Chapter Two – Moby-Dick and Heart of Darkness
[by LA ROSSOUW]
Ishmael’s whaling voyage and Marlow’s journey into Africa
Experienced sailors are familiar with the perils of the sea and the vicissitudes of fortune.
For them, every voyage is – to some extent at least – a journey into the unknown, and the promise
of an exciting adventure. It would not be surprising, therefore, if they were to find life on land
relatively predictable and, even, rather boring.
Ishmael
and Marlow, the respective narrators of,Moby-Dick and Heart of
Darkness, are two such men who have “followed the sea,for much,of their
lives, and a lengthy sojourn on shore soon becomes anathema to them.
The
former,decides to go whaling as “a way ... of driving off the spleen”
and countering “a damp, drizzly,November in [his] soul”, while the
latter “get[s] tired of resting” and enlists the help of an aunt to
achieve his ambition of being appointed as the captain of a steamboat on
the Congo River.
The physical journeys of both narrators may be
regarded as circular: Ishmael is rescued by the “devious-cruising
Rachel”, which, we must presume, eventually conveys him back to
Nantucket, while Marlow returns to “the sepulchral city”,the
starting-point, as it were, of his expedition into the “heart of
darkness”.
The physical journeys of Ahab and Mr Kurtz, by contrast, are linear.
Ahab’s passionate hatred,of Moby Dick dictates that he should direct the appropriately-named Pequod
towards
a final confrontation with the white whale. The consequences of this
are dire, since Ahab and all those under his command (with the solitary
exception of Ishmael) perish in the mid-Pacific.
Not much is said in Heart of Darkness about the physical journeys of Mr Kurtz. We assume,
without being given explicit details, that he made the trip to the Congo at some time in the past.
We
are told that he went on raiding expeditions into the interior,and
that, on one particular occasion, he travelled towards the Central
Station with a consignment of ivory before turning
back.After reports have been received that Kurtz is seriously ill, a “rescue” mission is
mounted,
but the Manager of the Central Station contrives that there is a
considerable delay before it is able to proceed. This effectively
ensures that Kurtz succumbs to the unhealthy
tropical climate shortly after boarding the steamboat under Marlow’s command.
Ishmael and Ahab experience the “howling infinite”; Marlow and Kurtz peer into
the “heart of darkness”
I think it is important to introduce my analysis of a number of (what I have proposed to call)
experiential journeys with the observation that Ishmael and Marlow perform dual roles in
Moby-Dick and Heart of Darkness respectively: they are narrators as well as characters. When
they assume their roles as the narrators of Moby-Dick and Heart of Darkness,they do so as
older men who report and interpret events that occurred earlier in their lives. It follows that
their narratives represent their thoughts at the time of their experiences and/or at the time of
writing. But, since Ishmael and Marlow often fail to distinguish between what they thought in
the past as characters and what they think in the present as narrators, it is only on rare
occasions that a reader will be able to differentiate between their experiences as narrators and
their experiences as characters. It is worth pointing out, though, that the reader of Marlow’s
narrative will find the task somewhat easier than the reader of Ishmael’s, simply because the
narrative orientation in Heart of Darkness fails to dominate the narrator’s original experience to
the same extent that it does in Moby-Dick.
However,
the difficulty remains, even in the case of Marlow’s narrative, and so I
shall not strive to make such distinctions where the distinction is not
already clear.have enhanced their ability to interpret the world in
ways that are meaningful to them.
The character development of Ishmael and Marlow may be inferred from the fact that each of them
finds it necessary to alter his outlook on life – and, hence, also, his habitual response to others
and to the world around him – during the course of the novel or novella in which he appears.
[Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, ed. Robert Kimbrough, 3rd ed. (New York : W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1989), p. 9.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ed. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford, 2nd ed. (New York : W.W. Norton & Co.,
Inc., 2002), p. 18.
Heart of Darkness, p. 11.
4
Moby-Dick, p. 427.
5
Heart of Darkness, p. 70.]
The
Pequod is named after a native American tribe which had been virtually
wiped out in 1637. Tom Quirk, thecompiler of the notes to the Penguin
Classics edition of Moby-Dick, observes: “The name is appropriate, for
thedescription of the ship and the prophecies that accumulate around the
fated voyage mark the Pequod as a death ship.” –
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, introd. Andrew Delbanco, with notes and explanatory [commentary by
Tom Quirk (rpt. Harmondsworth : Penguin Classics, 2003), p. 639.
Heart of Darkness, pp. 55-57.
Heart of Darkness, p. 34.16]
It is no accident that the physical journeys of Ishmael and Marlow are circular: we are meant to
see them as emblematic of their experiential journeys. These journeys follow spiral trajectories
that move “from an initial unity through multiple divisions back to a complex integrity which
replicates the simple unity of the origin but on a higher level.”
