important theme of their artistic expression. As far as written, non-poetic works are concerned, the theme of voyage takes us not only inside a thrilling adventure, but also inside the characters’ personality and psyche. The aim of this paper is to capture a glimpse of this vast and complex theme, as it is presented in the works of two early twentieth century English literature authors: Joseph Conrad and E.M. Forster.

JOSEPH CONRAD— HEROES OF A TRAGIC DESTINY

Joseph Conrad, born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (3 December 1857, Berdyczow, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire – 3 August 1924, Bishopsbourne, England) was the only son of Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewa Bobrowska, both members of the Polish nobility resisting the Russian rule of the lands inhabited by Poles. Because of his parents’ political activism, the family moved a lot, Conrad’s mother actually dying in exile in the northern parts of Russia when he was seven years old. His father’s death followed shortly, when he was eleven, and the young boy was left in the care of his maternal uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski. Five years later, at the age of sixteen, he began his adventures at sea, joining a French ship at Marseilles.

He spent the next four years of his life as sailor in and out of Marseilles, a period during which he got accustomed with a diverse variety of human experiences: social, professional, cultural and existential, all culminating with a failed suicide attempt. Such experiences, coupled with his ocean voyages—both as a passenger and later as a crew—to the West Indies and South America provided Conrad with the emotional material subsequently used in his works. In 1886 he is granted British nationality and is nowadays considered one of the greatest novelists in English, although this was actually his third language (Polish was the mother tongue and French the second language, which he was said to speak without an accent).

Conrad wrote both stories and novels, most of the times the action taking place in a nautical setting. From the point of view of the characters he constructs, Joseph Conrad can be seen as an early modernist: he builds dual personalities, creating thus central figures around which the action evolves, but never heroes animated by a superior calling or consciousness. His characters are ordinary individuals knowing how to take advantage of the chances they receive, knowing how to make the best of their qualities, in some cases trying to reinvent themselves and running away from their former selves or from what they perceive as unpardonable mistakes, always engaged in a fierce psychological battle with their shortcomings or their illusions of fame and greatness.

Conrad’s view of the human nature is a pessimistic one—life always manages to get the best of us, everybody dies defeated in one way or another by their short passage in this world. Death is omnipresent in his writings, the deceit of triumph being awarded to the basest and the vilest of us. Tragedy would thus be the characterizing element of his works. And it is to this unavoidable fate that his characters are attracted to, as we shall exemplify from now on.

Heart of Darkness—Travelling Towards Alienation

The novel develops as a story told by a sailor, Charles Marlow, to an audience comprising a group of his peers, a Director of Companies, an Accountant, a Lawyer, and the anonymous narrator who makes his presence felt at the beginning and final part of this frame narrative. They are all aboard the Nellie, a ship docked near Gravesend, on the lower reaches of the Thames. Marlow’s account describes a personal experience which took place in his earlier professional life, when he had been temporarily employed by a Belgian company to find and rescue Mister Kurtz, a famous German ivory collector who was still on the payroll of the afore-mentioned company but had been missing for some time. In order to carry out his mission, Marlow is appointed captain of an old and shabby steamboat which he has to navigate up an unnamed African river.

Throughout this journey—up the river towards the Company's Outer Station headquarters and then inland to the Central Station—Marlow forms an opinion of his own, unfavourable towards what he perceives as being the realities of colonial military and economic exploitation. Such a standpoint actually pierces through Joseph Conrad’s work which often describes racially-segregated former or existing colonial societies. Each time he presents a white-dominated world but does not generally portray the European colonial powers as heartless and evil conquerors seeking to annihilate other races. Conrad most likely tended to draw an emotional parallel between the African tribes under European rule and his native Poland which at the time no longer existed as an independent state, having been divided between its more powerful imperial neighbours—Prussia, Austria and Russia.

The choice of title becomes clear as the novel is read: to begin with, it is a detailed remembrance of a danger-ridden journey into the unknown: the big, snake-like river had coiled itself around Marlow’s imagination ever since he had first seen it on a map. And he would now go right into the centre of it, an area which on the Belgian trading company’s map was represented by a large patch of yellow, meaning little was known of it. The last known whereabouts of the mysterious ivory collector were there, inside that hardly-explored area. Marlow, a wandering seaman—he did not serve as a regular sailor of any ship—seemed like the perfect choice for this find-and-rescue mission. As far as he was concerned, his main motivation was to fulfill the obsessive desire of sailing up the river that had been haunting his imagination for the better part of his life.

So he decides to embark upon the adventure he had eagerly been awaiting. The enthusiasm would, however, be short-lived: arriving at the Central Station he finds out that the steamboat he was appointed captain of had been damaged just a couple of days before his arrival. He also becomes disappointed with the crew, “pilgrims” who only wanted to acquire a higher status within the Company and were unable to give to their expedition any other meaning except the strictly pecuniary one. Being forced to remain ashore for some months until the repairs were over, he realizes that, although Mister Kurtz was a first-class agent of the Company, he was actually a long way from being appreciated, and was rather resented. How was then his assignment going to develop and eventually end?

Once the journey is underway, the reader is able to comprehend that the heart of darkness meant not only the obscurity of the black continent’s inner jungles, but also the obscurity of the human soul. Deep within the waterways of the meandering river death acquired other meanings: for the “cannibals”—Africans working for the trading company—aboard the ship, affected like the rest of the crew by a scarcity in provisions, the Captain’s decision of throwing overboard a dead Black, killed as a result of a land-attack, was a senseless one: they, i.e. the other natives, could have eaten him. However, it is not this kind of behaviour the author insists upon as being of a dark nature. The gloom and shadows of a forgotten humanity are to be found in another meaning except the strictly pecuniary one. Being forced to remain ashore for some months until the repairs were over, he realizes that, although Mister Kurtz was a first-class agent of the Company, he was actually a long way from being appreciated, and was rather resented. How was then his assignment going to develop and eventually end?

Once the journey is underway, the reader is able to comprehend that the heart of darkness meant not only the obscurity of the black continent’s inner jungles, but also the obscurity of the human soul. Deep within the waterways of the meandering river death acquired other meanings: for the “cannibals”—Africans working for the trading company—aboard the ship, affected like the rest of the crew by a scarcity in provisions, the Captain’s decision of throwing overboard a dead Black, killed as a result of a land-attack, was a senseless one: they, i.e. the other natives, could have eaten him. However, it is not this kind of behaviour the author insists upon as being of a dark nature. The gloom and shadows of a forgotten humanity are to be found in an altogether different kind of soul.

To Marlow’s eyes, the scenery unfolding before him as he made his passage towards the Company’s station had been a desolate one: luxuriant forests had given way to broken machinery parts spread here and there, the natural surroundings were being literally destroyed by periodic demolition explosions, and the working conditions for native Africans were, to his sensibility, appalling: the reader is presented with an image of people in chains, worked to death by the European company. This is in fact the hardest anti-colonialism stance in the entire work: the conquest of the earth mostly meant “taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves”. It is from this point forward that the psychological trip begins to unravel, first inside Marlow’s character, for it to culminate in the tragedy of human existence presented to us as the novel reaches its climax.

Also, during the steamboat’s advance up the serpentine river, the seaman felt more closely attached to the African members of the crew, whom he seemed to understand better in their simple, unsophisticated ways. Not even the desire of eating a fallen comrade disgusted him as much as one might have expected. Their behaviour, although primitive and uncouth, had something of an unspoiled frankness in it. We can see here how the sequence of events leaves its mark not upon a detached observer, but upon an introspective and meditative character, whose inner-struggle becomes an asset in understanding the depths of the human soul, how capable it is of falling into an abyss of folly and self-delusion when given the proper chance.

As the boat was penetrating deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness, the European members of the crew would experience a vast array of thrills and feelings. At night they could hear a roll of drums behind the curtain of trees. But they were not able to tell what the sounds meant: were those calls to war, messages of peace, prayer callings? What was the “prehistoric man” trying to tell them: was he threatening them; fearing them; greeting or welcoming them? Nobody knew. They had to stick to their route, to face the darkness of the virgin wilderness, to accomplish their mission despite their fears and tribulations. They were down-right explorers although the only one who could grasp the full complexity of their situation seemed to be Marlow.

This episode, taking place in a nocturnal setting, is the one that might have influenced our storyteller to compare the Dark Continent to Britain before its conquest at the hands of the Romans—even London, the world’s biggest and wealthiest city in those days had been a dark and savage place prior to the Roman conquest. As far as the latter were concerned Britons were savages, just as Africans were to European colonists. In light of these things, Marlow’s wish to interpret and decipher the roars coming from behind the trees becomes perfectly understandable. Upon discovering Kurtz’s eloquently-written report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, Marlow has his first contact with the dark side of human nature, portrayed from now on by the German ivory collector—a footnote, added some time after the completion of the report read: “Exterminate all the brutes!”.

At this point he no longer believes Kurtz was worth the lives already lost or still at risk in the effort of finding him. Just as the desire to drop everything and turn back was becoming prevalent among the crew, the Central Station comes into view. There, on those banks of the river, an awkward-looking man waves at the ship. The colorful patches on his clothing made him look like a harlequin. The fair, boyish face lit-up at the sight of English tobacco. He was a Russian, son of an arch-priest, who had run away from school and made a living as crew member on a number of ships: Russian, English and Dutch, before meeting Mister Kurtz. Indeed, Kurtz was still alive but very ill. Despite his physical condition, the German ivory collector was worshiped as a god by local African tribes and fervently admired by the Russian for his insights into love, life and justice.

The Russian’s fanatical devotion to Kurtz, although disturbing, made Marlow realize that the collector had gone mad. However, the depths of his insanity would prove shocking: severed heads on stakes surrounded his encampment and the natives honoured him in “unspeakable rites”, including human sacrifice. He had become the embodiment of all that is evil and dark in man’s desire to achieve greatness. His hold over the natives’ minds and souls was done by means of inventions common for centuries to every European: gunpowder, rifles and the like. His authority was supreme and of a primitive violence and brutality. He was receiving guns and gunpowder, alongside anything else he needed to survive deep within the jungle in exchange for the ivory he was delivering but now, due to his sickness, the exchange had suddenly stopped, a fact which triggered the Company’s interest as to his whereabouts.

The difficulty of Marlow’s mission also became clear: Kurtz had to be taken back to Europe for he was now on his deathbed. But how would the Blacks worshipping him react? Would they simply allow the crew to take their god away and leave? At first Kurtz seems willing to get back to the Old Continent and sends the tribesmen away. The pilgrims take him to the steamer on an improvised stretcher. The natives, who had seemed ready for battle, are mute spectators to the show, from behind the dense bushes. Only one of them, a woman, a queen-like figure of the savages walks along the shore and stops next to the steamer. She is a clearly distinctive character among the Africans, set apart not only by her beauty, but also by what it seems to be a close relation with Marlow. Her raising the arms above the head and talking into the bushes are signs of a deep feeling, a mixture of despair, resignation and hurt pride.

However, during the night, as Marlow dozes off while on guard, Kurtz tries to escape and remain hidden—he actually did not want to leave the station because his plans had not been fully accomplished. Marlow manages to catch up with him in the forest and takes him back to the steamer. There, in an advanced state of pain Kurtz entrusts Marlow with his papers, including a picture of a woman, his fiancée, whom he called his Intended. The following day they prepare for departure. The natives, among which the “queen” was a remarkable presence, gather once again on the shore and begin to shout. Seeing the pilgrims loading their weapons, Marlow sounds the steam whistle and the Blacks dissipate. All but the woman who remains grounded as a statue, with outstretched arms. The twenty-five year old Russian had already parted ways with Marlow and the steamer, taking advantage of the favourable current, begins its way back from the darkness of the jungle.

Behind it remains the desolate scenery of the Central Station, the young Russian who, according to his own sayings had plenty of friends among the simple “savages”, and an “unsound” method of trading, as the manager of the Company put it. By his own accounts, this manager was fully aware of the way in which Kurtz was behaving towards the Africans, knew about the rows of “rebellious” heads put on display but took no action whatsoever because, up to that moment, ivory had been sent regularly and a lucrative business was thriving. Before disappearing deeper into the heart of the wild forest, the Russian confessed to Marlow that the attack against their ship had been ordered by Kurtz. However he dares not criticize his leader’s decision, nor does his admiration towards the “great man” diminish. Marlow was under the influence of all this information upon receiving the papers from Kurtz. But, somehow it would no longer matter.

His health having worsened beyond hope, Kurtz dies uttering a creepy, ambiguous cry: “The horror! The horror!”. What kind of a horror was he talking about: the horror of his actions and deeds culminating in the pleasure felt upon committing brutal murders? The horror of colonialism against native societies, as presented in this novel? The horror of our fragile and limited existence or that of “visions” had on his deathbed? One can only make educated guesses. Trying to act as nothing had happened, Marlow joins the other “pilgrims of progress” for dinner. Their company had already become an everyday burden to him. These “mean and greedy phantoms” were nothing else but hollow moulds of human beings, in a constant pursuit of material interest. The pilgrims looked upon him with disfavour as well. Marlow was getting incresingly ill and the Company’s staff had already numbered him with the death.

Before his passing away, while on board the steamer, Kurtz had got a grip upon Marlow’s thoughts: ghost-like, withering away and shrinking in height more and more so as to befit his name—in German meaning „short”— Kurtz was of an impenetrable darkness. An eloquence falling upon a most tenebrous soul, an unquenching thirst for wealth, fame and power, an unmatched ego that once seemed immune to failure as it was to morality, the god who had brought „thunder” and „lighting” to the depths of Africa had been vanquished by an equally powerful and destructive horror. A horror which, although the light was within a foot of his eyes, made him remark once: „I am lying here in the dark waiting for death”. And death did in fact come almost immediately, all to Marlow’s fascination. As already mentioned before, Marlow did not break the news to the pilgrims. While they were eating, the „manager’s boy”, an African, put his head in the doorway and said, in a scathing tone: „Mistah Kurtz—he dead.”

Next day the pilgrims burried his body in a muddy hole, confident that Marlow would follow on shortly. However, the latter had other plans—he battled death and did not join Kurtz. Upon his return to Europe, Marlow finds himself embittered and in the position of distributing the papers Kurtz had entrusted him with: to a Company’s representative—a clean-shaved man with an official manner—he gives the work entitle Suppression of Savage Customs (after having torn off the postscriptum), to a man claiming to be a cousin of Kurtz some family letters and other papers of no specific importance and to a journalist, anxious to know more about the fate of his “dear colleague”, Marlow gives a Report for publication, should he see fit to do so. He had been left with some letters and the girl’s portrait, whom he decides to find and hand her over in person those memorabilia.

