The Shadow-Line: A Confession

The Shadow-Line is one of my favorite Conrad novels. It ranks with Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nigger of the Narcissus. For that matter it ranks among the great works of world literature. The Shadow-Line is shorter than Conrad's other great works and can be considered either a short novel or a long short story. I suppose it is a novella. In any case, it is a rather straight forward tale of a young man's maturing and struggling with adversity. The unnamed hero, having just resigned as an officer of a merchant ship, unexpectedly gets command of a sailing ship whose captain has died. Of course, our young hero is thrilled at this stunning and unexpected opportunity. He must take the ship from Bangkok to points beyond the Indian Ocean. Alas, as soon as he sails, or rather drifts from the harbor his troubles start. No wind, disease, troubled crew members. It is all harrowing and told with gripping tension and insight by Conrad. This book has less of the murky modernist Jamesian passages than some others of Conrad's. Frankly,I don't miss them at all. Virginia Woolf had Conrad right. I quote from a website on modernism: Woolf wrote "He must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, how loyalty is good and honesty and courage..." Woolf believed that it was Conrad's celebration of these sailorly virtues - stoical pride in one's work, a connection to a deep and lasting tradition, action rather than cogitation - that would ensure the writer's legacy. Beyond his techniques of narrative mediation, beyond his modernist probing of epistemological uncertainty, we are left, Woolf claims, with maritime yarns that celebrate "fidelity, compassion, honour, service," what Conrad himself describes in Some Reminisces as "a few very simple ideas." Conrad the moralist and seaman trumps Conrad the modernist and explorer of the dark chasms of psychology. I couldn't agree more. The Shadow-Line is one of the best works of Conrad the moralist and seaman. It is a story of the sailorly virtues, of honesty and courage, and humanity. It is a celebration of "fidelity, compassion, honour, service" without being in any way sappy--just a few very simple ideas.

Conrad's first and last command as a captain provided material for 3 long stories of semi-autobiographical nature, all in a way variations on the same theme: growing up under pressure. The 3 are The Secret Sharer, Falk and then this one. Each is about leaving Bangkok as the new captain of a troubled ship, and about running into new trouble. The Shadow-Line was written quite a bit later than the other 2, in 1915. One reviewer called it a war story. There is some truth in this, in the sense that it was written during WW1, and it is dedicated to Conrad's son, who went to war for England. That's the ultimate enforcement of adulthood. The narrator has just abandoned a good job as mate on a ship under local flag, sailing the Malay Archipelago, for no good reason but out of youthful rashness. (That had been the time that gave us treasures like the Lingard trilogy and Lord Jim.) Surprisingly, he is offered a golden opportunity: a job as skipper of a sailing ship. The previous captain has died and a replacement is needed. The chief mate is apparently a bit off his rockers, that's why an outsider must be called in to fill the captain vacancy. The job is plagued with all sorts of threatening trouble: diseases, dead calm, madness, ghosts. Our freshman captain has to cross the shadow line from youth to adulthood, to become a responsible leader. Conrad tells us of his, presumably, own maturing process with surprising lightness. This is not pondering Marlow of the early phase, this is a different voice, this is somebody who can stand outside himself and watch and take himself less than dead serious. The ghost aspects: some claim that this is really a ghost story. Nonsense, this ghost is just the hallucination of a sick sailor, Conrad put no credibility into it at all. He was a rational person. If compared to Conrad's great stories, like Youth or Typhoon or the Secret Sharer, I would not put the Shadow-Line on the same level. But good enough for 5 stars it is any day.

One of Conrad's best novels, less profound than Heart of Darkness, certainly, but more economically written and featuring a narrator that more readers will identify with. The Shadow Line is a nice sequel of sorts to Conrad's great story "Youth." In that, he showed how we often interpret events differently as youngsters and years later as adults. In The Shadow Line, the young protagonist has to improvise under stress to deal with the big world he's grown into. Like all Conrad's works, this is wordy and slow by current standards, but well worth the time and effort to read it. Great practice for high-school seniors and college freshmen who want to step up to real literature.

If you are ever aboard a ship with Mr. Conrad as it's captain, and you happen to notice a dead madman playing a violin while frantically following the vessel from beneath the stagnant waters of the South Asian seas, then get the H#ll off the boat before you and your crew start dropping like flies.To me this novel was leagues better than Heart of Darkness. It's obvious that Joseph knew a thing or two about Human behavior as well as how to frighten the trousers off readers.

I enjoyed reading about the main characters experience of crossing the line from youthfulness into true adulthood. Conrad's eloquent, descriptive, and almost surreal writing style allows the reader to almost experience the stagnation, heat, and frustration that envelop the characters in this book. Perhaps not Conrad's best book, but certainly a good read, and it is quite short and to the point. Especially if you have an affinity for sailing and the power and majesty of the sailing vessels of old. I have always felt that there is a certain amount of effort required to enjoy Conrad's books, but I also feel that this, in a sense, is directly proportional to effort in life. The more you put in, the more you get out.