An
attentive reader of MobyDick and Heart of Darkness soon realises that
the two narrators undergo processes of intellectual growth and character
development (both as narrators and as characters).
Although, by the time their respective narratives end, Ishmael and Marlow have had a number
of disconcerting experiences, and although they continue to be puzzled by many things, I would
argue that they are wiser than they were before. Marlow has acquired greater self-knowledge,
and both he and Ishmael have gained greater insight into those with whom they have come into
contact. I also hold the view that the frequent philosophical conjectures of our two narrators
Although I am aware that a frame narrator (and not Marlow) speaks at the beginning and at the end of Heart of
Darkness, in this research report I shall refer to Marlow as the narrator of the novella, since he tells almost the entire
story, and we read his part of the narrative in his own words (which the frame narrator encloses within quotation marks).
I will expand on this statement when I discuss narrative journeys at a later stage of my argument.
[Abrams,
“Spiritual Travelers in Western Literature”, in The Motif of the
Journey in Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature, ed. Bruno
Magliocchetti and Anthony Verna (Gainesville : University Press of
Florida, 1994), p. 10.17]
Let us look more closely at Ishmael’s experiential journey in Moby-Dick. It is abundantly clear,
even before he sets out, that Ishmael expects to enjoy whaling. He declares that for him “the
whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open”. But
his blithe optimism is soon shaken.
At
New Bedford and, later, on the island of Nantucket, a number of
occurrences unnerve him. He enters a negro church by accident and it
seems to him,as if he is in the midst of “the great Black Parliament
sitting in Tophet.”
When he goes to,enquire about accommodation
at “The Spouter-Inn”, he notices that the landlord is the
rather,ominously-named Peter Coffin. Because the inn is full, Ishmael
has no option but to share a bed
with an evil-looking South Sea harpooneer named Queequeg. And, before the two of them
finally embark on their whaling voyage, the shabbily-apparelled Elijah hints darkly that they
have been unwise to enlist on a ship under the command of Captain Ahab.
It becomes apparent that the Elysian “wonder-world” of Ishmael’s imagination is soon replaced by a reality
that
is far less appealing, if not positively malign.However, despite the
fact that Ishmael’s first night at sea is a “frigid winter [one] in
the boisterous Atlantic,” he looks forward to “many a pleasant haven in
store”.
Subsequent events prove his confidence to have been
misplaced, since the Pequod does not call at any ports on its long
voyage halfway around the world. The only “pleasant havens” which lie in
store for
Ishmael are figurative ones: he enjoys expanding his
knowledge of whales and whaling,interacting with the crew of the
whaleship, and engaging in metaphysical speculation (whether for fun, or
in order to broaden his – and our – understanding of the universe). He
also relishes the prospect of encountering Moby Dick. But, although
Ishmael takes considerable delight in such thoughts and activities, he
does not attempt to conceal his anxiety about many of the dangers –
physical and metaphysical – which confront him
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/2174/RossouwLA_Chapter%202.pdf?sequence=4
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Steven B. Herrmann, PhD, MFT
Author of "Walt Whitman: Shamanism, Spiritual Democracy, and the World Soul"
Anyone
who is interested in a Jungian literary approach to an analysis of
Herman Melville's masterpiece must not overlook Edward F. Edinger's
masterful study "Melville's Moby Dick: An American Nekyia." While
Edinger has been criticized by literary critics for missing Melville's
humor and irony as part of his narrative strategy, he gets at an
in-depth psychological understanding of the novel that is enlightening.
As a psychological critic Edinger uncovers meanings that are remarkably
illuminating, both in terms of the archetypal meaning he assigns to
certain characters in the novel, but also to their relevance regarding
to Melville's personal psychology. For instance, in his analysis of the
figure of Captain Ahab as a study in the psychology of resentment and
revenge, and the therapeutic value Melville derrived from expressing his
anger and hate mythopoetically through the mouthpiece of Ahab Edinger
does not leave a stone unturned. As a classically trained Jungian
Edinger is one of the greatest teachers in the field of analytical
psychology. He makes his intentions clear from the start. In commenting
on Melville's opening passage of the book, "Call me Ishmael," Edinger
says that he is going to approach the novel "as though it were a dream
which needs interpretation and elaboration of its images for their
meaning to emerge fully" (9). Edinger's depth-psychological approach
leads him to unveil a different kind of wisdom, a different kind of
knowledge than what might be expected from a literary critic.
Particularly insightful, I think, are his comments about Ishmael's
"alienated state": "The word of the Lord," he says, "is an inner
imperative, a call from the Self to fulfill one's vocation"(43). Edinger
provides a psychological commentary on the inner conflict that connects
Ishmael as a "dream figure" to Melville's progressive vocation to
poetry. In my mind, it points to the most important theme of the novel
itself: the theme of psychic transformation through a prolonged and
extended process of active imagination, effected through his poetic art.