Upon entering the woman’s house he remembers Kurtz lying on the stretcher and opening his mouth voraciously, as if ready to devour the earth and all humanity. That vision seemed to enter the house with him. Although more than a year had passed since his death, Kurtz’s Intended was still in mourning and it seemed as if she would continue to mourn forever more. Her deep sorrow not only made the room look darker and gloomier, but also had a powerful effect on Marlow, who, when asked what Kurtz said before dying, answered that his last word was her name. Marlow was simply unable to tell her the truth. So ends his story, in the boat floating on a tranquil waterway, under an overcast sky leading into the heart of an immense darkness.

As one can plainly see from the above summary, „Heart of Darkness” is not just an adventure inside a little-known geographical territory, it is also an account of the abyss human beings can sink into: an eary abyss of grandeur, self-deception and involution towards an unscrupulous beast hidden in each of us. Kurtz was not the epitome of a stupid brute in power. If his veneration by the Blacks was understandable due to their primitive state of society, his hold over the young Russian, over the Company’s officials who, though they resented him, acknowledged his good work, over the man claiming to be his cousin for whom Kurtz was a musical genius, over the journalist for whom he would have been a great politician due to his oratorical talents, over Marlow whose imagination he continued to haunt after his death and of course over his fiancée, set him apart from the common men.

In light of all this, “Heart of Darkness” represents first and foremost the lowest form of outer-manifestations the human spirit is capable of: the utmost contempt for life, the highest egocentrism possible, the absolute disdain for nature and the most refined pursuit of one’s own interests, with no regard for those of others. Although present “in the flesh” only towards the end, Kurtz’s presence is felt throughout the novel. He is the central figure around which the plot develops and his absence makes him acquire an even more important status. As we are left to understand from the accounts of others he truly was a special kind of man, endowed with higher intellect and a vast array of talents. He could have made a name for himself even if he had chosen the path of morality. It is his conscientious choice of evil and his fitting death that make him a tragic anti-hero, defeated by his own lust and illusions of grandeur, in stark contrast to the heroes of classical tragedies. Kurtz therefore becomes a pathological case, which makes “Heart of Darkness” an excellent psychological thriller.

Lord Jim—How to Die Defeated by Yourself

A good example of mixture between the classical and modern compositions in a novel, “Lord Jim” is the story of shattered romantic illusions and expectations, of a special soul at war not only with its own self but also with life’s surprises and hindrances, a Shakespearian account of life and death, of one man’s fall and eventual demise. The main character of this literary work is a young British seaman named Jim. His surname is never disclosed, which can be seen indicative of the fact that everybody have their own innate, idealized picture of personal life and achievements thereof, ardent desires and expectations to be fulfilled. As the author himself confesses in the preliminary note to this novel, he was puzzled when a friend of his, returning from Italy, told him a woman there had found it “morbid”. After an hour of anxious thought, Conrad concluded the woman was not Italian—no Latin temperament would have found anything morbid in the bitter acceptance of lost honour—and wondered whether she was European at all.

European or not, the fact is of lesser importance here. What should be made known is that, as the author himself states, Jim is not the “the product of coldly perverted thinking”. He is in fact the type of a modern romantic hero whose strictly individualized sense of morality and duty make him uncomfortable with everyday reality, a wanderer battling the biggest mistake of his life, which always catches up with him and ultimately seals his faith. His idealism is obvious right from the start—Jim had chosen a naval career as a result of reading popular sea literature. A promising and talented young man he quickly rises through the ranks to become chief mate on the Patna, a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. However, his first and foremost obstacle in the way of success is himself: always in a dreamy state, wanting to be a hero like those of his readings, Jim fails to act as such when put to the test for the very first time.

Although weather conditions and night visibility were good, the vessel hits an underwater object and begins to sink. Clearly disturbed and not thinking straight, Jim, along with the rest of the crew, abandons the sleeping pilgrims to their fate. However the Patna does not sink and its passengers are saved from drowning, of which Jim and his colleagues find out when they themselves are picked up by the Avondale, a British ship. It is at this point that our hero reveals his true inner-self, his sense of morality and justice: Jim is the only crew member who did not run away from judicial responsibility. As a result of the trial he is stripped of his officer's certification. It is here, during the judicial proceedings, that Jim first meets Charles Marlow, sea captain and eloquent storyteller, whom we already know for his adventure as commander of a steamboat up an unnamed African river in “Heart of Darkness”.

Cautious and mistrusting at first, Marlow soon gets to know and feel sympathy for the young sailor who was angry at himself for failing to act as he should have, not only as seaman but also as “hero”. Despite all this Marlow ends up appreciating and befriending his younger counterpart whom he sees as “one of us”. He probably saw in Jim something that had recognized in himself—a similarity of character or even a shared inner fear. Whatever it was, it produced a powerful impression on Marlow, who decides to help Jim and finds him a series of jobs, among which that of “water-clerk”. It is actually as water-clerk that Jim is presented to us right at the beginning of the novel. He is described as a professional in his line of work, which was a “beautiful and humane occupation”, he possessed “Ability in the abstract” and was able to demonstrate it practically. Why would he then quit his jobs so suddenly? It was something that baffled his employers.

The reason behind this awkward behaviour was the ever-haunting Patna incident: each time the affair caught up with him, Jim would be unable to come to terms with his deed and move further east. From his discussion with Marlow during the trial the reader is left to understand that Jim could not forgive himself for the cowardice he had displayed, for the violent way in which he had acted when an awoken passenger grabbed him and uttered the word “water”; thinking he was talking about the flooded lower decks of the ship, Jim attacks the man in order to silence him. Only when realizing he was asking for a drink of water for his sick child does Jim give him his water bottle. He is a defeated man, torn to pieces by the lack of consistency between his own vision of life and life itself. His first stroke of luck was in fact this meeting with Marlow, who would become some sort of protector for the young man. In an innovative method of plot building, the all-knowing anonymous narrator at the beginning of this novel is replaced by Marlow, who would from now on give us his personal version of the story.

As it is the case with Joseph Conrad’s works, this novel also becomes a wandering man’s story coupled with psychological insights into several types of personality. By replacing the omniscient narrator with somebody personally involved in the subsequent development of the story, the author also allows us to take a glimpse at that person’s view on life and morality. As far as he was concerned, Marlow could as easily have taken no action whatsoever in helping Jim. He did so nonetheless, and it went beyond his first reaction of sympathy. The night before the sentencing, Marlow offered to provide Jim with some money and a job recommendation, should he have decided to flee. The latter refused, which meant the end of his career as a naval officer. Wondering how he would have acted if in Jim’s place, Marlow’s sympathy turns to admiration and his involvement in later events becomes stronger and of a personal nature.

Being stripped of his officer's certification did not discourage Jim, who continued to believe in his star and in his ascension to the status of hero sometime in the future. Until then he had to accept Marlow’s letter of recommendation for a job, which would allow him to begin anew. It is thanks to this recommendation that Jim receives his first assignment as water-clerk. Things seem to improve for the young man, whom his employer praises in a letter to Marlow. All is well until a former engineer of the Patna turns up and gets a job with Jim’s employer. Our hero cannot stand the emotional pressure and leaves the port moving further East. Marlow and Jim meet again, quite by chance, in another port where the latter was holding the same job. Upon his return a few months later, Marlow finds out that Jim once again quit, now because a damaged steamer carrying pilgrims had put in, and the Patna incident had again come to his memory. The recollection thereof proved too strong to be dealt with and Jim found himself once more running from his past.

Moving from job to job and from port to port so as to avoid the emotional confrontation with his mistake, Jim is unable to find inner peace and a place of his own to settle down. Decided to put an end to all of Jim’s tribulations, Marlow consults with Stein, owner of a large trading company, a man with a most adventurous past: German by birth he took part in a revolution back in his native land, came to the East Indies with a Dutch naturalist, remained there with a Scottish trader he had met and who made Stein successor to his trading empire, became adviser to Mohammed Bonso, son of a Malay queen, whose sister the German trader married and had a child with. His hobby was collecting beetles and butterflies. Hearing Jim’s story, Stein quickly labels him as “romantic” and decides to help. At Stein’s suggestion Jim is offered the job of manager of the Patusan trading post. Patusan was a remote region, of which little was known. The agent there was Cornelius, a Portuguese who had not been removed from duty because he was guardian of a Dutch-Malay woman’s girl, the woman having been an acquaintance of Stein’s. Jim accepts the offer, a decision that would prove of the utmost importance for him.

Exuberant at what he perceived as being a “magnificent chance” and displaying his usual uplifting enthusiasm, Jim will very soon get to know the harsh reality of Patusan: a land bypassed by history, it had been used in the seventeenth century for pepper trade by Dutch merchants. It was now hard to reach and its official leader was a young Sultan with congenital deformities (most likely the result of inbreeding). However, the de-facto ruler of Patusan was Rajah Allang, the Sultan's uncle, a power-crazed, opium-addict tyrant. Upon his departure, Jim is given a revolver and a silver ring by which he could be recognised by Doramin, leader of the Bugis and old friend of Stein’s. Alongside Doramin and Rajah Allang, another prominent figure in Patusan was Sherif Ali, an Arab religious zealot who had his camp to the interior of the territory. From there he would conduct armed attacks against the countryside. Soon after his arrival Jim is imprisoned by Rajah Allang but manages to escape and reach Doramin’s campsite, where he is warmly received. Here Jim and Dain Waris, Doramin's son become best friends.

A couple of years later, upon visiting Patusan, Marlow is surprised to see that Jim had accomplished his dream of becoming a hero. What had happened? Following Jim’s proposal, the Bugis attack Sherif Ali’s camp, defeat him, and thus put an end to his reign of terror. Jim was now, to many, a man possessing supernatural powers and the people would follow his every advice and command. Marlow was pleasantly impressed: the idealistic youth he had met during a judicial hearing was now “Tuan Jim”, meaning “Lord Jim” in a local vernacular. There, in that backwater of Patusan, despite all hardships Jim found not only the strength to rise at the image he had created for himself, but also found love. Who was the “chosen one”? The daughter of the Dutch-Malay woman, a beautiful girl whom Jim would simply call Jewel. But, as it always happens, success gives birth to envy. Rajah Allang and Cornelius despised Jim and wanted to get rid of him by any means possible. Jim begins to hear rumors that plans were being made to assassinate him and even an attempt on his life is thwarted one night thanks to Jewel. However, Jim’s desire was to make Patusan his home.

Having the devotion, love and adulation of so many people, would Jim now be able to live-up to his own expectations? His display of courage, altruism and kindness made those closest to him—Dain Waris, a devoted servant named Tamb'Itam and Jewel—be very frightful that he would eventually leave. Marlow tries to assure them of the contrary but is not completely successful, especially with Jewel. Since he was the only one who knew Jim prior to his arrival in Patusan, people turned to Marlow in order to know more about the man who had greatly improved their lives. He becomes a link between Jim the chief mate of the Patna and “Tuan Jim” of Patusan. This made Jim feel somewhat uncomfortable—although he did not fear Marlow telling them about the naval incident, the sailor’s very presence there made him feel ashamed of his past. When Marlow leaves they both knew their paths would never meet again, unless Jim went outside of Patusan, even if it would be for a brief period of time.

Their paths would indeed part forever, the two men would never see each other again, but a tragedy, of which Marlow finds about, would befall Jim. During a visit to Stein’s, Marlow is surprised to see that Tamb'Itam and Jewel were there, both in a miserable state of mind. He realized right away it had to do with his former protégé. Marlow talks to them but the information about what had happened to Jim is not shared with the reader. Jim’s tragedy would instead be narrated from his deathbed by Gentleman Brown, a merciless pirate. After escaping from a Spanish prison in the Philippines region, the raider manages to steal a boat and flee his captors. However, the ship lacked in provisions and fresh water. With the specter of starvation looming over their heads, he and his men remember the remote region of Patusan and decide to go there. Here the Bugis were awaiting them. Having been informed about the approaching pirates, those residents of Patusan, lead by Dain Waris (Jim was away in the countryside), manage to ward off the attack, forcing them to retreat to a hilltop.

While in disadvantage, hunger drove the pirates’ crew to stay and fight—they would either get food, water and anything else they wanted and needed, or would die in trying to achieve this aim. Jim had not been back yet, so Rajah Allang seizes the opportunity and, through Cornelius, strikes an agreement with Gentleman Brown. Meanwhile Jim gets back and the following morning he and Brown meet. The pirate tells Jim he and his crew won’t be kept on that hilltop forever, to die out as rats. They had either to be fought or allowed to leave. During their negotiations the pirate observes Jim closely and realizes the man standing in front of him had a shameful secret in his past. Brown decides to use this to his advantage. Their discussion over, Jim goes directly to Doramin and suggests that Brown and his men be permitted to leave unharmed. Because Doramin was hesitating, Jim declares he would not lead the people, should they engage in battle. Doramin eventually gives in and agrees that the pirates be allowed to leave. Jim manages to convince him and, at the same time, seal his own faith.

The account we got regarding these events is that of Brown and Marlow questions its overall accuracy. This part of the novel is built on racial dynamics: Dain Waris was unsuccessful in his attempt at completely defeating the white pirate and it was up to another European, which everybody called “Lord Jim” to be once again the rescuing hero. During their talk, Brown also pointed out to Jim their common racial background, which had to take precedence over his relationship with the natives: if, in the middle of the wilderness a white man’s plight and motifs behind his actions could not be understood by another white, then by whom? This “reference to their common blood” seemed to suggest to a common experience and to a common guilt. But the pirate did not intend to keep his part of the bargain and Jim would not live-up to his responsibilities, thus making an even bigger mistake than the one on the Patna.

Having instructed Tamb'Itam to go downriver and inform Dain Waris—who had blocked the escape route from Patusan with ships and armed men—that Brown is to be allowed to pass, Jim sends Cornelius to Brown with a note informing the pirate that he could leave. Delivering the message, Cornelius also tells Brown about an alternate river channel that leads directly behind Dain Waris's camp, offering to accompany him. Not wanting to let such an opportunity escape him, Gentleman Brown, takes his revenge “upon the world”: landing his ship behind the Bugis’ camp, he and his men open fire, killing several natives, including Dain Waris. They then leave as quickly as they came. Cornelius, unable to flee in time, is struck dead by Tamb'Itam who, being there when the incident occurred, delivers the news to Jim and Doramin. Aware of having lost everything—his status and reputation—Jim goes to Doramin. The leader of the Bugis shoots him through the heart and Jim falls dead.

