Joseph Conrad. An Outcast of the Islands. 1896; Amazon Digital Services, 2012. E-book.

This was Joseph Conrad’s second novel, and it is worth reading, especially for those who appreciate his two most famous novels Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.

The novel is set in a location not far from Lord Jim, in the Celebes of the Dutch Indies (today’s Sulawesi of Indonesia). The merchant Captain Lingard has made a decent living by trading all over the East. He has what almost amounts to a personal supplier up a virtually unknown river on the island of Celebes. Here Almayer runs the trading post and Peter Willems works for both men.

Willems has married a native woman and runs into some trouble. He is cast out by her tribal people. He is the outcast. Almayer has little to do with him now. Things get progressively more complicated as Willems falls in love with another native woman from a different tribe. Since he is an outcast, everyone considers him separated if not divorced, but when his wife comes looking for him, it gets complicated.

As is typical of both Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, much of the dynamic of the novel is between the Europeans and their uncivilized subjects. While Celebes is part of the Dutch Indies, it is not too far from Borneo, part of which is British and part of which is Dutch. In the background there are some conflicting claims and conflicting flags. Both Batavia, the Dutch capital of its Indies, and London, the British capital, are far away. The only law is the practical law of the sea and whatever tribal or international law people are willing to recognize.

Just as the natives call Jim Lord or Tuan in Lord Jim, so Captain Lingard is called Tuan Laut or Lord of the Sea, or even Rajah Laut, King of the Sea. Everyone respects him. He has wealth and power. Almayer and Willems both depend on him as do most of the natives. In this case there are also tribal rivalries and even religious rivalries since some tribes are Christian and some are Muslim. Both groups still have elements of their folk religion, too. Much of the real law is simple vengeance and vendetta, the law of the settled score.

An Outcast of the Islands is probably a little more predictable than the later novels of Conrad mentioned above, but we can see his craft developing. In this tale the white men think that they understand the natives, and the more articulate Malay men and women think they understand the Europeans. We begin to see that neither really understands the other well.

There are some notable quotables in this book. First is one that anyone who has worked at sea knows well:

In life—as in seamanship—there were only two ways of doing a thing, the right way and the wrong way. (150)

Of course, in the Coast Guard we would add a third: “The Coast Guard way.” The Navy men say something similar.

There is also an image virtually identical to one in Heart of Darkness:

In the darkness her figure was like the shadow of a woman with clasped hands put out beseechingly. (247)

In this story, though, we get a sense of what the woman is thinking. In Heart of Darkness, the African woman with outstretched hands is silent, at least in any language the narrator understands. Both women are trying to connect with their men but at the same time keep their own identity. Is it even possible? If love is a part of it, is it even desirable?

There is one lovely description of life at sea. As one who loves the sea and appreciates it, I have read few descriptions that equal it (one from an O’Neill play, but I forget which one, and one from the Old English “The Seafarer”):

The sea, perhaps because of its saltness, roughens the outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants’ soul. The old sea; the sea of many years ago, whose servants were devoted slaves and went from youth to age or to a sudden grave without needing to open the book of life, because they could look at eternity reflected on the element that gave the life and dealt the death. Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman, the sea of the past was glorious in its smiles, irresistible in its anger, capricious, enticing, illogical, irresponsible; a thing to love, a thing to fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into boundless faith; then with quick and causeless anger it killed. But its cruelty was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable mystery, by the immensity of its promise, by the supreme witchery of its possible favour. Strong men with childlike hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by its grace—to die by its will. (16, 17)

Ah, but our outcast Willems, like the later Congo outcast Kurtz, though a lesser man, tries to do what Kurtz would more cleverly attempt. To Willems:

The wise, the strong, the respected, have no scruples. Where there are scruples, there can be no power. On that text he preached often to the young men. It was his doctrine, and he, himself, was a shining example of the truth. (14)

Captain Lingard himself warns Willems:

“A man sees so much falsehood that he begins to lie to himself.”

And as Kurtz looks into an abyss of his own making, so Willems also senses an abyss—i.e., eternal things that can be full of horror. He observes:

He was in the grip of horrible fear; of a fear whose cold hand robs its victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to escape, to resist, or to move; which destroys hope and despair alike, and holds the empty and useless carcass as if in a vise under the coming stroke. It was not the fear of death—he had faced danger before—it was not even the fear of that particular form of death. It was not the fear of the end, for he knew that the end would not come then…It was the unreasoning fear of this glimpse into the unknown things, into those motives, impulses, desires he had ignored, but that had lived in the breasts of despised men, close by his side, and were revealed to him for a second, to be hidden again behind the black mists of doubt and deception. It was not death that frightened him: it was the horror of bewildered life where he could understand nothing and nobody round him; where he could guide, control, comprehend nothing and no one—not even himself. (115)

As “Mistah” Kurtz would say: “The horror! The horror!”