This was the first attempt at a full-length interpretation by a Jungian
and like so many of Edinger's books, his analysis is brilliant. This is
a great resource for any avid reader of Melville. My only criticism is
that he missed the meaning of the Ishmael-Queequeg marriage symbolism,
yet, given that the book was published in 1995, this oversight is
completely understandable. Today the cultural importance of this symbol
seems more obvious. A wonderful book.
[Amazon Book Review]
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“DAMNED IN THE MIDST OF PARADISE”:
THE APPRENTICESHIP NOVELS OF MELVILLE AND
CONRAD-TED BILLY
[M]y soul is bent upon a whaling venture. [. . .] I am brimful with
the most exhaustive information upon the subject. I have read,
studied, pumped professional men and imbibed knowledge upon whale
fishing and sealing for the last four years. I am acquainted with the
practical part of the undertaking in a thorough manner. (Karl &
Davies, Letters, I, 14)
The author of the above passage is not Herman Melville but Joseph Conrad. Its context is a letter he wrote to a Polish friend in 1885 expressing his desire to make “a fresh start in the world” by undertaking a whaling expedition to the polar seas. Of course, Conrad never followed through with this objective and, instead, eventually embarked on a much different voyage as a professional writer.
Later, in a 1907 letter, Conrad professed his antipathy for Melville’s fiction, claiming to have “looked into” the American author’s first two novels, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)and Omoo (1847) without finding what he wanted.
In the same letter Conrad complains that he could not endure the “strained rhapsody” of Moby Dick. Surely his own rhapsodical yearning to become a whaler in1885 was long forgotten, or else long repressed. Yet in spite of Conrad’s professed aversion to Melville’s works, scholars have found, and continue to find, affinities between these greatest of seafaring novelists.
Certainly the exotic subject matter of Melville’s apprenticeship novels is akin to that,of Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly and An Outcast of the Islands.
In addition, both novels make significant use of a romantic escapist as the main character. Of course, in many respects these works differ significantly.
For Melville, with his characteristically philosophical bent,views his Polynesian world through the lens of Romantic escapism,whereas Conrad, primarily interested in psychological studies of
Europeans in foreign lands, impressionistically portrays the clash of cultures in the exotic East. With this in mind, I propose to focus on Conrad’s anxiety of aversion with regard to Melville’s early fiction.
Though he devoted a whole book to The Vision of Melville and Conrad, Leon F. Seltzer gave little consideration to the similarities of their apprenticeship novels.
In a view that still holds favor today, Seltzer argues that Typee and Omoo could have had little influence on Conrad because of Melville’s naïve, Rousseauistic idealization of natives, his lack
of artistic form, and his tendency to moralize and propagandize.
Seltzer also argued that Conrad may have felt some anxiety atthe prospect of being linked to “Melville’s romanticized documentaries” because of their seafaring backgrounds .
But he bases his comparison of the two novelists on their skeptical temperaments rather
than any similarities in artistic treatment.
In this paper I want to examine some key areas of commonality in Typee and Almayer’s Folly: the
subversion of the colonial enterprise, the unconventional use of the word savage, the characterization of Asiatics in general, and the portrayal of the main male and female natives: Marnoo and Fayaway in Typee and Dain Maroola and Nina in Almayer’s Folly.
Although he claimed to have found the books antipathetic, it is scarcely surprising that Conrad read Melville’s first two novels.
Typee,in fact, was published in Great Britain in February 1846, about three weeks before it appeared in America. The novel was printed as part of John Murray’s “Home and Colonial Library,” a series that specialized in travel narratives. The novel proved so popular in Great Britain that the book never went out of print during Melville’s lifetime . Melville composed it shortly after returning from his voyages in the Pacific. He had set sail in 1841 on the whaling ship Acushnet, but by 1842 conditions on board the ship were so extreme that he and a fellow sailor, Richard Tobias Greene, decided to desert when it docked in the Marquesas Islands.
Typee narrates the story of their adventures among the natives, known as the Typee. Melville’s narrative is part travelogue, part autobiography, and part fiction. Thus, scholars have had difficulty in determining its generic identity. Probably inspired by Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before
the Mast, Typee ultimately seems to veer closer to fiction than to fact.
Typee is perhaps the most anti-colonial American novel. Melville condemns Western colonialism, and especially French colonialism, as representing European culture at its worst, for it uses subtleties and
subterfuges to commit “outrages and massacres” against the peaceful native populace, all in the name of bringing Christianity to the South Seas . Melville’s narrator laments that the natives tend to welcome
Christian visitors with open arms, for these Western visitors espouse Christian compassion but practice subterfuge, turning the natives’ heaven on earth into a living hell. Early in the novel, Tom recalls the incident of the Essex, in which an invasion of Christian soldiers was rebuffed by the Islanders, prompting the retreating Europeans to commit barbarous atrocities as they fled to their ship.