Such was Jim’s destiny, similar to that of tragic heroes—he was gone, “inscrutable at heart”, as Marlow put it. His short-lived existence had always been a collision between heroic ideals and reality. But the choices he made have proved fatal not only for him but also for other people close to him—Dain Waris who got shot, Doramin whose soul ceased to exist after his son’s death, Jewel who was left alone and heartbroken. In the end Jim’s idealism brought about sorrow and sadness. His death was rather shameful than honourable, his life rather ordinary and poisoned by the recollection of failure. Jim's story is an “enigma” even to Marlow, who struggles to find it a meaning. Most of the times he fails to, as we can see from the use of adjectives such as “inscrutable” and “inexplicable”. And what about his description of Jim as being “one of us”? Marlow tells the story, up to the arrival of the pirate crew, at a later date to an audience of listeners and completes it by sending a manuscript to one member of that audience who did not believe his account. All these modern methods of plot building are intended to capture the reader’s attention and plunge him or her into the center of events, as they unfurl.

Such being the case we cannot help to try and find out the meaning behind Marlow’s choice of words: Jim was clearly not a down-to-earth fellow, he was not an idealist who achieved great things, he no longer was a sailor, his accomplishments were short-lived, he died defeated and regretful. One of whom was he then? Ideals are a heavy burden, and those possessing them fear the situations in which they have to choose between ideals of morality and worldly happiness. To Marlow Jim is the embodiment of his possible fallibilities; Brown on the other hand is in contrast with Jim: his life is full of romantic adventures but devoid of morality and he is unashamed by his past or by the overpowering fear of spending his life locked-up in a jail. We could say that Jim is a bit of every other character in this novel and, at the same time completely different from all of them.

As it is the case with “Heart of Darkness”, the setting of “Lord Jim” is in a colonial world. However, unlike Kurtz, Jim is not the depraved oppressor of native people; on the contrary he befriends them and lives among them. His story is one of incompatibility between naïve idealism and everyday reality; he struggles to find his true inner-self and his place in the world. Jim’s voyage is comparable to that of folk tale heroes, the difference being that he does not find happiness and wellbeing but an absurd death, which could have been easily avoided.

The Secret Sharer—Self-Discovery Through an Alter-Ego

The distinctive feature of this short story is that the action takes place entirely at sea, on a nameless ship, near the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand). Its events are presented and narrated from a subjective perspective, that of a young Captain, whose name is never revealed. The readers’ first insight into the Captain’s state of mind can be made right from the start: during his night watch the anonymous storyteller describes himself as being “alone with my ship” and “alone on her decks”. His solitude was not only physical, it was also emotional: due to events “of no particular significance” he had been appointed to the command only a fortnight before. He was therefore unfamiliar with both the ship and its crew and felt as the only stranger on board, among people who had been together for about eighteen months. The nameless Captain was also the youngest man on board, except for the second mate, a “round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his years”. Such a state of loneliness was made worse by the fact that he also felt a stranger to himself, which denotes insecurity regarding his ability to fulfill the role of an authoritative figure.

Interesting up to this point is that the main character in the novella, i.e. the young Captain, is not physically described, whereas the two crew members who are introduced to the reader also have brief sketches of their anatomy drawn. The second mate was described above, while the chief mate had round eyes, a simple face and “a terrible growth of whiskers”. Besides, he used to repeat constantly: “Bless my soul, sir! You don’t say so!”, indicating a logical split in his train of thought and the precarious expression thereof. This can be regarded from a dual perspective:

as a means of showing it is the hero’s lack of confidence in himself and his inner battle with it that will guide the sequence of events, and;

as a literary device by means of which the two officers are used as embodiments of the Captain’s two major attributes: his insecurity (the chief mate) and his seriousness (the second mate).

Duality is in fact a key element of this work, since the alter-ego theme and the presence of a double to the main character are exploited in order to create a mirror image that both completes and offers an alternative personality of the hero.

Wanting perhaps to gain some degree of sympathy from the crew, the Captain decides to be the first in taking the anchor watch, an “unconventional arrangement” prompted by his total strangeness to the newly acquired status and the sleeplessness it had resulted in. During those late hours his attention was once again directed towards another ship, anchored between a group of nearby islands, a ship which he had already noticed earlier that evening. It was, the second mate told him, the Liverpool ship Sephora and it was carrying coal to Cardiff. These moments of
“regained” solitude allowed him to arrive at a comforting conclusion: his ship “was like other ships, the men like other men” and besides, the sea did not have any torments, specially installed for him. These being said he decides to go below and get a cigar, rejoicing suddenly in “the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land”.

His enthusiasm would however be short-lived: noticing the rope side ladder had not been hauled in as it should have been, the Captain decides to do so himself. He gives it a vigorous tug but the ladder, instead of coming in easily, remains as it was. Taking a closer look, the young man has the shock of his life: hanging by the ladder was what it appeared to be a headless corpse. The naked body hanging over the rail was actually pretty much alive, but exhausted due to a long swim. The swimmer, after being informed he was talking to the ship’s captain, introduced himself as “Leggatt” and came aboard. The young Captain fetched him his sleeping suit, which was just the right size. The newcomer’s features were described as being regular: “a good mouth”, light eyes and dark eyebrows, “a smooth, square forehead”, the cheeks had no growth on them, the mustache was small and brown while the chin well-shaped and round. At the same time he was meditative and concentrated.

These details, especially Leggatt’s features are important because they provide us with an indirect physical description of the anonymous Captain. Their physical resemblance was so great that the Captain would often refer to the newcomer as “my double” or “second self”. It was him the alter-ego of the hero. But who was he really and what was he doing naked in the water? Leggatt was the chief mate of the Sephora and he had accidentally killed an insolent crew member seven weeks before. Although it had all been a misfortunate incident, Leggatt knew he would have been found guilty if put on trial, therefore he escaped his imprisonment aboard the Sephora and decided to swim for a “new destiny”, sinking his clothes so the crew of the Liverpool ship would think he had committed suicide by drowning. Feeling a peculiar and unexplainable affinity to Leggatt, who was as much of a stranger on the ship as himself, the Captain decides to help, by hiding him in his cabin. Leggatt had now become the secret sharer of the Captain’s cabin while the Captain the secret sharer of Leggatt’s tribulations and flight for survival and a new beginning in life.

The logic behind the decision of helping a man who had confessed to a murder goes beyond the striking physical resemblance between the two, which was so great that the Captain felt as if gazing at his “own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense mirror”. The two men also had other things in common: they both were “Conway boys”, Leggatt’s father being a parson in Norfolk; they attended the same prestigious merchant marine school but the narrator, being two years older than Leggatt had left before the latter joined; both men had become marine officers at a young age and both were in the situation of overcoming difficulties in life. Their similar social backgrounds met, producing what seemed to be two distinct ontological experiences of the same being. In fact the psychological connection between them was so powerful that, to the nameless Captain, their experiences were actually identical. The two men completed each other in their qualities and shortcomings perfectly. Leggatt’s physical strength, which allowed him to swim over a long distance, would thus become counterpart to the Captain’s newly found mental strength and determination to help his double.

Worth mentioning is also the fact that, throughout the story, no evidence for Leggatt’s guilt or innocence is to be found. As it was previously stated this is a personal account, therefore no distant, objective voice makes itself heard. From his own version of facts we are able to understand Leggatt’s fiery spirit, which made him attack the insolent crew member. The latter, apparently drunk, refused to obey a direct order. The weather was “terrific”, so there could be no “gentlemanly reproof”. Leggatt turned around and grabbed the man by the throat. As they were fighting, giant waves began hitting the boat. When the danger was gone, ten minutes later, the crew found the two fighters jammed together behind the fore bitts. Leggatt was still holding the other sailor by the throat but the insolent one was already dead. What had really happened nobody can say for sure, perhaps not even Leggatt (the sheer weight of the sea could have easily killed the man). All that mattered was the subjective opinion of people in command: to the skipper of the Sephora he was guilty, to the anonymous narrator he was clearly innocent—“no homicidal ruffian”.

As it always is the case with Conrad’s works, the main character’s decision is the result of intense psychological inner-battles. In order to try and understand the Captain’s relation with Leggatt, we must first try and understand his relation with himself. Although related from a personal perspective, the beginning of the story implies that the young man gained his post through connections. This might be the cause of his deeply-felt solitude and alienation. The “novel responsibility of command” has apparently found him unprepared, although the sea gave him a sense of security. He was alone with these encouraging thoughts when Leggatt made an almost supernatural stage entry. At first mute and fish-like, he seemed to have come out from the depths of the sea. His appearance fascinates the Captain right away: so similar from the anatomical point of view, the double seemed to be the storyteller’s mental opposite. The young captain confesses he could not have swim as Leggatt did, he did not possess the newcomer’s physical strength and he could not help but listen to what had happened without questioning anything because there was something in Leggatt’s narrative or even in his personality that made any comment impossible.

Another mental mechanism by which the unknown hero felt an overlapping between his situation and that of Leggatt could be the grasping of Leggatt’s sense of duty. The tragedy involving him was the result of his desire to make the Sephora weather a storm, which the ship did. The storyteller was only a couple of years older than Leggatt but a captain, whereas the latter a chief mate. This probably must have been the main character’s position as well, were it not for his connections. Being fully aware of that fact, the Captain was likely to consider Leggatt a model of responsibility and initiative. He regarded himself as lacking the qualities needed to be a captain and realized he would be able to acquire them through his double. Leggatt thus becomes the embodiment of these qualities. So, the two men share more than a stateroom aboard a ship: one gives to the other the abilities required from a leader, while receiving a means to escape trial and punishment for (involuntary) manslaughter.

Figuratively speaking, Leggatt “opens” the Captain’s eyes to a side of his personality he had failed to express before: his leadership skills. First, the young storyteller began by feeling completely responsible for his other self’s security—he knew Leggatt could not remain hidden forever in his cabin and a plan to safely get the double off the boat had to be devised. He felt so similar in thoughts and emotions with the former chief mate that when the skipper of the Sephora came on board to inquire about the fugitive and implied that Leggatt was not the sort of sailor to be chief mate “of a ship like the Sephora”, the Captain had no doubt in his mind that, given their physical resemblance, the unwelcomed guest also implied the same about him. Before Leggatt’s arrival, the Captain’s inner tribulations made him feel torn in two. But now he had found his lost half and a confident. However, once the skipper left the ship, their arrangement could no longer last: everybody knew how very much alike the Captain and the fugitive were and Leggatt could not risk being discovered.

The pressure of safeguarding his double started to take its toll on the young commander who began experiencing the “mental feeling of being in two places at once”, and whose strange behaviour prompted the crew members to suspect him of “ludicrous eccentricities”. Besides, the steward had accidentally heard Leggatt moving in the cabin and thought it was the Captain. All this made the anonymous narrator feel scarred about the outcome of his actions. He felt as if the “disaster of discovery” hung like a sword above their heads. As a consequence he was no longer able to conceal his agitation—his nerves were shaken and his conduct became so unpredictable that the chief mate described the Captain’s mental state by tapping his forehead with the forefinger. Such a description was actually not so far-fetched—the Captain himself admits at one time of being so close to “insanity as any man who has not actually gone over the border”. Coming very close to being discovered by the ship’s steward, Leggatt asks the Captain to maroon him among the islands off the Cambodian shore. Hesitant at first, the latter agrees in the end.

That night, the fourth since Leggatt had come on board, the Captain details him a plan: the ship will be steered near Koh-ring, an island that seemed inhabited. The Captain will personally maneuver it to within half a mile of the shore, a dangerous attempt that could very easily cost him his first command and his future in the navy. Leggatt had to get into the water without making any noise and then swim for the island. The reason the Captain gave to the crew was that they were not doing well in the middle of the gulf, so he decided to look for the land breezes, which meant going “amongst the lot off all them islands and reefs and shoals”, as the chief mate put it. To make Leggatt’s escape possible, the two quarter-deck ports would be open. Before leaving to assume his command duty, the Captain gives Leggatt his white hat to protect him from the sun and three sovereigns (British gold coins) to help him get by for a while. As they separate for the last time, neither man says anything.

This final episode of the story is the decisive moment for the young Captain, the time when he proves his commanding qualities and seamanship to the eyes of the crew. As they were approaching Koh-ring, the other sailors began voicing their concern regarding the decision taken. The Captain himself is worried about the ship's proximity to the land, but knows he had to maintain course in order to help Leggatt escape. A dark night made navigation very difficult and the Captain was unsure as to the direction he had to take. Suddenly he sees his white hat in the water—it had dropped off Leggatt’s head and it now became the marker by which the Captain steered his ship away from danger. His mission was thus a success: he had gained control of the ship and its crew, while his double was now “a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny”. As for the anonymous young Captain, he made a new fate for himself, while feeling for the first time “the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command”.

What is striking in this short story, as compared to other of Joseph Conrad’s works, is its ending, which is on a positive note: the hero does not die, nor is killed by another character. The young Captain manages to eventually overcome all obstacles, striking for a better future, after having previously discovered a hidden part of his personality. “The Secret Sharer” can therefore be regarded as a “bildungsroman”—a novel of formation. In our case it is the story of a shy young man who becomes more daring and self-assertive, therefore more complete. He does so however not by his own means, but with a high degree of “outside” assistance. By meeting Leggatt, we can say he had actually met an undiscovered and unexplored part of himself. He was made aware of the courage and determination he had not dared to show up to that point. In the attempt of understanding this work, we must not overlook the fact that both the young commander and his ship are anonymous, while his double is singled-out perfectly: Leggatt, chief mate of the Liverpool ship Sephora. This might hint to the fact that Leggatt was actually the Captain, more specifically that part of himself the hero was unaware of.

By making the young man captain of a ship in distant seas, the author allegorically alludes to those situations in everybody’s life when they have to show their qualities, but feel uncomfortable with such a pressure. Leggatt’s appearance changes everything. He initially represents the more determined and impulsive part of the human psyche. Him being naked at first suggest the nakedness of the human soul, stripped of its conventional etiquette. He would eventually stand for that part of the Captain that emerges as the “voyage” ends. By helping Leggatt escape the way he did, the nameless storyteller put his life, as well as those of the crew in danger. In order to fully take hold of his newly found self-confidence, the Captain had to go through a “near death” experience, which allowed him to be reborn to a new beginning and new opportunities. The ship is rescued from sinking at the sight of the Captain’s hat, denoting the young man’s change and self-improvement, acquired by his own means. Overall the story allegorically suggests the existence of a darker self in each of us, a less explored part of our being that comes out when we need it most, provided we allow it to and exploit its full potential.

