An Outcast of the Islands

Much -- perhaps too much -- has been written and said about Conrad's racism and/or racialism. By the second term, I mean the predilection of Conrad's contemporaries to explain culture and character by innate racial differences. In that sense, 'race' is one of Conrad's central themes, especially in The Outcast of the Islands, and Conrad is a bona fide quasi-Darwinist believer in racial determinism. Most of Conrad's 'South Sea' adventure novels are built around the clash of races. Again and again, both whites and non-whites devolve, degenerate, dissipate in reaction to each other. One might even say that Conrad is hugely antagonistic to and cynical about the white race in its colonial phase. Three of the white characters in Outcast - Hudig, Almayer, and Willems - mate with non-white women and father half-white children, and in every case the outcome is disastrous for all concerned. The contemptuous language that white characters spout about non-whites in Conrad's novels has earned him hostility from modern non-white readers, but wait! the non-whites in Conrad's novels are just as vituperative and derogatory about whites. Does Conrad take sides? It seems to me that he treats both sides rather harshly. Does Conrad really 'understand' his non-white characters? Now that's a good question, which I'm not anthropologist enough to answer. But it's clear that Conrad is pessimistic about the colonial encounter and the globalization of economic interests, that he perceives only obsessive, blind conflict leading to destruction for both sides. At this point in history, I wouldn't dare fault him as a prophet. Conrad is also a writer of his times in his consistent portrayal of Nature as powerfully indifferent to humankind's fate, animate yet without animus, a constant beautiful perilous prolific Nature that will outlast humanity, that implicitly mocks humanity's piddling drama and self-importance. Such was the portrayal of nature by Stephen Crane, Thomas Hardy, Jack London and other contemporaries of Conrad. The chief difference is in how gorgeously Conrad describes Nature, how well he treads the line between the emotional perceptions of Nature as "meaningful" for his characters and his own aloof awareness of Nature's unconcern. Outcast is, briefly, a love story, then a hate story. Sexual energies are seldom beneficent in Conrad, and his women characters are no doubt his weakest. As a previous reviewer, Herr Schneider, aptly points out, the woman Aissa in Outcast is utterly implausible if you stop to analyze her expressions. By the time she begins to have a voice, however, any reader like me will be so caught up in the rip-roaring emotional and physical violence of this novel that he/she will suspend all doubts quite willingly. The Outcast was Conrad's second novel, but curiously it has more syntactical tangles than Almayer's Folly, his first. One does have to wonder whether editors or colleagues played a role in Conrad's phenomenal command of his third langua

The title that Conrad had originally planned for his 2nd novel was '2 Vagabonds'. Those two vagabonds were the Dutch loser Willems, who later became the sole hero of the title, the outcast, and the Malay pirate, diplomat, opportunist Babalatchi. If you wish, you have a failed man on the winning side, and a winner on the losing side of the historical struggle for dominance in the Malay Archipelago of the 19th century. Of course the definition of winner and loser would change less than a century later. This novel is the middle piece of Conrad's 'reverse Malayan trilogy'. He wrote it after Almayer's Folly, but the story is set about 20 years earlier, ie approximately in the 1870s. Later, Conrad would write the Rescue, which explains the origins of one of the main characters of the trilogy, Captain Lingard, the Rajah Laut, ie Sea King, the man with the excess of benevolence in some cases. One of the beneficiaries of this excess is the undeserving Willems, one of Conrad's most despicable anti-heroes, and man without spine nor morality nor intelligence, who well deserves his outcast position. Even foolish Almayer is a shining light compared to him. His madness with slightly implausible Aissa is painted by himself and in hindsight in the light of a postdated temptress affliction: the woman brought evil over him and led to his eviction from the paradise of Lingard's protection. Aissa's implausibility, in my view, is less her behaviour, but her verbosity. She is nearly an intellectual in her ability to articulate her feelings between conflicting loyalties. Re-reading this after 25 years, I am amazed at the plentitude of Wallace references in the text. Of course I find that out only due to the excellent notes in this Oxford World's Classics edition, which I recommend. (Well, apart from a few editing howlers, such as these typos: access for excess; absolution for ablution; a note says that Chennai is the new name for Calcutta; another note says to look up Monsoon in the glossary, but the word is not there... Apparently a revised edition is coming out next Feb; good opportunity for house-cleaning.) Anyway, in my Conrad re-visit I realize I like so far everything better than I remember liking it then. Maybe I am growing up. I was not aware previously to what extent the man was an innovator in his narrative technique. He really was a modern writer, not an old-fashioned writer of adventure stories. Just take his brillant slow motion style in the chapter where Lingard confronts Willem, with Aissa watching and not understanding. Well, said Lingard, and with that word he came unexpectedly to the end of his speech. Colonialism: money belongs to him who finds it and is strong enough to keep it.