Melville views Westerners as decadent in comparison to the natives’ natural vitality.
His most specific anti-colonial target in the novel is the missionary movement. Tom opposes the conversion of the Islanders because he has seen how the natives of the Sandwich Islands were dehumanized by the civilization imposed upon them by the missionaries: “Better will it be for
them forever to remain the happy and innocent heathens and barbarians that they now are, than, like the wretched inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, to enjoy the mere name of Christians without experiencing any of the vital operations of true religion, whilst, at the same time, they are
made the victims of the worst vices and evils of civilized life”. Passionately defending the right of the natives to exist as they are,
Tom bemoans how the missionaries have transformed the unsuspecting natives from noble individuals into pathetic beasts of burden: “They have been literally broken and are harnessed to the vehicles of their spiritual instructors like so many dumb brutes! Missionary undertaking, however it may be blessed of Heaven, is in itself but human;and subject, like everything else, to errors and abuses”.
Like Melville, Conrad departs from the conventional patterns of colonial fiction. As Andrea White notes in her study of Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition, Conrad’s first novel offers a perspective
that is not exclusively English and does not confine the story of the Other to “the European point of view” . Although inspired by the sea tales of Hugo, Marryat, and Cooper, which provided a “shaping
discourse” for his own exotic fiction, Conrad questioned “some of the attitudes of the genre” even while he adopted some of the conventions of the “adventure yarns” he eagerly read as a youth .Thus,
Conrad mixes a nostalgia for a heroic past with a “realistic appraisal of man’s universal imperfection, an understanding that all men are base”. And, as White also notes, Conrad’s complex chronologies
and
probing psychological insight must have been puzzling to readers
accustomed to the streamlined exotic romances of Haggard, Kipling, and Stevenson.
In White’s view, Almayer’s Folly effectively reverses the image of the white man in the tropics “Instead of casting off with our hero from England for exotic lands, to seek glory and to light up the
dark places of the world, and always to return to the hero’s beloved native shores, we are confined to Borneo with Almayer throughout the fiction.
Instead of journeying to open seas, we experience Almayer’s claustrophobia. Instead of heroic deeds, Almayer accomplishes nothing”
Perhaps Conrad departs from the conventions of adventure fiction most conspicuously in his “subversion of the genre that had always depicted the benevolent heroism and achievements of the white man in the outposts of empire” . Thus, Almayer’s Folly “ is the record not only of one white man’s folly but of the misguidedness of the whole European venture in its imperial outposts”. Like Melville’s missionaries, Conrad’s white man is “a duplicitous, destructive opportunist” . Late in Conrad’s novel, Mrs. Almayer virtually paraphrases Melville when she tells Nina to encourage Dain to “’slay the
white men that come to us to trade, with prayers on their lips and loaded guns in their hands’” . But Conrad more often links the “bold spirits” of “sea-going adventurers” to “trade and dissipation”: they “ traded with Hudig in the daytime, drank champagne, gambled, sang noisy songs,and
made love to half-caste girls at night” . The term “halfcaste” serves
as a racial stereotype throughout the novel, qualifying even Nina’s alluring appearance. Even when racial intermarriage occurs in the novel, there is no real love between Almayer and his Malay wife.
One of the common denominators linking these first novels is Melville’s and Conrad’s addiction to the word savage. Melville, in fact, calls attention to the term, affirming that the South Sea Islanders do not
deserve to be called savage and that Western civilization has a better claim to barbarity:
The term “savage” is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think
that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned,four or five Marquesan islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans
dispatched to the islands in a similar capacity. (Typee 145-46)
Undoubtedly, Typee serves as an apology for “savage” customs. Melville argues that in all other respects, except for cannibalism, the Typee are “humane and virtuous” (232). And though he claims to abhor and condemn the practice, he is quick to note that they only cannibalize their slain
enemies. This is the closest Tom ever comes to condemning the “savage,”for he customarily views the natives’ “savagery” as naïveté. Another“savage” behavior that Tom abhors is the native religious practice of tattooing, and he fears that the natives will insist on tattooing him,making him unwelcome in Western society. This is one of the early signs in Melville’s novel that Tom fears being totally assimilated into Typeeculture. Tom has unabashedly gone native, but, almost like Almayer in
this respect, he expects to go back and live as a Westerner. AlthoughTom describes the natives as having religious beliefs, he states that “anunbounded liberty of conscience” prevails among them,
suggesting that they are free to act without inhibition. This freedom from restraint comes close to Conrad’s employment of the word savage in Almayer’s Folly.