Nostromo. A Tale of the Seaboard—Fame Fades Away in Death

A major novel, it is regarded by most critics as Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece. Its action is set in the fictional Latin-American republic of Costaguana. The actual historical event it is based on is the secession of Panama from Colombia, which took place in 1904, “Nostromo” being published shortly afterwards. As the author himself acknowledges, it was “the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels”, drawing its inspiration from real, or allegedly real, facts: the story of a man who was supposed to have stolen single-handedly an entire lighter-load of silver during the troubles of a South-American revolution and the life story of an American sailor who worked, for some months, on a schooner owned by the very thief. Although the thief is portrayed as a rascal, Conrad decides to change his personality for the purpose of the novel, on the assumption that such a deed could as easily have been the work of “a man of character”, “a victim in the changing scenes of a revolution”.

What makes this novel different from other works by Conrad is the setting, which most of the times is land-related. The author set the story in the mining town of Sulaco, an imaginary port in the western region of the fictional republic of Costaguana. Another distinctive feature of “Nostromo” resides in its characters: there are more fully developed characters in this book. As it usually is the case with Joseph Conrad’s works, racial dynamics is an important element in plot building, this time being completed and superseded by national and social dynamics. The Occidental Province of Costaguana is presented as a mosaic of nationalities—native Indians, Anglo-Saxons, citizens (Costaguaneros) of Spanish descent, Italians—in interaction, the European influence being still present and important in everyday life. This is a post-colonial society and the racial issue is not as powerfully exploited as it is in “Heart of Darkness”. The intrigue is actually built around ongoing power struggles and unexpressed dormant social conflicts, therefore social status rather than racial belonging is the driving force behind occurring events and final outcome.

Unlike “Heart of Darkness”, “Lord Jim” and “The Secret Sharer”, “Nostromo” exploits adventure rather than voyage. Characters are no longer engaged in a long and perilous journey. They indeed face dangers and have to fight for their lives, but it all takes place in or around Sulaco, the voyage that brought them there being over. It is in such a dangerous situation that the eponymous hero of the novel is introduced: after a long period of revolution, war and tyranny, Costaguana was experiencing an interval of stability under Ribiera, an authoritarian, dictatorial political figure. However, what is generally known as Latin America has always had a troublesome history, full of military conflicts and civil unrest. As a consequence, the republic would once again experience the fires of a revolution, this time directed against Ribiera. The dictator, so we are left to understand, would have certainly perished were it not for “Nostromo—invaluable fellow—with some Italian workmen” who “managed to snatch him away”. In what clearly is a modernist writing technique, the author presents this scene—one of the last—during the first chapter, in order to focus the readers’ attention on the main character.

According to his own statement, what Conrad needed for the artistic expression in the novel was a “Man of the People”, free from “his class-conventions and all settled modes of thinking”. The inspiration for Nostromo was a “Mediterranean sailor”, most likely a Corsican, which seems the most adequate choice: an Anglo-Saxon “would have tried to get into local politics”, whereas Nostromo’s ambition was to become “a power within the people”. His motivation was, as we are already accustomed, of a personal, psychological nature: he nurtures the obsessive desire of being admired and “well spoken of” and it is to this longing that he ultimately surrenders his existence. He already was known in Sulaco and the neighbouring region as the “Capataz de Cargadores”—leader of the port’s dockers but wanted to become something more than that. The choice of name becomes paramount in understanding the character’s emotional drive towards achieving recognition for his talents and what he was willing to sacrifice for reaching this goal, to which he had devoted every ounce of energy.

An Italian expatriate, Nostromo's real name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza, “fidanza” being an older form of the Italian word for “trust”. And it was the trust he instilled upon others that would account for both temporary success and ultimate failure. Most characters in the novel regarded the Italian as an extremely reliable person, one who could not be corrupted: Charles Gould a native Costaguanero of English descent, owner of the San Tome silver-mining concession and “Idealist—creator of Material Interests”; Mrs. Gould, Charles Gould’s wife and “first lady of Sulaco”; Don José Avellanos—statesman, poet, man of culture, patriot imprisoned under the tyrant Guzman Bento, representative of his country at several European courts and writer of a historical work on Costaguana, “Fifty Years of Misrule”, which goes unpublished; Antonia Avellanos, Don José’s daughter; Captain Mitchell, Nostromo’s employer in Costaguana, a man for whom any event of some significance was “historical”; the Viola family—Giorgio, Teresa, Linda and Giselle; all other less important and episodic characters.

The two major exceptions to the above list are Dr. Monygham, brilliant doctor but lonesome man, “bitterly taciturn when at his best”, who could feel an undisclosed sympathy only towards Mrs. Gould, and Martin Decoud, a “Frenchified…idle boulevardier” and anti-idealist skeptic whose sole “weakness” was his love for Antonia Avellanos. The latter is the one providing the most pertinent description of Nostromo’s inner-motivation as being an ambition “fit for noble souls, but also a profitable one for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel”. Even the main character’s famous nickname is in fact a literary device used to convey a more thorough understanding of his behaviour: although the word “nostromo” exists in Italian, meaning “boatswain”—it is as boatswain on a Genoese ship that he arrives in Costaguana and is then hired by Captain Mitchell—most literary critics consider that the name should be interpreted as a corruption of the Italian phrase “nostro uomo” meaning “our man”. This seems to be the more adequate approach, since “Nostromo” meant nothing to Teresa Viola or her daughters, who point out the fact that, except them, nobody used the hero’s first name.

Nostromo’s relation with the Viola family was a very close one: Giorgio and Teresa Viola were essentially his adoptive parents. Nostromo himself was an orphan and had lived a miserable life at the hands of an employer who “cheated him out of his orphan's inheritance”. The Violas had, in their turn, lost the first-born child, a boy, and therefore took a liking to Giovanni Batista. Giorgio Viola was, as Nostromo himself, a Genoese “with a shaggy white leonine head” and former Garibaldino—soldier who had fought for the unification of Italy alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi. A die-hard republican, he would have nothing to do with what he called “priest’s religion”. Tolerating “superstition” in women, he was fanatically devoted to Garibaldi, whose picture was proudly displayed on one of the walls in the family’s board and lodging, “Albergo d’ Italia Una”, and to the idea of Liberty for the oppressed masses. Starting in his old days to physically resemble his hero, Giorgio would strongly influence Nostromo when the anti-Ribiera revolt reached the port of Sulaco. It was his ideals that made Nostromo consider himself a mere tool in the hands of the well-off.

On the other hand, Teresa Viola was in opposition to her husband’s austere view on life, for whom “duty” took precedence over anything else. A Ligurian as well— born in La Spezia not too far from Genoa—she was considerably younger than her husband but “already middle-aged”. Her face was handsome (the complexion thereof had nonetheless turned yellow because of the climate) and her voice a rich contralto. She is introduced in a maternal poise, embracing her two daughters—“the dark-haired Linda indignant and angry” and “the fair Giselle, the younger, bewildered and resigned”—inside the “albergo”, besieged during the turmoil of rebellion, all the while calling upon her other “child”, her “Gian’ Battista”, her “Battistino” to come and rescue the young girls. Teresa’s ardent desire was that Nostromo, for whom she had been like a mother, provide materially for her two girls after her death. She had made him promise to marry Linda and would constantly reproach him for what she perceived as ingratitude from his part, for the fame he was trying to gain by running “at the heels of his English”.

The Italian woman had a strong, turbulent inner-life. She clearly loved Nostromo as her own son and was always under the impression that he would eventually fail to be there for her and her family. She would be proven right: the ongoing worry as to the young girls’ future combined with the insecurity of surviving the revolution made her fall ill. Though having to carry out a dangerous mission, Nostromo stops to pay a visit to his sick foster mother. Lying in bed, she urges him to bring her a priest. Under the circumstances, it would have been impossible to do so without compromising the mission. All these, combined with his refusal to accept the fact that Teresa could actually die, prompted Nostromo to follow the path towards success, disregarding what would be Teresa’s last wish. A gunshot, fired in the Viola household startles her and the shock proves too much to bear: she dies crying “The children, Gian' Battista! Save the children”. Teresa passes away, victim to her personal torments and feeling betrayed by her “Battistino”, by whom she had once again been abandoned, in exchange for a pay “in fine words” from people who did not care anything for him.

But what was this mission and why was it so important that it had to be carried out in spite of everyone and everything? How could it satisfy Nostromo’s ego to such an extent, for him to disregard Teresa Viola’s last wish? As it has already been mentioned, the event which triggered the writing of this novel was a theft: in 1875 or 1876 Joseph Conrad had heard the story of a man, “an unmitigated rascal” and “small cheat”, supposed to have stolen a whole lighter-full of silver all on his own. The feat allegedly took place “somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution”. As such, the turning point and key episode in “Nostromo” would, in its turn, be related with a transport of silver. Before the outbreak of the anti-Ribiera revolution, after several years of exhausting legal conflicts with officials and governments, Charles Decoud had managed to turn the San Tome mine into a lucrative business. Supporting him in this endeavour was an associate from San Francisco, California. The American capitalist was an old millionaire, “endower of churches on a scale befitting the greatness of his native land”. Therefore, regular loads of silver would make their way to the United States.

The historical reality of foreign interests and the part overseas capital played in the political and economic life of Central and South American republics after they had gained independence was the spark that set in motion the outbreak of revolution in “Nostromo”. Being to a certain extent isolated from the rest of Costaguana by high mountains, the Occidental Province did not experience civil unrest right from the onset. General Montero, leader of the revolutionary forces, knew it had to be brought there and attempts by both land and water had to be undertaken. Up to that point the San Tome silver mine had safeguarded Costaguana’s independence and political stability under Ribiera, the President-Dictator. Anyone wanting to lead the country’s destiny had to make sure they had Charles Gould on their side. Or, better yet they had to take possession of the mine. As a result, the sending of troops to Sulaco by sea was entrusted to Sotillo, commander-in-chief of the Esmeralda garrison. Greed and an unquenchable thirst for power had plunged Costaguana into chaos once more.

Realizing the region’s only hope for future peace and prosperity took the shape of silver ingots not yet sent to the United States, the upper-class of Sulaco resort to entrusting Nostromo with a dangerous mission: he had to take the silver, loaded onto a lighter, to the nearby island of Great Isabel. From there it would subsequently be taken over by a passing O.S.N. Company ship and, upon its arrival in San Francisco, sold into international markets with the aim of relieving Costaguana from what seemed to be a new period of tyranny and misrule. However, the Capataz de los Cargadores would not set forth alone. His companion would be the idler Martin Decoud, now editor of the “Porvenir” (“The Future”), an anti-Montero newspaper issued three times a week in Sulaco. Within its pages the revolutionary leader was described as the “Gran’ bestia”, the Great Beast. Aware of the fact that once caught by Montero’s men he would be tortured and executed, Martin Decoud decides to help Nostromo in taking the silver to a safe place.

Decoud’s behaviour and decision is the result of his determination to survive in order to marry Antonia Avellanos, the woman he loved. He began publishing the “Porvenir” not only to mock or ridicule General Montero but also to express a new political thinking: the secession of the Occidental Province from the rest of Costaguana. Again, such an action was prompted not by idealism or heart-felt local patriotism; it was a consequence of the character’s logical mechanisms, according to which his plan of marrying Antonia would be better served this way. And so the young man becomes a key character for the outcome of this novel—he ends up sharing a mission of high importance with Nostromo, and a similarly tragic fate. The two men had set out with the silver on a calm, dark night. They were slowly advancing towards the Great Isabel, lights off and as quietly as possible. However, these precautions could not prevent the sideways collision between their lighter and Sotillo’s ship. Since the lights on both ships had been turned off so as not to give away their position, Nostromo and Martin Decoud have a narrow escape and are eventually able to reach land safely.

Once on the island, they buried the silver, sunk the boat and parted ways: Decoud remained there in case a O.S.N. Company ship passed by (O.S.N. Company—Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, represented in Costaguana by Captain Mitchell, Nostromo’s employer), while the Italian swam back to Sulaco. Back on the mainland Nostromo is surprised at hearing that everybody thought the lighter had been sunk by Monterist troops and the silver gone forever. Here our Capataz receives another life-threatening assignment: he fearlessly rides over the mountains and summons the army which saves Sulaco from the revolutionary forces. Though he becomes famous, Nostromo cannot shake the feeling of having been used by the aristocracy and upper-classes, of which he does not become a member. He starts feeling betrayed and used. Returning, a few days later, for Martin Decoud, Nostromo finds out his companion had committed suicide—being alone for several days had proven too much for him. Decoud shot himself after he had put four ingots of silver in a pocket, so that his body would sink into the water. Disillusioned with the behaviour displayed by the elite and fearful they would accuse him of having stolen the four ingots of silver, Nostromo decides to keep the treasure for himself.

In an ironic twist of events and with US help, Decoud’s political “vision” comes to life: the Occidental Province secedes, becoming an independent state. Standard of living was high and the new country was thriving thanks to the San Tome mine. Although his bitterness against nobility was as powerful as the day he had first tasted it, Nostromo was now Captain Fidanza, a highly-estimed citizen. Morally corrupted by what had happened on the island, Nostromo was getting rich slowly—leaving the silver buried on the Great Isabel, he would make night incursions and would take as much as he needed for a given period of time. It all went well until the O.S.N. Company decided to build a lighthouse on the island. Thinking quickly, Nostromo convinces Captain Mitchell to appoint Giorgio Viola as keeper of the lighthouse. Under color of visiting, Nostromo would take to the island and come back to Sulaco late at night, after digging some more silver for his personal use. At the same time he tries to keep the promise made to Teresa, asking for Linda’s hand in marriage.

What seemed as an honourable thing to do takes in the end a turn for the worse: Nostromo realizes he was really in love with Giselle, the younger and more beautiful of the Viola girls. For the disaster to be complete, feelings were mutual. Suspecting Nostromo of foul play, Ramirez, Giselle’s most ardent admirer, confesses his worries to Linda, who cannot believe a betrayal of this magnitude. Disgusted and enraged by their behaviour, Linda states, in the presence of both her sister and father, that Ramirez had boasted in town he would carry Giselle off from the island. The younger sister replied he was not the man. It was in fact Nostromo who had promised to take the fair girl away from everybody and everything. She only needed to wait a while longer, allow him to have the material part covered, which meant taking out more silver from the stash hidden on the island. Even if it infuriated Linda, Giselle’s answer prompts Giorgio, who hated Ramirez, to avoid by any means and at any cost such a thing from happening. The old Garibaldino would not be put to shame by the likes of Ramirez.