"I know the white man...in many lands have I seen them, always the slaves of their desires..."This is Conrads second book and like his first it deals with the colonial enterprise but in this book white men are their own worst enemies. The native Malay characters are given more in the way of identity in this book and they are seen as having complex views. There is intrigue in this book as white men from different nations try to assert their dominance in the region but the Malays too have a plan and that is to take advantage of the whites aggressive and competitive natures and set them against each other. Great plot. But Conrad also gives you each characters story and each character is always more interesting than whatever role they are playing in the overall plot. One of the most attractive and elaborated themes in this book is the one of mans place in nature and mans own nature. The beauty of the tropical locale is made even more attractive and alluring by the women who walk through the foliage like "apparitions" veiled in "sunlight and shadow". Conrad describes the forests, the light in the tree tops, and the shadows on the forest floor and all nature is seen as metaphor for mans own dualities and incongruites. A much matured writer from Almayers Folly. The plot is simpler than Almayer was but thats good. The simpler plot allows Conrad more latitude to deal with the individual characteristics and that is certainly one of Conrads strengths. He sometimes overdoes it with the repeated use of words like inscrutable and the always heavy darkness, and his overall view of man seems dim, as man in his eyes is an only partially lit(enlightened) being. To Conrad man remains a lost creature for the most part who just by chance or luck or ill omen gets caught up in events he cannot fully comprehend. A limited resource man may be but while reading it is hard not to see it his way. The summing up scene at the end of the book with a drunken Almayer(who also appeared in Conrads first book, the Almayer of Almayers Folly) relating the now long passed events of the book to a traveling and equally drunk botanist is an excellent closing comment on the continued folly that is the colonial enterprise and man in general.

Conrad has a exciting style of writing which consists of artfully mixed poetic prose and moral analysis. The language of the text alone is enough to make this a great novel, perhaps even an epic poem. The intensity of the prose is such that I was driven backwards into my seat for most of the novel. A prequel to _Almayer's Folly_, An Outcast...is a true must read.

AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS was both Conrad's second novel and the second novel in a trilogy of books featuring Almayer (the first book being ALMAYER'S FOLLY and the third Conrad's final novel, THE RESCUE), who is a major minor character in this one after being the major character in his first novel. This novel is not as strong an effort as the novels from his major phase, but it is nonetheless a book of great power and wonderfully illustrates most of the great themes that run through all of his books. I have a love-hate relationship with Conrad, because while I respond to the marvelously depicted male characters in his books (his women are usually implausibly stupid and cardboardish) and their conflicts with the universe and each other, I find the world he describes as being a little too bleak and the cosmos far too impersonal. All of his characters are doomed to ineffecual action, and their fates are determined by forces and factors outside of themselves, or perhaps to some degree by motives within themselves over which they have no power. I do not like Conrad's universe, but I admit the power of his creation.This is not one of Conrad's greatest works. It belongs in a tier immediately below his very greatest works like NOSTROMO, THE SECRET AGENT, UNDER WESTERN EYES, HEART OF DARKNESS, LORD JIM, and VICTORY. Nonetheless, slightly lesser Conrad is more rewarding than major works of other writers, and I heartily recommend this novel (as well as his other books) to any serious reader.