Conrad, in fact, uses the word savage even more compulsively than does Melville, and he also tends to redefine the term by often placing it in a positive context. As Cedric Watts has noted, in Almayer’s Folly, “Conrad made adventure introspective, heroism ambiguous, the exotic subversive;
he liked to undermine stereotypical contrasts between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘primitive’” . In this respect, Conrad’s strategy resembles Melville’s.
In his study of the psychology of atavism in Almayer’s Folly, Todd G.Willy affirms that Conrad shows no reluctance to define all of his Asiatic characters as “savage” : “In general, to be savage in Conrad’s first novel is to be endowed with either vestigial or dominant traits of a distinctly ‘lower’—though at times an absolutely necessary and often thoroughly admirable—character. In either case, savagery’s hallmark is, according to the narrator, a certain lack of ‘restraint’” . Conrad presents “savagery as being animal-like, as being primitive, instinctual, violent and native”
.
At one point in Almayer’s Folly Conrad almost echoes Melville when the narrator states that “there are some situations where the barbarian and the so-called civilized man meet upon the same ground”
. Here the specific context is human greed, which spans all races and ethnic heritages. Mrs. Almayer’s delight in scooping up handfuls of silver coins links her to her husband’s dream of a wealthy life in Amsterdam. And, indeed, Conrad uses the word savage most often in reference to her.
A “savage manner” underlies her “personal charms,” and her “savage mood” cannot be destroyed by the “genius of civilization” . Quickly shaking off the Western conditioning imposed on her, Mrs. Almayer begins to treat her husband “with a savage contempt expressed by sulky silence, only occasionally varied by a flood of savage invective”. The three years that Nina lives with a “savage” mother on a “savage” river also serve to throw off her previous conditioning . For “Nina adapted herself wonderfully to the circumstances of a half-savage and miserable life” . She shrugs off her Western-style education as she listens to “the recital of those savage glories, those barbarous fights and savage feasting". Almayer cannot comprehend why Nina would be seduced by what he considers savage because, for him, savagery is the absence of what he envisions as civilized: a splendid Amsterdam of the mind. Almayer feels condemned to a “savage” life in opposition to his unrealistic dreams. And in the climactic confrontation between father and runaway daughter, Conrad allows Nina to force Almayer to face his
own hypocrisy and self-deception regarding his marriage to a “savage” woman. Surely, for Conrad, as for Melville, Western civilization has no ordained preeminence over native savagery.
With a few notable exceptions, Melville’s portrayal of the Typee is favorable. As Tom and Toby begin their exploration of regions largely unknown to Westerners, Melville depicts their trek as an atavistic journey through an antediluvian world of nature that anticipates Conrad’s postlapsarian environments: “The whole landscape seemed one unbroken solitude and as we advanced through this wilderness, our
voices sounded strangely in our ears, as though human accents had never before disturbed the fearful silence of the place, interrupted only by the low murmuring of distant waterfalls” . In this same context,
Melville emphasizes falling and plunging, for Tom and Toby figuratively fall from their supposedly enlightened civilization into a primitive heart of darkness. Yet, ironically, this primitive world seems more comfortable to them than does their detestable ship.
Melville views the primitive as superior to the civilized because,although Western civilization may supply the means by which desires may be gratified, the South Sea Islanders seem infinitely happier, in the
midst of nature’s bounty. Moreover, Melville affirms that civilization can only elevate the mind of the Islander, not the spirit or the heart. And while he admits that civilized life has more advantages than primitive existence, he still favors the primitive because it offers none of the disadvantages of civilized life. The Typee seem pleased by the most trivial pleasures because they are free of the manufactured cares and anxieties of Western culture. The childish immodesty of the native women embarrasses Tom and Toby, yet Melville views the natives’ lack of shame as proof of the women’s freedom from civilized affectation. The Happy Valley of the Typee, in fact, is a paradise for native women, for they are
highly valued, amorously courted, and keenly conscious of their own power in the community. And just as native women put civilized damsels to shame, native men also seem superior to civilized gentlemen: “Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden—what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane necked varlets would civilized men appear” . Persistently,
Melville stresses the sound health of the Typee in contrast to the starvation and disease evident among the Hawaiian natives, a consequence of the incursion of white people. Even when he must admit that the natives have committed outrages, Melville argues that white people have always been the first
aggressors, violating the spirit of Christian charity in the process: We breathe nothing but vengeance, and equip armed vessels to traverse thousands of miles of oceans in order to execute summary punishment upon the offenders. On arriving at their destination, they burn, slaughter, and destroy, according to the tenor of written instructions, and sailing away from the scene of devastation, call upon all Christendom to applaud their courage and their justice.