What neither Giselle nor Linda could understand was Nostromo’s apparent lack of initiative. What prevented him from carrying Giselle off next time he came? Their question would remain unanswered. As he had often done before, Nostromo found himself on the Great Isabel one night, waiting patiently for everybody to go to sleep. Giorgio was, however, fully awake and his gun was loaded. That night, the serenity of the Great Isabel was broken by the first shot ever fired on the island. Taking Nostromo for the “infame” Ramirez, Giorgio did what he had to do: “Like a thief he came, and like a thief he fell”. What puzzled him was the cry: “He cried out in son Gian’ Battista’s voice”. Master and slave of the San Tome treasure, Nostromo is carried away to hospital by Dr. Monygham. There he confesses everything to Mrs. Gould and dies “betrayed” by the “fine people”. Betrayed or not by those whom he accused, Captain Fidanza dies alone and without glory, victim to his own desires of fame and greatness, betraying those who loved him the most.

In literary terms, Nostromo’s death represents an allegory: symbolizing the masses, this “Man of the People” dies disappointed, bitter, desolate, unhappy, feeling remorse, sorrow and an apologetic disdain towards those of a higher social class. His anonymous demise is that of the common people, his exploits go forgotten, overshadowed by two major moments of weakness and their implications. He fails morally—does not keep the promise made to his foster family—as well as socially—he feels resentment against the “fine people” only because they did not accept him as one of them. Nostromo becomes an epitome of the endeavour undertaken by the people to achieve happiness and be masters of their own destiny, to break the “chains of servitude” and escape their status of pawns on a chess table they have no control over. Interested only in his reputation, the Italian expatriate also stands for the people’s failures, shortcomings and ultimate inability to achieve full control over their lives. Simon Bolivar’s remark, which the author mentions in this book, that “America is ungovernable” thus translates as “humanity is ungovernable”—no man-made government has proven its efficiency in providing for the needs of all its citizens and there will always be victims of political and social misconduct.

Nostromo’s final “glance of enigmatic and profound inquiry” is that of a vanquished man, of an individual at a loss with his life and its outcome, and holds within the perplexity, distress and sense of futility the awareness of impending death produces upon the human soul. This character also allegorically represents an ontological irony: constantly seeking the status of folk hero, the tangible results of his actions are in the end less people-oriented than those of Charles Gould, owner of the silver mine, dominant economic and political force in the region and “Idealist-creator of Material Interests”. While the latter sacrifices his happiness in order to turn the San Tome mine into a lucrative business and consequently avenge his father’s good name—

Don Carlos Gould had died out of bitterness resulting from governmental medley in the running of the mine—the former’s sole interest was fame and glory; while Charles Gould’s obsession makes his wife—Doña Emilia Gould—unhappy, he provides for her material wellbeing, as well as for that of his workers and his workers’ families, whereas Nostromo’s obsession brings about misery and suffering to those who cared for him the most.

From an outside perspective, Nostromo’s desires are even less humane than those of Martin Decoud: Nostromo’s love destroys Linda and Giselle, Decoud’s love only destroys himself. “Nostromo” summarizes the tragedy of human existence: humanity’s goal is to provide for its future generations, which implies a forfeiting of personal happiness. Those who seek only their own wellbeing end their journey on Earth with an “enigmatic and profound inquiry”. The moral conclusion is a scary one: the masses are less humane in their overall actions than those who rule them. It is this tragic faith of human societies that pervades “Nostromo”, making it an epic work that stands as testament to Joseph Conrad’s sense of social and existential absurdity.

E.M. FORSTER—A CRITIC OF HYPOCRISY IN OTHERS

Like Joseph Conrad, Edward Morgan Forster was also an only child and, in a similar twist of fate he too lost one of his parents in early childhood—the father, Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster died before his son’s second birthday. Although a traveller himself, Forster’s childhood was different from Conrad’s. He grew up in a mansion near Stevenage, attended to by servants and cared for by Alice „Lily” Whichelo, a loving mother. Despite his social status and an inheritance of £8,000 from Marianne Thornton, his paternal great-aunt, Forster’s literary work sets him as a critic of the British upper-middle-class. This stance stems from family background: Henry Thornton, Marianne Thornton’s father was an abolitionist and member of the Clapham Sect, a social reform group composed of wealthy people, all of them devout Anglicans. The organization’s name comes from Clapham Common, a then elite residential area south-west of London, and its members were bound by shared political beliefs: abolition of slavery and slave trade and reform of the penal system. They were active from the end of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th.

The inheritance gave Forster the opportunity to become a writer. After attending the prestigious Tonbridge School as a day boy, his post-University travels were financed with the money Marianne Thornton had left him. She thus became a great influence in the author’s life, contributing to his liberal heritage and convictions. E.M. Forster made his first journey abroad in the company of his mother—it was a one-year long tour of Italy. Another tour, that of Greece, followed. Before the start of World War I he also got the chance to visit Germany, Egypt and India. Such voyage experiences provided sources of inspiration: those on mainland Europe, Italy and Greece in particular, made him satirize the conduct of his compatriots—British tourists are described as conceited, displaying a peculiar behaviour, a mixture of superiority, omniscience, contempt towards cultures that greatly contributed to the development of their own and at the same time apprehension and fear of other Europeans. Visiting India twice, before and after World War I, Forster follows in Joseph Conrad’s footsteps and criticizes European colonialism, being dissatisfied with colonial behaviour in British India.

The theme of voyage, as exploited by E.M. Forster, becomes a means to an end: that of portraying what the author regarded as an unjust social system. A guiding force behind his works is the unfairness the existence of social strata fosters and perpetuates. Colonialism is, consequently, a very important symptom of this “disease”. Therefore, Forster’s artistic creed is to examine and depict, in an ironic manner, class difference and social inequality in early twentieth century British (imperial) society. His worldview can easily be recognized and labeled as socialistic: as far as inter-cultural, East-West relationships are concerned, the British are the guilty party: they make them impossible by seeing themselves as colonial masters whose mission is to impose their way of life on others; meanwhile, back on his native archipelago, the higher the social status the bigger the guilt for all that goes wrong in society. What the author denounces is the hypocrisy of the powerful. Although a commendable action, it must always be put in connection with those who undertake it.

Forster uses for the purpose of his best-known novel, “A Passage to India”, characters, members of the English upper-classes, who do not share their country’s political view on the role it should play in India. However they fail to be of any concrete help to the natives. Was this the case with Forster’s ancestors who were actively engaged in the Clapham Sect? Were they not wealthy people who disliked colonialism and who fought for the betterment of non-Europeans? And, above all were they not successful in their mission? Taking all these into consideration could we then not draw the conclusion that the same concept of hypocrisy is applicable even to the author himself? We must ask ourselves this in order to try and come up with an explanation for this split between Forster’s literary characters and the examples in his life, between his own high social status and the artistic contempt displayed towards most of his peers and why not between two contrasting realities: while having the image of a liberal champion, he made good use of a large inheritance and did not turn down a permanent home at King’s College in Cambridge, his Alma mater, when offered to him in 1946.

Furthermore, despite the underlying need for social morality that pervades his works, Forster’s life seems to have been devoid of another kind of morality: the author had homosexual tendencies—he wrote a novel, “Maurice” and a collection of short stories, “The Life to Come” dealing with homosexual love (both published posthumously) and it seems he was engaged in homosexual relationships. While it is a sensitive topic nowadays, homosexuality can easily be regarded as a form of moral depravity and this not necessarily from a religious standpoint, on the contrary from an evolutionary one: it leads to nowhere and it is a hindrance in the perpetuation of our species. This being said we shall leave the discrepancies between Forster’s literary rhetoric and his personal life to be judged as anyone sees fit and shall try to see how he approaches voyage, adventure, social condition, human psyche and existence in some of his writings.

A Passage to India—Politics, Race and Friendship

We shall begin with “A Passage to India”, Forster’s last novel, published in 1924, which brought him his greatest success. This literary work is the direct result of the author’s two voyages to the Indian subcontinent, first in 1912 and then in 1921-1922. During his second spell in India, Forster was secretary and companion to the Maharajah of Dewas. He formed his opinions under the influence of another Indian, a close friend, Syed Ross Masood, a Muslim patriot whom he had tutored in England. The Muslim’s influence over Forster was so great that a central figure in the novel, Dr. Aziz, is built on him and the work itself is dedicated to Masood. Not surprisingly, English-Indian differences are examined and portrayed as irreconcilable on account of English prejudice and narrow-mindedness. The left-wing political obsession with inequlity between social classes is also present: under the British Raj the Indian society was fundamentally unstable, all because of the foreign rule in the country. Although the majority in India has always been of the Hindu faith, which at its core is based on the existence of priviledged and lower classes, the underlying social tension in Forster’s novel is due only to colonialism: on the one hand there are the British or Anglo-Indian residents, on the other the Muslim and Hindu natives, all „members of a subject race”.

The noun „race”, when applied to human beings means not only the division into main groups of individuals according to their phenotype, skin colour and other physical features; it can also mean „people” and „nation” and can be used to describe national affiliation. However, when analyzed in the context of this novel, its meaning encompasses both “people” and “group of individuals classified in accordance with their skin colour and other physical features”. The two notions overlap, which is actually a normal social and historical phenomenon: race creates nations. Having this in mind it is easier to comprehend the sequence of events and the echoes they produced upon both parties. The very historical context criticized by Forster, British colonialism in India, is a direct consequence of unequal technological development, itself spurred by racial belonging: the white or European race has been and still is at the forefront of scientific and technological development. Therefore, should we want to portray the natives as “victims”, they should then be regarded as victims of progress and military might, not as victims of skin pigmentation. Race alone cannot be held responsible for territorial expansion: before the arrival of the British, Hindu states were being ruled over by Muslim conquerors while in Europe imperial powers such as Russia and Austria-Hungary had engulfed territories at the expense of other European nations.

It is against this socially and racially charged background that an important aspect of human life is explored: friendship. The novel begins and ends by posing the question of whether two men, an Indian and an English, could develop a lasting friendship, at least within the context of British colonialism. Given his own personal relation with an Indian patriot, Forster is likely to have used this theme as a means to raise the question of Britain’s political control on India. Politics also play a significant part in understanding the impact Forster’s work had on readership and society: between the author’s first and second voyage to India, Britain underwent the traumatic experience of World War I, which resulted in a dwindling of the self-confidence that earlier had marked the country’s attitude about its empire and its place in the world—Britain’s assertiveness had given way to doubt and uncertainty. Within this political context, E.M. Forster is able to foresee the decline of British imperialism and the rise of Indian nationalism. As a result the book was widely criticized at home and in Anglo-Indian circles for what the general public regarded as an anti-British stance. Nonetheless, despite the critique of colonialism through biting satire, the author never suggests that Britain should abandon India outright. What he implies is that the British should become kinder and more sympathetic to the Indians they live with.

In order to point out the need for a different approach in inter-human relationships between governors and governed, Forster spends large sections of the novel characterizing different typical attitudes the English hold towards the Indians they have control over. What is obvious for every reader is the fact that Englishwomen are more harshly criticized—they are depicted as overwhelmingly racist, supercilious, and overtly condescending to the natives. The reason behind this literary device might be historical reality, a scorn against women given Forster’s sexual tendencies or a mixture of both. On the other hand, though some of them are as wicked as the women, Englishmen are generally portrayed as having good intentions and being invested in their jobs. They fail however, all but one, at relating to Indians on a personal level, remaining mostly arrogantly detached as far as the locals were concerned. A cloud of tension floating in the air can be felt from the first pages, as if a dormant volcano was slowly waking-up. British order had only superficially penetrated a chaotic and disorderly society and its impact had been a negative one: “the net Great Britain had thrown over India”. Was it then possible for a sense of normality to overcome and make way for an equitable social development?

Structurally, “A Passage to India” is divided into three parts: “Mosque”, “Caves” and “Temple”, each playing a different role in plot building: in part one the reader is introduced to the atmosphere of the place—the fictional town of Chandrapore with its surroundings (of which the Marabar Caves are the best the town has to offer) and population; the climax is reached in part two while in part three the troubles are over, eventually left behind, life carries on as usual, indifferent to the fate of individuals and the readers are able to draw their own conclusions from the novel. The action evolves, in its turn, around four main characters: Mrs. Moore, an old Englishwoman, mother to Ronny Heaslop, City Magistrate of Chandrapore; Miss Adela Quested, Ronny Heaslop’s fiancée for most of the novel; Dr. Aziz, a highly emotional young Muslim Indian physician who works at the British hospital in Chandrapore, built as we have already mentioned on Syed Ross Masood, E.M. Forster’s acquaitance; and Cyril Fielding, principal of the Government College (British-run school for Indians), friend of Dr. Aziz, the only official figure who shows respect towards Indians and their ways. They symbolize the difficulty of establishing friendship across cultural boundaries.

The book also addresses the question of faith—both religiously and in terms of social conventions: Mrs. Moore and Miss Adela Quested had taken the passage from Britain to India at the request of Ronny Heaslop, who wanted to have his fiancée closer. Adela’s most ardent desire was to see “the real India”, of which she made no secret. The young woman’s thoughts were shared by Mrs. Moore, who was nevertheless not so enthusiastic in her outer-displays. So as to fulfill the female visitors’ wishes, Mr. Turton, who held the post of Collector, being thus a generic representative of British authority in the district, organizes a „Bridge Party” i.e. „a party to bridge the gulf between East and West”, a phrase which he himself had invented. His efforts prove useless—the party is unsuccessful. Wanting to make a good impression and knowing the party had been given in their honour, Miss Adela and Mrs. Moore arrive early. However, since it was held at the local club, which was reserved for the Anglo-Indian residents of Chandrapore, most of the Indian guests had arrived even earlier and were massed at the farther side of the tennis lawns waiting their turn to come in. Showing an uplifting state of mind, Miss Adela engages in discussions with as many Indians as possible. There she will have a first disappointment.

Described as a “plain”, not very attractive woman, Adela Quested was intelligent and honest. Her enthusiasm was regarded as naïve by the vast majority of the Anglo-Indian population, particularly by women, who deemed it understandable due to her recent arrival. She would realize, in the long-run that getting too close to Indians was not a good idea. And such was indeed the case, as we shall see later on. Coming back to Adela’s first disappointment, during the Bridge Party: among those she had conversations with were also the Bhattacharyas, an educated Indian family who had adopted some Western habits. Some but not all—during their discussion, the Indian couple invites both Miss Adela and Mrs. Moore to pay them a visit „on Thursday”, also offering a carriage to fetch them. That same day, the Bhattacharyas had to leave for Calcutta, which meant they could not be at home on Thursday. Believing they would change plans on her account, Miss Adela felt dreadful and insisted she did not want to trouble anyone. The young schoolmistress was unaware of the fact that being polite without really keeping the promises you make was a common Indian feature: there was not going to be any carriage waiting for them on Thursday nor a subsequent opportunity of getting to know the Bhattacharyas better.