Melville’s narrator contends that the accounts of missionaries have grossly exaggerated the frequency and enormity of the atrocities committed by the Islanders to make readers believe that these pagan cannibals must be liberated from their superstitions. Thus, Melville implies that the natives are easily corrupted by whites and not fully responsible for their violent actions. To Tom, the Typee seem perfect human beings with one tragic flaw, cannibalism: “The frightful genius of pagan worship seemed
to brood in silence over the place, breathing its spell upon every object around. Here and there, in the depths of these awful shades, rose the idolatrous altars of the savages” .
In short, Melville views the Typees as Noble Savages with one significant tragic flaw: cannibalism. Conrad, in contrast, portrays his Asiatic characters more realistically as flawed human beings.
With the exception of Dain Maroola, none approaches the Noble Savage archetype.
Conrad also differentiates these characters, whereas Melville tends to lump all the Typee together. And yet Conrad does stereotype his nationalities. For example, Almayer’s “unscrupulous and resolute” Arab
rivals commonly resort to deception to attain their goals. The Arabs evenpretend to have business with Almayer so that they can get a glimpse of the beautiful Nina. Lakamba offers the lowest salaams and the heartiest of handshakes to Almayer, but he departs with a “furtive smile” to consult with Abdulla . In addition to guile, Lakamba exhibits a cultivated yet cold-hearted sensibility, as when he tells Babalatchi that Almayer “’must die quietly’”. Ironically, just after this command, he listens“with closed eyes and a delighted smile” to Verdi’s plaintive music as the weeping Trovatore bids farewell to Leonore . But Arabs do not have a monopoly on deception in the novel. Tamineh seems to drift unknowingly
and unfeelingly through the narrative, yet, toward the end, she lets Almayer know that Dain is alive and that Nina has run off with him. Likewise, Mrs. Almayer initially conceals her “hate and contempt” for
her “new life” . Ironically, it is Mrs. Almayer who warns Nina against white men’s lies. But the personification of guile among Conrad’s Asiatic characters is undoubtedly the silver tongued Babalatchi, who calls the white men “devils,” only to hear Mrs. Almayer respond, “’And you salaamed and asked for mercy.’” Babalatchi’s reply discloses his cast of mind perfectly: “’But I shall live to deceive them’”. In contrast to Melville’s cannibalistic Noble Savages, Conrad’s Asiatics have lost whatever naivete and trust they once possessed. They are not corruptible but corrupt.
Melville paints a Rousseauistic portrait of the archetypal Noble
Savage in Marnoo, whom he describes as a Polynesian Apollo. Marnoo
exhibits “matchless symmetry” of form, beautifully structured limbs, and
an elegant figure (Melville 157). A breathtaking male counterpart to the
beautiful Fayaway, Marnoo is nevertheless given a cold reception by Tom,
who has gotten used to the lavish affection of the native women and feels
upstaged by this ideal specimen of manhood. Ironically, it is Marnoo
himself who engineers Tom’s escape from the island. Only at the end of
the novel does Melville indicate that Marnoo has been working behind
the scenes and has arranged for a rescue ship to take Tom away from the
cannibalistic Typee. Thus, Marnoo has guile as well as an imposing
physique.
Nevertheless, Melville’s Marnoo is obviously one-dimensional. But Conrad’s Dain Maroola, though he is more of a major character than Marnoo, does not quite transcend the label of a stock character in a
romantic melodrama. Like Marnoo, Dain is a splendid physical specimen. Though of medium height, Dain has “a breath of shoulder suggesting great power” . He has “a face full of determination and some dignity. The squareness of the lower jaw, the full red lips, the mobile nostrils, and the proud carriage of the head gave the impression of being half-savage, untamed, perhaps cruel” .
Small wonder that Nina views Dain as a “gorgeous and bold being” who scarcely resembles
the other traders she has seen. In fact, she envisions Dain as the
personification of Malay manhood: “Nina felt as if this boldlooking
being who spoke burning words into her willing ear was the embodiment of her fate, the creature of her dreams—reckless, ferocious, and with a passionate embrace for his beloved—the ideal Malay chief of her mother’s tradition” . “His strength and his courage,
his recklessness and his daring, his simple wisdom and his savage cunning—all were [Nina’s]” . Conrad puts Dain’s “savage cunning” on display late in the novel when the Balinese warrior believes the Dutch have surrounded him, and, instead of charging ahead, he decides to resort to guile as the best way not to save himself but to die bravely: He would wait for his enemies in the sunlight . He knew how a Malay
chief should die. The sombre and desperate fury, that peculiar inheritance of his race, took possession of him, and he glared savagely across the clearing . . . He would walk towards them with a smiling face, with his hands held out in a sign of submission till he was very near them. He would speak friendly words—come nearer yet—come nearer— That would be the time: with a shout and a leap he would be in the midst of them, killing, killing, killing, and would die with the shouts of his enemies in his ears, their warm blood spurting before his eyes. Despite this portrait of Malay cunning and bloodlust, Conrad, the ironist par excellence, cannot resist giving Dain a hilarious pratfall: “Carried away by the excitement, he rushed forward, struck at the empty air, and fell on his face”.
Melville’s Fayaway, the embodiment of exotic female perfection, is the female counterpart to Marnoo. She possesses ideal female grace and beauty and personifies the essential freedom of living in a Rousseauistic pastoral state. She is a “child of nature” who enjoys a “perfect freedom from care and anxiety” (Melville 104). (At one point in the novel, Fayaway
stands up in a boat and makes a sail out of her robe, a tableau that perfectly
captures her natural beauty.)
The natives do not disapprove of Tom’s dalliance with Fayaway until he expresses his desire to paddle her around the lake in a canoe. This strenuous objection is the first sign that the Typee do not look favorably on mixed racial relationships.Fayaway, in short, is a stock character representing natural feminine allure. But Conrad rejects such one-dimensional characterization in Almayer’s Folly, for Nina resembles Fayaway only in the most superficial physical characteristics. Even in Conrad’s descriptions of Nina’s physical perfection he emphasizes how her mixed heritage has set her apart from other Malay women by virtue of her greater understanding and intellect: Her dark and perfect eyes had all the tender softness of expression common to Malay women, but with a gleam of superior intelligence; she stood there all in white, straight, flexible, graceful, unconscious of herself, with a shining mass of long black hair that fell in heavy tresses over her shoulders, and made her pale olive complexion look paler still by the contrast of its coal-black hue. In addition to her beauty, Conrad calls attention to Nina’s “great sad eyes,where the startled expression common to Malay womankind was modified
by a thoughtful tinge inherited from her European ancestry” . Conrad foregrounds Nina’s intellect to show that her decision to ultimately affirm her Malay identity is a thoughtful choice, not an irrational impulse. Although Almayer thinks of his daughter as fundamentally different from her “disorderly, half-naked” mother, Nina accepts “that savage intrusion into her daily existence with wonderful equanimity” .
Nina’s Western-style education has had a great effect on her, but not in the way Almayer planned. For to her “the savage and uncompromising sincerity of purpose shown by her Malay kinsmen seemed at least preferable to the sleek hypocrisy, the polite disguises, to the virtuous
pretenses of white people”. Though the narrator affirms that Nina’s “young mind” has been “thrown back again into the hopeless quagmire of barbarism, full of strong and uncontrolled passions” ,
Conrad dramatizes how Nina uses her mind to reject “the white side of her descent, represented by a feeble and traditionless father” . Unlike the ever-compliant Fayaway, Nina rejects Almayer’s visions
of her future happiness in Amsterdam and “ dreamed dreams of her own with the persistent absorption of a captive thinking of liberty within the walls of his prison cell”.
In her final confrontation with her father, she tells him: “’You wanted me to dream your dreams, to
see your own visions—the visions of life amongst the white faces of those who cast me out from their midst in angry contempt. I have been rejected with scorn by the white people, and now I am a Malay!’. Yet despite this climactic declaration of her cultural identity, Babalatchi and her own mother call Nina a white woman on numerous occasions (104, 121, 122). So Conrad foregrounds Nina’s mixed ancestry
to show that although she has a dual ancestry she cannot fully embrace either culture.In the opening paragraph of the “Author’s Note” to Almayer’s Folly Conrad may be alluding to Melville when he speaks of life “amongst honest cannibals” (ix). But the main thrust of his argument is surely beyond dispute: Conrad finds in distant lands the same picture of life as in England, for “there is a bond between us and that humanity so far away”. In his intent “to sympathize with common mortals, no matter where
they live” , Conrad was also taking a path pursued by Melville, who was always dogged by his literary reputation as the man who once lived among cannibals. As indicated earlier, the episodic nature of Typee surely would not have endeared Melville’s novel to Conrad, who had an abiding
concern with artistic form. Yet there are some intriguing similarities in the way Melville and Conrad dramatize their exotic material. BothTypee and Almayer’s Folly foreground the clash of cultures, and though Melville and Conrad seem critical of Western colonial authorities, thenatives hardly remain unscathed. Tom tries his best to fit into the Polynesian culture but ultimately remains an “omoo” or wanderer. Almayer may marry a native woman, but he is unwilling to assimilate into the culture of Sambir. Melville’s Fayaway, the living embodiment of female grace, seems a far cry from Conrad’s more complex Nina, yet both represent the tantalizing possibility of bridging the gap between the races.
Moreover, just as Melville’s Tom imagines that Toby has deserted him in Typee, Almayer feels abandoned by Tom Lingard. Perhaps Conrad departs most significantly from Melville in his depiction of nature. For Melville, nature does present some perils, but it is essentially a bower of bliss.