Mrs. Moore’s first experience with Indians proved far better—the elderly widow, the most reflective of the English characters has a chance encounter with Dr. Aziz at the mosque in Chandrapore. The young doctor had gone there after an unsuccessful attempt at finding Major Callendar, the head of the government hospital in Chandrapore—Major Callendar holds the post of civil surgeon, being Dr. Aziz's immediate superior. At first annoyed by the Englishwoman’s presence, of whom he thought she had not taken off her shoes, Aziz ends up engaging her in a discussion. Despite the age gap, the two had much in common: they both had three children, two sons and one daughter each, and they both had lost their previous spouses—Aziz’s first and only wife had died, as was the case with Mrs. Moore’s two husbands. As a consequence a strong sympathy develops between them: Aziz is happy to have met an English person who is appreciative towards himself and India, while Mrs. Moore finds the Muslim doctor charming, intelligent, and interesting. The emotional man is so fascinated with Mrs. Moore’s personality that an admiration-filled statement is made: he wished other English resembled her and were able to understand the Indian soul.

Rather surprised with such a show of satisfaction, the English lady replied she did not know whether she truly understood people or not—she only knew whether she liked or disliked them. Aziz was delighted: “Then you are an Oriental”, he replied back almost ecstatically. Being emotion-driven becomes a sign by which Aziz was able to identify an Oriental “at heart”, so to say. To him the logic of the West could not get the upper hand over the feelings of the East. This experience makes Adela Quested a bit jealous. She tells Aziz that Mrs. Moore had learnt “more about India in those few minutes’ talk with you than in the three weeks since we landed”. This confession was made during a tea-party given by Cyril Fielding and attended by the other three main characters of the book. During their meeting the four people get to know each other better and something unusual occurs: Aziz discovers yet another sympathetic English—their host, Mr. Fielding—and, if at first he had rather ambivalent feelings about the English, he now gets to admire them and is on the path of becoming an Anglophile. He develops a strong friendship with Fielding and wants to make an even better impression upon the two Englishwomen. In his desire to impress, the young doctor decides to invite Mrs. Moore and Fielding to his house: “Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy”.

Realizing his house was in fact not a suitable place for entertaining Western guests, Aziz has a sudden change of mind. On the spur of the moment, he asks his newly found friends to join him for a picnic at the Marabar Caves, the natural landmark outside of town, the only thing that made Chandrapore famous and worth visiting. The invitation is accepted: they would go on a tour of the famous caves, as soon as Aziz had everything planned out. If, up to now, the action was somewhat lingering, their decision to visit the Marabar Caves represents the turning point in the novel. Recovering after an intense fever, Aziz is able to make good on his promise. Ronny Heaslop felt strongly against his fiancée’s and mother’s undertaking: he disliked them socializing with Indians and formally forbade a visit to the countryside without British auspices. Nonetheless, the picnic takes place but results in total disaster. Despite all the troubles Aziz went through, problems occured right from the start: Professor Naryan Godbole and Fielding are late because the former, a Brahman or Hindu of the highest caste, had not finished his prayers in time. Consequently, the two women were left alone, for the better part of the day, with Aziz and the servants he had arranged—the plan had been to leave Chandrapore by train and then reach Marabar on elephants.

Once off the train things seemed to improve: the group reached the picnic spot near the caves on elephant-back, they would spend two hours visiting the caverns and then be back in time for their tiffin, or midday meal. The unforseen does however occur: Mrs. Moore does not enjoy the cave visit, feels suffocated and the echo disturbs her. It was a strange phenomenon indeed—no matter what sound, shrill or utterance would be originally made, there would always be something like „boum” or „ou-boum” in reply, as if in a Hindu mantra. The seemingly positive Hindu image of the world, where all living things are one proves to be, inside those grottos, a big illusion and monumental sham: if all are one, then good and evil are one, there can be no distinction and no inherent value in nature, no ideals to live by and no joy in life. Mrs. Moore becomes more and more frantic: she is detached from Aziz and Adela and feels as if someone had touched her. Making her way out with difficulty she sees that the touch had come from a baby sitting on its mother's hip. Although aware of the fact there was nothing evil in that cave, the old woman decides to go no further and wait for everybody else in the shade. At her suggestion Adela and Aziz leave behind the crowd of villagers who were also visiting the caves and continue their tour taking only one servant with them. By doing so a series of life-changing events was unleashed.

While climbing the slopes of the Marabar Hills, Adela becomes aware of the fact that she did not love Ronny. Thinking about the already planned wedding, she asks Aziz whether he was married. He answers in the affirmative and, out of courtesy and without meaning it, invites her to come and visit his wife (who we must not forget was dead) and children. In a dreamy, self-inquisitive state, Adela pops another question: did Aziz have one or more wives? The Muslim doctor is shocked and gets so upset that lets go of her hand and enters a cave by himself. Adela is not aware of her companion’s state of mind and also enters another cave, unaccompanied. After calming down, Aziz sets about searching for the English schoolmistress. Not being able to find her, he asks the servant what had happened. The latter told him the young lady had entered a cave but he did not know which one. Angry at this neglect of duty, Aziz hits the young servant. Seeing what appeared to be Miss Adela’s shape getting into a car, he feels relief and sets back to the picnic spot, where Cyril Fielding and Professor Naryan Godbole had already arrived. On the way back he finds Adela’s field glasses, lying at the verge of a cave, the leather strap broken. Without giving it another thought, Aziz puts the glasses in his pocket and joins the other campers.

He was once again full of joy and assured everyone that Miss Adela was fine, she had only left ahead of others. Aziz would be proven wrong. Returning to Chandrapore with the rest of the group he is arrested, charged with sexually assaulting Adela Quested. What had actually happened is a total blur: while in the cave, Adela had the distinct feeling of being attacked. To defend herself she hit the alleged assaulter with the field glasses, hence the broken strap. All the while the ghastly echo made its presence felt and its sound continued to haunt both Adela and Mrs. Moore. Frightened and desperate, Adela asked Miss Nancy Derek—an unconventional young and single Englishwoman who worked as a personal assistant to the Maharani of Mudkul, an independent Indian state—to drive her back to Chandrapore. Here she filed the complaint against Dr. Aziz, which would give birth to an intense trial. As far as her own rendering of facts went, Adela accused Aziz only of trying to touch her. She could remember him grabbing the glasses and the strap breaking, which allowed her to get away. Since the pair of glasses was indeed in the possession of Dr. Aziz, it became the prosecution’s main piece of evidence. On the other hand, to the Indian population the trial was nothing more than a fraud aimed at ruining their community's reputation.

As we have already seen it happen in Joseph Conrad’s works, this part of “A Passage to India” is filled with racial dynamics: the Anglo-Indians regard the situation as an insult against them—the women, which up to that point had not taken Miss Adela to their hearts, have now coagulated around the young woman, being sincerely worried about her person; the men were determined to avenge her honour, which had symbolically become that of an entire nation. The two notable exceptions are Mrs. Moore, for whom Aziz could not be guilty (the echo from the Marabar Caves continued however to haunt her and she left India before the trial, dying during her passage back to England) and Mr. Fielding who does not fulfill Turton’s expectations to rally to the banner of race, demanding to know the facts and being the only English who actively takes the natives’ side during the trial. On the other side of the barricade we have the Indians, who seemed to have acquired a newly formed national conscience: Nawab Bahadur, „a big proprietor and a philanthropist, a man of benevolence and decision”, distinguished Muslim, leading figure in the local community of Chandrapore, supporter up to that moment of British rule in India and man known for his hospitality and loyalty to friends proclaims Aziz’s innocence while the doctor’s defence is composed of two anti-British lawyers: Mahmoud Ali, his own friend and co-religionist, and Mr. Amritrao, a famous Hindu barrister or trial−lawyer from Calcutta.

Spirits run high on both sides during the trial, presided over by Mr. Das, a local Hindu, assistant magistrate in Chandrapore: given his relationship with Adela Quested Ronny Heaslop had excused himself from sitting on the case; Mr. Amritrao objects to allowing the British to sit on a platform at the front of the courtroom and is successful in having them moved within the courtroom; Mr. McBryde, the district superintendent of police in Chandrapore and prosecutor at the trial points out the scientific fact that darker races are physically attracted by the fairer, but not vice versa, at which a voice from the court replies: „Even when the lady is so much uglier than the gentleman?”; and Mahmoud Ali accuses the British of having smuggled Mrs. Moore out of the country so that she could not testify on behalf of Aziz—her name is shouted by the crowds outside and becomes Indianized into „Esmiss Esmoor”. The tension gradually builds until Adela takes the stand. Now she is finally able to get away from the haunting echo and, while questioned to what had happened, the English girl manages to regain clear-mindedness: „Dr. Aziz never followed me into the cave”, „I withdraw everything”.

Her testimony causes a massive shock wave—the English, angry and/or feeling betrayed abandon the schoolmistress to her fate, the engagement with Ronny Heaslop (whom she did not know whether she trully loved or not) is broken off and Adela eventually returns to England. On the other hand, the victors engage in a loud celebration, which seemed to turn into an outright revolt against the British. In the end Dr. Aziz and those who made his victory possible are invited at Nawab Bahadur’s residence. The wealthy Muslim had renounced his title and British sympathies, returning to his own name, that of Mr. Zulfiqar. At Fielding’s request, Aziz drops asking Miss Adela Quested for material compensations. Once everything settles down, the destinies of the two friends change: Cyril Fielding goes back to England where he becomes a close acquaitance of Miss Quested’s, who introduces him to his future wife—Stella Moore, Mrs. Moore’s daughter and half-sister to Ronny Heaslop. He writes Aziz a letter, informing him about everything. The latter however, having been poisoned by his countrymen against Fielding (of whom they said he would surely marry Adela), does not read it entirely and becomes convinced the Englishman deceived him, marrying the woman that had denigrated him.

Things will be clarified only some years later, when Fielding and Aziz meet again, on the former's return to India. The reunion takes place in the independent Hindu state of Mau, where Aziz had relocated with his three children, giving-up his medical career and becoming „medicine man” to the state’s ruler. Despite their reconciliation, both men had changed: by marrying a female compatriot, Fielding, who had previously showed „no racial feeling” was now less critic to the British presence in India; Aziz, in his turn, was bitter and resentful against the English, whom he wanted out of his native land. Their discussion is fiery and its conclusion is that Aziz and Fielding could not reestablish the same degree of friendship until India was free. Or, as Aziz put it: „India shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!”. This would be the two men’s last meeting—they part ways, friends to a lesser degree than before, knowing it would be the last time they see each other. The differences between them have in the end proven impossible to surmount totally and completely.

Drawing on the author’s personal experiences and understanding of his contemporary historical context, „A Passsage to India” is, despite the extensive use of motifs (echo, religious processions, religious songs, architecture) and symbols (mosque, caves, temple) a powerfully realistic and premonitory novel: during their last meeting, Aziz put forward the idea that in the following European war, India would become a nation. And so, through this character, Forster displayed a keen intuition of future events: he not only predicted, fifteen years beforehand, the outbreak of world War II but also the independence of India, which occured shortly afterwards, in 1947. Foreboding the death of British colonial might, this literary work also represents E.M. Forster’s death as novelist: between 1924 and 1970 (the year when he passed away) there would be no other novels bearing this writer’s name. It seems that the critique of colonialism had become an inspiring obsession, motivating Forster to „share” it, to make it known to the world by his own means of expression: writing. Nevertheless, obsession are, most of the times, linear in nature, as was the case here: it gave Forster the impetus needed to create a good piece of literature but at the same time, it left him barren and devoid of the necessary state of mind to achieve something similar afterwards. Once an obsession is fulfilled there cannot be room for anything else, a part of you dies with it. This is what could have happened with Forster as well.

Voyage in E.M. Forster’s Short Stories—Cultural Clashes, Superstitions, Mythology, Mysticism

Short stories are an important aspect of E.M. Forster’s literary career. As it is the case with his novels, a major source for Forster’s inspiration resides in the voyages he undertook. A voyage or travelling experience acquires different connotations for those involved, depending on their temperament, cultural background, historical and national background, and worldview. Given this writer’s liberal heritage, it comes as no surprise that he displayed a critical attitude to what was (or to what he perceived as being) a stiff, rigid and presumptuous conduct of his countrymen. During his visits on mainland Europe, Forster got the chance to experience Mediterranean culture, which he grew to love and incorporate aspects thereof in his short stories. Italy and Greece become mirror reflections of Britain: while the latter had risen to the status of world power from an obscure past, the two South European countries, heirs to a glorious, magnificent past were experiencing a less brilliant period, being reduced to simple holiday destinations for the priggish British upper-classes. Such dichotomy could not escape a keen observer of historical context, albeit one who can be described as having a left-wing, why not socialistic bias. This divergent historical development gave birth to a visible cultural evolution between North and South, East and West, which Forster was able to introduce in his works, using it in a dual manner: as a fact in itself and as an alternative means of exploring human condition in connection to specific markers such as superstitions, folklore, religion, mythology, mysticism, and so on. All these melt and combine in Forster’s short stories, as we shall see by analyzing three titles: “The Road from Colonus”, “The Story of the Siren”, “Other Kingdom”.

“The Road from Colonus” deals with an eternal and universal problem every human being goes through: aging. The hero of this literary composition is Mr. Lucas, an Englishman who was growing old. He had always wanted to visit Greece and was now realizing this life-long dream, forty years after he had “caught the fever of Helenism”. Even though he was on a tour of the country we are presented with only a section of it, the action taking place in the province of Messenia, at Plataniste. The other members of his group were Mrs. Forman, Mr. Graham (“a young man who was always polite to his elders”), an English-speaking dragoman (interpreter, translator and official guide) and Ethel, “his youngest daughter, still unmarried”. It was generally understood that Ethel was going to devote her life to her father, being “the comfort of his old age”. An experience in Greece changes something deep inside the old man: breaking away from the younger companions and riding by himself through a hilly landscape, Mr. Lucas discovers a group of huge plane trees. One of them was hollow, “burnt out for charcoal”, but a spring of water flew from its trunk. This curious tree becomes the symbol of communion between “then” and “now”, between the past and the present: “in the rind of the tree a shrine was cut, holding a lamp and a little picture of the Virgin, inheritor of the Naiads’ and Dryads’ joint abode” (Naiads-water nymphs in ancient Greece, Dryads-tree nymphs in Ancient Greece).