Conrad,
in contrast, views the organic world from a decidedly postRomantic
perspective, seeing it as a hothouse where passionate dreams are dashed and Westerner and Easterner alike find isolation and
alienation. Conrad clearly goes beyond Melville’s use of an exotic environment as a backdrop and makes the organic world a living entity. Moreover, Conrad characteristically rejects the I-narrative perspective on Eastern manners and customs, employed by Melville in Typee, in favor
of an impersonal narrative voice that foregrounds ambiguity and irony in its depiction of cultures not just meeting but conflicting. Nevertheless, Conrad, at the beginning of his artistic career, could well have found in Melville’s early novels the authorization to challenge the colonial project, which is largely absent from the conventional colonial narratives of Kipling
and Stevenson.
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA, USA
N O T E S
An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference on “Joseph
Conrad and Crossbreeding”, held at the Catholic University of the West, in Angers, France,
11-12 September 2002.
Leon F. Seltzer, The Vision of Melville and Conrad (Athens: University of Ohio Press,
1970), categorically states that “there is very little that Conrad could have leared from his
limited sampling of the American author. The exoticist of Typee and Omoo could have
nothing instructive to offer such a self-conscious artist as Conrad” (xvi).
In Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), Ian
Watt affirms that “As regards plot, Conrad again seems to follow, but actually undermines,
the prescriptions of popular romance” (46).
Watt observes that Almayer’s “[. . .]final collapse is merely the culmination of Almayer’s
lifelong schizophrenic division between his inner picture of himself and what he actually is
and does: his whole existence has been a continuously accelerating process of protecting his
ego ideal by insulating it from reality” (66).
Watt notes that “Conrad makes the effects of inherited racial characteristics an important
element in the novel: Mrs. Almayer quickly rejects the European veneer derived from her
convent training and relapses into the morose ferocity of her Sulu pirate forbears; and then
her daughter, Nina, in turn rejects the white inheritance of her father and the values of the
Protestant household where she was brought up, in favor of Dain and the Malay part of her
identity” (45).
In connection with Almayer’s Folly, Cedric Watts, in Joseph Conrad: A Literary Life (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), has rightly observed that “[. . .] although the novel has some
recourse to racial stereotypes, not until a second reading may one fully appreciate the
extent to which those stereotypical contrasts have been questioned by the sceptical emphasis
on common features: dreams of power and avarice, it seems, make the whole world kin”
(58).
Although White contends that Conrad did not endorse the ethnocentrism of adventure
fiction in Almayer’s Folly, she admits that he did not portray Babalatchi or Mrs. Almayer
sympathetically: “In many respects, Mrs. Almayer is treated as the stereotypical Other.
[...] She is the conventional ‘primitive,’ superstitious and impulsive” (131).
Willy contends that Dain’s physical description establishes him as Conrad’s version of
the Noble Savage, for he embodies “the stock virtues which are the due of any Rousseauistic
primitive. We [. . .] are supposed to be attracted to the carefree, handsome, bold, innocent,
sagacious, manly and proud Dain Maroola. [. . .] Just one glance at Dain should be sufficient
to remind us that he is a worthy literary descendent of James Fenimore Cooper’s idealized
Indians” (7).
The only time that Fayaway falls short of perfection is when Tom catches sight of her
eating a raw fish. Suddenly the natural has become the detestable, and Tom is momentarily
disillusioned regarding her purity.
White views “Nina’s going back to her mother’s savage ways” as demonstrating “that the
white man’s civilization had nothing to offer her. [. . .] Rather than the reputed moral
degradation of the native, [. . .] it is the European civilization that Nina condemns for itsnarrowness, its moral emptiness, racial exclusiveness” (129, 130).
One can imagine Conrad’s consternation when he read the opening sentence of Typee’s
chapter 31: “Sadly discursive as I have already been, I must still further entreat the
reader’s patience, as I am about to string together, without any attempt at order, a few odds
and ends of things not hitherto mentioned” (Typee 252).
Watt notes that in Almayer’s Folly Conrad employs landscapes in motion to subvert
popular romance conventions (45).
WORKS CITED:
Karl, Frederick R., and Laurence Davies, eds. The Collected Letters of
Joseph Conrad, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983.
Melville, Herman. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. New York: New
American Library, 1979.
Rollyson, Carl, and Lisa Paddock. Herman Melville A to Z: The Essential
Reference to His Life and Works. New York: Checkmark Books,
2001.
Seltzer, Leon F. The Vision of Melville and Conrad. Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1970.
Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979.
Watts, Cedric. Joseph Conrad: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989.
White, Andrea. Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Willy, Todd G. “Almayer’s Folly and the Imperatives of Conradian
Atavism.” Conradiana 24, 1 (1992): 3-20.
http://www.uca.edu.ar/uca/common/grupo17/files/01-billy.pdf