After a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Lucas climbs into the tree: “the place shall be mine; I will enter it and possess it”. An idea was already tormenting him: he minded being old and no longer wanted to pretend otherwise. Greece had made him discontented and he became restless and resistant to the idea of expecting a passive death from old age—he would die fighting. Upon entering the natural shrine he is made aware that others had been there before him—little votive offerings, i.e. tiny models of arms, legs, eyes, brains, hearts, tokens of recovery after disease and suffering were hanging from the bark. The sorrows, joys and superstitions of humanity had reached even there. Mr. Lucas tasted the sweet water of the spring, closed his eyes and had an epiphany: he felt that “all things were a stream, in which he was moving” and regarded everything as “intelligible and good”. The place had totally captured his imagination. He felt so connected to it that when the rest of his party found him, the old man experienced bitterness, deeming them incapable of sharing the revelation he had experienced. In this state of mind he is unable to understand that Ethel was joking when she suggested spending a week at the nearby inn. He does not want to leave that place and the others are compelled to take him by force.

Back in their native land, some time later, things had once again changed: Ethel was about to get married and Mr. Lucas, who had become a perpetually disgruntled old man, would be taken care of by his sister, Julia, whom he hated. The hero of this short story had no hopes left and was complaining about everything: next door neighbours, street noises and especially the sound of running water, which did not let him sleep. As if in a bad joke, the serene purl of the mystical Greek river had been reduced to a plumbing annoyance. Life had installed for Mr. Lucas only self-induced bitterness in his last days. The story ends upon reception of a parcel intended for Ethel. It had been sent by Mrs. Forman from Athens and it contained asphodel bulbs wrapped up in Greek newspapers. Ethel, who had learnt Greek, tries to read them. She picks one up and has a shock: the night when her father was forced to continue the tour with the rest of the group, a large tree (in fact the one with the spring rushing from its trunk) had blown down, killing all five inhabitants of the inn where Mr. Lucas had wanted to remain for a week. She gets upset, and says how lucky they were for not spending there that night, and having what could only be called a “marvellous deliverance”, unlike “those poor half savage people”. The whole place was in ruins and even the stream had changed its course. Mr. Lucas was irritated by the noisy children next door and dismissed the story without any interest. He no longer cared.

The choice of title is explained in the work itself: Mrs. Forman always referred to Ethel as “Antigone” and Mr. Lucas tried to “setle down to the role of Oedipus, which seemed the only one that public opinion allowed him”. Forster thus anchors this story in the famous Greek tragedy of Oedipus, the man who unwillingly killed Laius, his father and married Jocasta, his mother. After discovering the terrible truth of his parentage and consequences of his deeds, Oedipus puts out his eyes and leaves Thebes (where he had ruled as king after delivering the town from the Sphinx) accompanied by Antigone, one of his daughters, whom he had fathered as a result of the incestuous relationship with Jocasta. The two wander until they reach Colonus, a village near Athens. There Theseus, king of Athens, takes pity on the pair and looks after them until Oedipus’ death. As far as Mr. Lucas was concerned, he had one thing in common with Oedipus: getting old. However, for Oedipus there would be no “road from Colonus”, because he dies there. Unlike him, Mr. Lucas cannot choose his last location on Earth: not being able to take charge of his own fate, he resistingly eludes a dramatic death waiting for him in the tree’s fall. Compelled to return to England he is abandoned by his Antigone and has to age and die slowly, without much dignity. Therefore he gives up the dream of a memorable death, becoming morose, selfish and lonely.

And so the Greek kind of tragedy, with its high moral aspects and implications, its profound pessimistic view on human destiny, its heroism and unavoidable painful struggle in life makes for the starting point of a modern type of tragedy, where meaning and expression of desires are lost to failed communication and (self-imposed) social dictates—the English party won’t stay at the country inn (or khan) because they regarded the Greek family who owned it as being dirty, foreign and low-class. “That’s the modern Greek all over”, adds Mr. Graham after successfully detering the three children from keeping Mr. Lucas at the khan. “Your father meant money if he stopped, and they consider we were taking it out of their pockets”. Encompassing into a few pages a vast array of subthemes—aging, father-daughter relationships, depression, death and dying, disillusionment and suffering, care giving, family relationships, superstitions—“The Road from Colonus” also constitutes a good reminder of how important it is to respect the opinions and needs of the aging. The others were certain they had rescued Mr. Lucas from himself, regarding his attitude and stubbornness to continue their tour as a mere whim. Instead they took away the last dream he would be able to have, fatally diminishing him in the process.

Another reinterpretation of cultural constituents can be noticed in “The Story of the Siren”, where E.M. Forster combines superstitions and local-held beliefs with ancient mythology. The fantastic element is in fact noticeable from the work’s very title: in ancient Greek myths Sirens (or Seirenes) were mythical beings, believed to have the power of enchanting and charming, with their beautiful song, anyone who heard them. Their abode is identified as a rocky island (sometimes as a group of rocky islands) in the Mediterranean. According to different sources their residence is placed on some small islands called “Sirenum scopuli” by the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, while Homer identified them as living between the island of Aeaea and the rock of Scylla. In other versions of the myth they inhabit either the island of Anthemusa, Capo Peloro, the Sirenuse islands near Paestum, or Capreae (now Capri). All these locations are off the coast of modern-day Italy and most of the times the island of Capri seems to correspond best to the Sirens’ mythical dwelling place—even Anthemusa is identified by some researchers as being either Ischia or Capri. Once these observations have been made, it is not difficult to understand why the action of the short story is set on and around the island of Capri.

The reader is plonged right away into action, by an abrupt beginning: the anonymous narrator was on a boat with a group of fellow tourists, in the Mediterranean, when he drops his notebook on the Deist Controversy into the water. One of the two boatmen starts taking his clothes off, so that he could jump and retrieve it. Since he needed it for his Fellowship Dissertation, the narrator suggests that he and the equally anonymous seaman, a Sicilian, be landed back and the others continue their tour of the grottos. So it happens and the two are left near the Blue Grotto at Capri, a place which contained “only more blue water, not bluer water”. If the notebook falling through the waters of the Mediterranean had been a beautiful sight, reaching mystical dimension when, owing to refraction, it got “bigger than the book of all knowledge” then, to the narrator, the naked Sicilian diving for the lost object constituted a sight “past all description”. Perhaps just one of Forster’s homosexual fantasies. Once the notebook was recovered, the Italian engages the young British tourist into a discussion about the Siren. The latter suggests that she comes out of the blue water and sits on the rock at the cave’s entrance combing her hair. When asked whether he had seen her, he replied “often and often”. The Sicilian admits never to have seen her.

A remark must be made at this point: it would seem that a confusion between Sirens and mermaids is being made. Sirens are creatures belonging strictly to Greek mythology and are described as a human (female)-bird hybrid. Even though both their parentage and number differ from author to author and from literary work to literary work, in all writings they are beautiful creatures who lure sailors with their enchanting music and voices, shipwrecking them on the rocky coasts of their island. The Sirens are unsuccessful at tempting the Argonauts, because Orpheus surpassed them in musical abilities, and Odysseus, whose crew blocked their ears with wax while he himself was tightly bound to the ship’s mast. As the legend goes, should any man hear and not be enchanted with their song, then the Sirens would perish. Odysseus was able to hear them sing but was restrained to the mast. Distressed by seeing a man escape their music, the Sirens fly around his ship and sing, but in vain. They go mad, throw themselves into the sea and drown. In every legend they are depicted as inhabiting rocky islands, consequently living near the sea, but never in the sea. Unlike them, mermaids can be found in myths across Europe, the Far East, Africa, Asia, even the Caribbean. They too are hybrids, with the upper body of a human (female) and the tail of a fish. They are aquatic creatures, living in either salt or fresh water, rarely venturing onshore.

Returning to Forster’s short story, its creature seems to possess features of both Siren and mermaid: the narrator says that his conjectural companion must have heard her sing, at which the Sicilian replies impatiently: “How can she sing under water? Who could? She sometimes tries, but nothing comes from her but great bubbles.” Judging by this remark it would seem as if one of the creatures who had failed in luring Odysseus had somehow cheated death and, in doing so, became a prisoner of the sea, from which it was desperately trying to set herself free. The huge expanse of water had become her refuge and dungeon: she could not leave it on her own because the priests had “blessed the air, so that she cannot breathe it”; they had also “blessed the rocks, so that she cannot sit on them”. Only the sea remained unblessed, “because it is too big, and always changing”. Therefore she lived in the sea, perhaps acquiring fish-like characteristics as well and taking hybridization a step further on the evolutionary chain. As it happens with the myth of Oedipus, the Siren is also reduced to a fraction of her former self: once a formidable creature, her power had dwindled within the “new”, Christian Europe. She could nonetheless still do harm: being wicked, the Siren generally targeted good people, but would sometimes make slight exceptions to this rule, which the Italian boatman knew only too well.

One day, when he was seventeen, the Sicilian joined Giuseppe, his older brother who was then twenty, on a tour of the caves. They were acting as guides to a group composed of a rich English lady and her friends. According to his own confession, Giuseppe was loved by many and loved many in return, “but that is a different thing from being good”. Wanting to make a positive impression, the young boy caught a crab, pulled off its claws and offered it as a curiosity. The ladies were squeamish but a gentleman was pleased and offered him money. Being inexperienced, he did not take it: the man’s pleasure had been sufficient reward for him. However, Giuseppe had witnessed it all, got angry at his brother, and hit him on the side of the mouth with such force that a tooth cut his lip making it bleed. A struggle ensued but the younger brother was quickly calmed down, with a powerful kick under the armpit. Later on, after reaching a grotto, the gentleman made the two brothers dive for money. Knowing how much pleasure it gave foreigners to see them in the water, Giuseppe was quick in taking advantage of this opportunity: he would not dive for anything else than silver. So a two-lira piece was thrown in. Noticing his younger brother attending to his bruise and crying, Giuseppe entered the water “without crossing himself”, which people did to avoid seeing the Siren (for she was targeting good people). He nevertheless saw it, and thus both his life and his brother’s took a turn for the worse.

After a short break, the Italian continued his story: Giuseppe had to be pulled into the boat, where it was noticed that he had undergone a transformation: he seemed so large as to fill the boat all on its own and so wet that he could not be dressed. It was as if he had become of the sea—that afternoon the doctor came “and took money”, also “the priest came and took more and smothered him with incense and spattered him with holy water”. All proved to no avail: the mutation was so powerful that Giuseppe even “kissed the thumb-bones of San Biagio and they never dried till evening”. What happened next? Giuseppe cared for nothing else except sleeping: he did no work, “forgot to eat”, “forgot whether he had his clothes on”. As a consequence, his younger brother and sister had to provide for the family—Giuseppe could not be made into a beggar because he was “too robust to inspire pity”, as for an idiot “he had not the right look in his eyes”. The cause of this peculiar behaviour was the unhappiness provoked by knowing everything. It would seem that after his encounter with the Siren Giuseppe had been cursed with the gift of omniscience, hence his desire of sleeping constantly and no longer engaging in any sort of social activity.

A parallel can be drawn here, to Romanian folklore and literature: the effects of meeting the Siren can be compared to those of meeting the mythological creatures called “iele”, which Camil Petrescu uses as background for his drama “Jocul ielelor”. In Romanian folklore those who see the “iele” become physically deformed, slip into alienation or, less frequently, develop nostalgia for the Absolute. They are therefore no longer able to find their place in the world, as it was the case with Giuseppe. The latter manages however to get married. After his brother read him a newspaper article about a girl from Ragusa (a city in Sicily) who had “gone mad through bathing in the sea”, Giuseppe got up, left the house and returned a week later with the young girl, whose name was Maria. Despite an initial resistance from her father, a rich mine-owner, the two got married. The event had been a sullen one, ending with children throwing stones after the newlyweds. There were now two persons who needed to be looked after (Maria displayed the same behaviour as Giuseppe), so the family’s boat was sold and the unnamed Italian got the job with “the bad old man you have today”. But there is always room for worse.

The “end of everything” came when Maria got pregnant. If at first people mocked and ridiculed the family, they slowly became frightened: “the child would be Anti-Christ”, said the priests, while an old witch “began to prophesy” that unlike Giuseppe and Maria—who had “silent devils”, capable of little harm—the child would “always be speaking and laughing and perverting” for in the end to “go into the sea and fetch up the Siren into the air and all the world would see her and hear her sing”. Her song would bring chaos and destruction: opening of the Seven Vials, Pope’s death, burning of Santa Agata’s (patron saint of Catania) veil, all culminating with the marriage between the boy and the Siren. The couple would “rule the world together, for ever and ever”. None of these came to happen. The strange alliance between Church and witchcraft had alarmed even the hotel keepers, who feared a reduction in the number of tourists. They decided to subscribe the money for sending Giuseppe and Maria inland until the child was born. The night before their departure, Maria wanted to see once more the sight of the sea shooting up over the cliffs under a full moon. It was the last thing she would ever see, for a priest pushes the girl over the cliffs killing both her and the unborn child.

Later that night, a child breaks the news to Giuseppe and his brother, laughing. The latter rushes for a knife, but Giuseppe tells him to sit down again: “If she is dead, why would others die too?”. For refusing to listen, Giuseppe trips his brother, charges against him and sprains his wrists. The anonymous boatman faints and Giuseppe disappears, never to be seen again. By the time his wrists got better, the murderous priest had already immigrated to America and besides, he no longer had the fury to go through with his plan: “one cannot kill a priest” because “they held the key of heaven”. As for Giuseppe, he travelled the world in search of someone else who had seen the Siren. Arriving in Liverpool he falls ill and begins spitting blood until he died. Apparently there was no longer anyone living who had seen the Siren. The unnamed Italian thought there would never be in his lifetime both a man and a woman to see her and give birth to the child who would fetch up the Siren from the sea, thus destroying silence and saving the world. Silence and loneliness could not last an eternity. The sea is capable to last longer than anything “and she shall come out of it and sing”. The narrator wanted to know more about the prophecy but the returning boat prevents him from asking.

Life is in constant change—all living things need to transform and adapt in order to survive. Humans are no exception and neither their societies: in the early twentieth century Britain was the world’s first power, hence the British upper-classes generally looked down upon other cultures. This can be noticed in “The Story of the Siren” as well: British tourists loved to see Italians diving for coins. The latter had as main objective getting as much money from the rich tourists as they could. Although things are different now, the main change that can be noticed in this short story takes place on a symbolical level: change in the humans’ perception of the world also brought about change for other creatures, albeit mythological ones. The Siren of ancient Greece founds herself faced with a new world: she is now no longer interested in luring men to their death, working instead at the destruction of the world. She who once was a virgin daughter of Gaia, terror of all sailors, could now hardly be spotted and was searching for a mate, male offspring to a man and a woman who had seen her. By marrying him the Siren would be able to destroy the world. This was how the local legend went.

However, to the anonymous Sicilian boatman, the Siren was going to save the world, not destroy it. On the level of symbolism her loss of maidenhood through marriage is representative of humanity losing its last ideals. Since only good people could see the Siren and since approximately one in every generation saw her, means that the number of good people is falling. Nonetheless she is also seen by Giuseppe, a man whom his own brother describes as “wicked”. Such a strange occurrence can be regarded either as a mistake of the Siren who inexplicably took Giuseppe for a good person, or as a plan of the same creature, meant at bringing about the birth of the child who would release her from the underwater prison. In the light of the second option things become clear, proving the Sicilian right: the Siren does not want to destroy the world, for the world does a great job all on its own. Wickedness falls prey to itself, which the Siren knew from personal experience. That is why she targeted good people and needed a partner: by coupling she would be able to completely detach from her former self and in so doing she could rule, together with her companion, over the world. Not the same world, but a new one, detached from what it had once been, reshaped and rescued from itself.

“A Passage to India”, “The Road from Colonus” and “The Story of the Siren” have used voyage as main theme or background against which E.M. Forster developed a series of underlying ideas concerning humanity and the role individuals play in its development. Similarities in the use of motifs and ideas between these three literary works and “Other Kingdom” can be observed: the spiritual/mystical and mythical elements permeate all of them. The most obvious difference resides in the artistic expression of the “voyage” theme: in “Other Kingdom” readers are presented with events taking place after the trip they are connected to had ended. Following a visit to Ireland, Mr. Harcourt Worters, a wealthy entrepreneur and landowner from Hertfordshire, returns home in the company of a beautiful young woman, Miss Evelyn Beaumont, who becomes his fiancée. The particularization of action in this short story begins in media res, with the Irish girl and Jack Ford being tutored in Latin by Mr. Inskip. Being a piece of modern literature, the narration of “Other Kingdom” is neither completely objective, nor completely subjective: Mr. Inskip provides us with an account of a life situation involving the other three main characters of the story. He witnesses it first hand and becomes just partially involved, so his rendering of facts is done in a semi-detached voice.

The key figure seems to be Mr. Worters, a character holding authority over the others: he is Miss Beaumont’s fiancé, Jack Ford’s guardian, Mr. Inskip’s employer. He is a powerful man, not only financially, but also mentally: throughout the story things are done according to his will. As it often happens, characters in Forster’s short stories are bearers of a socially-charged message, transmitted through reinterpretation of a classical myth. This time the story that is remodeled so as to fit a modern context and address the problems of modern world is the story of Daphne. In ancient Greek mythology Daphne was a nymph, living either in the Peloponnese or in Thessaly. There are several versions of this myth, but the general story is the same: the Olympian sun-god Apollo falls in love with the nymph and ardently desires to possess her. Having pledged her life to chastity and hunting, Daphne tries to escape Apollo’s lustful advances, thus resulting a chase. Although a good athlete, Daphne could not outrun a god. Realizing Apollo would eventually catch up with her, Daphne pleads to be rescued (according to different versions of the myth she asked Peneus, a river god and one of the alleged fathers, Zeus or Gaia for deliverance). Her prayers were listened: the young huntress is turned into the tree that is now bearing her name—laurel (“daphne” means laurel in Greek).

The conflict which sets events in motion is, in keeping with the ancient story, an overlapping between love and possession: Evelyn Beaumont is described as a “crude, unsophisticated person…beautiful and ludicrous in the extreme”. She is Daphne’s counterpart, a “child of nature” whose outgoing personality is seductive. The role of Apollo is played by Mr. Worters, the rich Englishman accustomed at fulfilling his wishes and having things go his way. In one of the Greek myth’s versions Daphne also had a second admirer, Leucippus, a mortal boy. In “Other Kingdom” it is Jack Ford who embodies him. Since Miss Beaumont and Mr. Worters were engaged to be married, the latter buys as wedding present Other Kingdom Copse, a small beech wood neighbouring his own property. The young girl is so delighted with the present that she poses as a tree—a silver-birch at first, then correcting her mistake does a good impression of a beech tree in the “delicate green dress”, which quivered over her slender, swaying body “with the suggestion of countless leaves”. Her acting as a dryad or tree nymph, suggested by the green dress (green being the colour of nature, fertility, joy, life and its perpetual regenerative force), is indicative of the story’s denouement.

Evelyn’s enthusiasm is so great that she convinces everybody else to go for a picnic in what had become her wood. The party of eight (the four main characters already mentioned plus Mr. Worters’ mother, two sisters and Mrs. Osgood) sets off. There was the matter of reaching Other Kingdom Corpse to be settled: Miss Beaumont suggests they should paddle across the small stream that divided the properties, while Mr. Worters wanted to use the bridge that did not cross the stream at the right place. Things were done according to his wish. The wealthy man’s feelings towards the Irish girl were a mixture of love, desire to own her as a trophy, and bodily lust. Nothing strong enough to make him more flexible to Evelyn’s suggestions: besides this episode, Mr. Worters cannot be persuaded not to have the combined properties fenced in, a rustic bridge built over the small stream in the right place, and paths laid. At first Miss Beaumont resists these changes—she did not want the natural scenery being modified, she had already counted her trees (there were seventy-eight) and liked the place just as it was—but in the end gives in to her fiancé’s plans. While the landscape was being altered, Mr. Worters came across Jack’s secret diary and, upon reading it, had the boy expelled from his house. He had found about the young man’s passion for Evelyn.

Not knowing the reason behind her betrothed’s decision, Evelyn desperately tries to convince him otherwise, failing once again. This time the experience transforms her: she asks Inskip (who would later repeat the conversation to Mr. Worters) to give “Mr. Ford” her love and tell him to “guess”. The girl was so disillusioned that she “remained indoors, neither reading nor laughing, and dressing no longer in green, but in brown”. Only a heart-felt disappointment could account for such a chromatic shift: brown is representative of strength and maturity, in opposition to the exuberant and playful green. Evelyn had pulled herself from the meshes of an idealized life, “the great dream” in which everything becomes a sham. Other Kingdom Copse was now all fenced in and Miss Beaumont was inside, listening to the storm outside. Mr. Worters decided that once the storm was over, they would go to her wood and take possession of it formally, “for it didn't really count that last time”. For the first and last time in this short story, things would go not exactly as planned by the wealthy entrepreneur. Knowing the storm would not stop as long as she remained in the house, Evelyn goes out on the terrace. The storm indeed weakens but the wind grows in strength, uproots a beech tree from the copse and carries it all the way to the lawn.

Realizing the event’s symbolical meaning, Miss Beaumont asks her lover to go the copse after lunch. The latter agrees and the same lugubrious procession sets off anew. Evelyn Beaumont undergoes yet another, and final, metamorphosis: she had regained her happiness and had returned to the green dress previously used. The Irish girl now becomes a twentieth century Daphne: “Her garment was as foliage upon her, the strength of her limbs as boughs, her throat the smooth upper branch that salutes the morning or glistens to the rain”. Displaying an ecstatic behaviour, “she began to do her skirt dance in the open meadow, lit by sudden gleams of the sunshine”. The mystical dance, resembling that of forest deities in ancient Greece, took her away “from our society and our life, back, back through the centuries till houses and fences fell and the earth lay wild to the sun”. The sun or Phoebus Apollo, to which Harcourt Worters could now be identified: “he, entrammelled in love's ecstasy, forgetting certain Madonnas of Raphael, forgetting, I fancy, his soul, sprang to inarm her”. He was burning with desire and was consumed by an ardent passion: Evelyn Beaumont becomes Eternal Bliss, “Mine to eternity! Mine!”.

She, on the other hand, enthralled by her epiphany and in the grips of the pagan ritual dance, could no longer deny what had laid hidden until then: “Oh Ford! oh Ford, among all these Worters, I am coming through you to my Kingdom”. As her true feelings were sinking in, so was her metamorphosis: “Oh Ford, my lover while I was a woman, I will never forget you, never, as long as I have branches to shade you from the sun”. The scene of Apollo chasing Daphne is reenacted: Mr. Worters was quickly gaining on Miss Evelyn but she nonetheless escaped him. They all began searching for the young girl, but despite hearing her voice from behind the trees, in the bushes, above their heads, they were unable to find her. Another storm, more powerful than the previous, begins. Believing his fiancée had eloped with Jack Ford, Mr. Worters takes Inskip with him to London, to the “squalid suburb” that was Ford’s new home. Confronted with his alleged deed, Ford replied simply: “No such luck”. Mr. Worters, “stammered with rage”—he asks Inskip to quote the evidence against Ford. The latter admits having guessed what Evelyn had wanted him to, and assures Mr. Worters that Miss Beaumont escaped him “absolutely, for ever and ever, as long as there are branches to shade men from the sun”.

What actually happened to Miss Evelyn Beaumont is not properly stated, only implied. Behind the story’s fantastic ending, there should be some sort of message: a common feature of E.M. Forster’s short stories is in fact the reinterpretation of the realistic through the fantastic. As it is the case with “A Passage to India”, the overriding message might be a political one: given the young girl’s national belonging, Forster could have intended “Other Kingdom” to be an allegory of British-Irish relationships. First published seven years before the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland, the short story is a statement for Irish home rule. Besides Miss Beaumont’s nationality, another image used to convey the political message is that of Other Kingdom Copse itself. Only a small stream separated Evelyn’s estate from Mr. Worters’, just as only a narrow sea—the Irish Sea—separates Ireland and the United Kingdom. Consequently, hers and Mr. Worters’ different temperaments are symbolic of the Irish’ and English’ different temperaments, which geographical proximity could not reconcile. Moreover, the Englishman’s attitude regarding Other Kingdom Copse and his fiancée personifies England’s attitude towards Ireland—

Mr. Worters wanted to enclose the two properties, just as England wanted to bridge the cultural difference between itself and Ireland by imposing its own values upon the latter. England’s undertaking eventually failed, so did Mr. Worters’. In a moment of clear-mindedness, he actually confesses to Evelyn: “I—in the end I was a naughty, domineering tyrant, and disobeyed you”. But, as history bears witness, tyrants’ domination does, sometimes, come to an end.

CONCLUSIONS

Curiosity and an innate desire to understand their surroundings have prompted humans to explore the planet they inhabit. Scientists are now able to provide information about its internal structure, the forces and processes constantly working at its shaping, its formation and tormented geological history, and endangered existence in a violent universe. We have got so far slowly, one step at a time, ever since our distant ancestors first acquired self-consciousness. Before meeting the requirements needed to explain our planet’s “mysteries”, we had to know it physically. This was done over a period of several centuries, through voyages of exploration. Most, if not all of the times, such undertakings were carried out by sea—the best known example of an exploration voyage being of course Charles Darwin’s expedition on board the HMS Beagle. Besides its use as a means of gathering scientific information, “voyage” has also proven to be a rich source of inspiration for all kinds of artists, including writers. Artistic expression replaces nonetheless scientific rigour with individual personality and subjective worldview. Consequently, it emphasizes more the human factor of the equation, allowing us to better comprehend our own historical development, both individually and collectively. It is in fact this very relationship between the act of voyage and human psychology that takes center stage in the works of two early twentieth century English writers, Joseph Conrad and E.M. Forster.

As we could see studying some of their works, both writers express criticism against the white-dominated world of those days, particularly against European colonialism in other parts of the world. They are quick at portraying the European influence elsewhere as being unnatural, unjust and discriminating, focusing only on negative aspects, which they maximize and distort in a socialistic fashion. Regarded historically, these works provide readers with the opportunity to compare between two different eras—colonial and post-colonial. Although not completely devoid of excesses, colonialism also had its positive side, introducing a superior stage of technological and cultural development outside of Europe. Therefore history proves Joseph Conrad and E.M. Forster wrong: the European withdrawal from Africa and India did not bring about peace and prosperity. The Black Continent is even today—sixty, fifty, forty or thirty years later—pray to bloody civil wars, poverty and ruthless dictatorships, while former British India, shortly after gaining independence, witnessed religious intolerance leading to conflict and eventually to the secession of two Muslim states—Pakistan and Bangladesh—from the rest of the predominantly Hindu country.

Unable to properly manage their own resources, former European colonies rely extensively on assistance from the Old Continent. Assistance which often takes the form of allowing massive numbers of immigrants to come to Europe, thus putting pressure upon local labour markets and causing impoverishment of native elements. Also worth mentioning in Conrad’s and Forster’s works is the characters’ ultimate failure at completely overcoming cultural differences: despite the sympathy felt towards Africans, Charles Marlow does not befriend them, Jim decides to leave among the Bugis of Patusan mainly because it was the best way of escaping his past (love being actually an adjacent reason), people in Costaguana tend to prefer the company of those with whom they share similar origins, Fielding’s and Aziz’s friendship becomes conditioned by India’s political status. All these tensions are ascribed to British and/or European prejudice and arrogance. In reality both authors failed to understand the main force at work behind scientific progress, technological innovations, ground-breaking accomplishments, development of art and culture, the same force hugely responsible for setting the parameters of modern world: white genius and achievement. Insisting on a single, fugitive and purposely distorted historical phenomenon must not, and does not, belittle the contemporary’s world European heritage.

WORKS CITED

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and other stories. Collector’s Library, CRW Publishing Limited: 69 Gloucester Crescent, London NWI 7EG, 2006

Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. Filiquarian Publishing LLC: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2011

Conrad, Joseph. Nostromo. A Tale of the Seaboard. Dover Publications: Mineola, New York 2002

Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Sharer. Boson Books: 3905 Meadow Field Lane, Raleigh, North Carolina

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. Penguin Books: City of Westminster, London, 2011

Forster, E.M. Other Kingdom. Kessinger Publishing: Whitefish, Montana, 2010

Forster, E.M. The Curate’s Friend; The Road from Colonus. Kessinger Publishing: Whitefish, Montana, 2010

Forster, E.M. The Story of the Siren. The Hogarth Press: 496 Paradise Road, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, 1920

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Michael. A History of English Literature. Macmillan Press Ltd: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, 2000

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and other stories. Collector’s Library, CRW Publishing Limited: 69 Gloucester Crescent, London NWI 7EG, 2006

Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. Filiquarian Publishing LLC: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2011

Conrad, Joseph. Nostromo. A Tale of the Seaboard. Dover Publications: Mineola, New York 2002

Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Sharer. Boson Books: 3905 Meadow Field Lane, Raleigh, North Carolina

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. Penguin Books: City of Westminster, London, 2011

Forster, E.M. Other Kingdom. Kessinger Publishing: Whitefish, Montana, 2010

Forster, E.M. The Curate’s Friend; The Road from Colonus. Kessinger Publishing: Whitefish, Montana, 2010

Forster, E.M. The Story of the Siren. The Hogarth Press: 496 Paradise Road, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, 1920

Knox, Peter E. Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1986

Stringer, Jenny. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, 2004