73 pages • 2-hour read
Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
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Background
Authorial Context: Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad, born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in Berdychiv, then part of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). Though most people in Berdychiv were (and are) Ukrainian, the Korzeniowskis belonged to the Polish aristocracy that owned most local land. Conrad is thus considered Polish rather than Ukrainian. He began learning English after joining the British Merchant Marine in 1878, eventually becoming one of the great figures of English literature. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was a Polish nationalist, playwright, and translator who was arrested for his participation in anti-Russian activities and exiled with his family to Vologda in northern Russia. Conrad’s mother, Ewa, died of tuberculosis when he was eight. His father succumbed to the same disease four years later. The young Conrad was orphaned by twelve. His early exposure to exile, the collapse of idealism, and the moral ambiguities of political struggle would later appear in his portrayals of characters torn between loyalty and self-interest, as in Nostromo and Lord Jim.
After his parents’ deaths, Conrad was raised by his uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, a conservative landowner who provided for his education but worried about his instability and romantic temperament. At 16, Conrad left Poland for Marseille, defying his uncle’s wishes by becoming a sailor. He spent the next 20 years as a mariner, first in the French merchant marine and later in the British merchant service, rising to the rank of master mariner and eventually becoming a British subject in 1886. These two decades of maritime life took him across the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia, exposing him to the moral complexities of imperial trade, the fragility of human order, and the stark divisions of race, class, and nationality.
Conrad’s seafaring years brought him into contact with the colonial world that would later form the backdrop of much of his fiction. His 1890 voyage to the Congo, where he commanded a river steamer for a Belgian trading company, shaped his view of imperialism’s corruption and human cost. The brutal realities he witnessed there inspired Heart of Darkness (1899). Though Nostromo is set in a fictional South American republic rather than Africa, it explores similar themes.
By the time Conrad began writing Nostromo, he had retired from the sea and established himself as a novelist in England. His first novel, Almayer’s Folly (1895), drew upon his experiences in Borneo and was followed by works such as The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897) and Lord Jim (1900), which explored individual conscience and failure. Nostromo represented a broader, more ambitious depiction of global politics and capitalism. The novel reflects Conrad’s understanding of how imperial powers manipulated weaker states for economic gain. His years at sea had given him firsthand experience with the global movement of goods, money, and people, and with the moral ambiguities of those who profited from them. Conrad’s personal skepticism toward political idealism also informed Nostromo. Having grown up amid failed nationalist movements, he distrusted revolutionary zeal and saw it as easily corrupted by vanity and greed.
Conrad’s later years were spent in England, where he struggled with ill health and financial insecurity but continued to produce major works, including The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911). He died in 1924 in Canterbury, leaving behind a body of fiction that bridged Romanticism and modernism. His dense and ironic prose examined the limits of human understanding and the pervasive influence of economic and political forces.
Literary Context: Conrad and Modernism
Joseph Conrad is regarded as a key precursor and participant in literary modernism, even though his major works appeared before the movement fully crystallized in the early 20th Century. Modernism, as a literary movement, is generally defined by a rejection of 19th-century realism, a skepticism toward inherited moral and political systems, and a focus on subjective experience, fragmentation, and ambiguity, as exemplified by the intensely personal style pioneered by such writers as James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) and Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), The Waves (1931), and other novels. Modernist writers sought to represent a world perceived as unstable, morally compromised, and resistant to coherent explanation. In Nostromo (1904), Conrad exemplifies these modernist concerns through narrative experimentation, political skepticism, and a sustained examination of the disintegration of ideals in the modern, capitalist world. Though Conrad retains elements of traditional storytelling, his novels consistently undermine the confidence that earlier realism placed in reason, progress, and transparent moral judgment.
Nostromo demonstrates modernism most clearly in its treatment of history and narrative structure. Rather than unfolding in a straightforward chronological sequence, the novel moves backward and forward in time, layering events and perspectives in a way that demands active interpretation from the reader. Important actions are often narrated indirectly, revisited from different angles, or revealed after the fact. This fragmentation reflects a modernist distrust of linear history as a coherent story of progress. In Nostromo, political events in the fictional South American republic of Costaguana do not lead toward stability or enlightenment. Instead, revolutions repeat themselves, power shifts hands, and corruption persists regardless of ideology. Conrad’s narrative voice further reinforces this modernist sensibility. The novel lacks a single, authoritative moral perspective. Instead, the narrator often withholds judgment or presents events through irony and distance. Characters are described from the outside, through reputation and rumor, rather than through transparent access to their inner thoughts. This creates a sense of epistemological uncertainty: the reader cannot fully know the truth of events or motives.
The novel’s treatment of character also aligns with modernist concerns. Rather than heroic figures who shape history through moral strength, Nostromo presents individuals whose identities erode under pressure from impersonal forces. Nostromo himself, initially admired as incorruptible and selfless, gradually loses his moral center after becoming secretly attached to the silver he helps protect. His transformation is not framed as a clear moral fall but as a slow psychological disintegration, shaped by pride, resentment, and isolation. Modernism is also marked by an awareness of the impersonal forces shaping modern life. In Nostromo, individuals are repeatedly overwhelmed by economic systems, historical momentum, and geopolitical interests beyond their control. Conrad emphasizes how personal intentions are subordinated to structural forces such as global trade, foreign investment, and colonial influence. Finally, Conrad’s language and tone contribute to his modernist status. His prose is dense, ironic, and often deliberately opaque. Meaning emerges gradually rather than being clearly stated, while moral conclusions remain unresolved. This stylistic complexity reflects the modernist belief that reality itself is multifaceted and resistant to simplification. Taken together, these features establish Nostromo as a fundamentally modernist work. The novel embodies the modernist conviction that the world can no longer be explained through inherited frameworks of meaning.
Literary Context: Conrad and Colonialism
Drawing on his own experiences as a sailor in imperial trade networks and colonial territories, Conrad approached colonialism not as a civilizing mission or a purely political system, but as a complex moral and psychological condition. His novels explore the assumptions that underlie imperial expansion, exposing the gap between colonial rhetoric and colonial reality. Colonialism, in general terms, refers to the practice by which a powerful state extends its control over foreign territories and populations, typically for economic exploitation, strategic advantage, and political dominance. This control may involve direct governance, military presence, or indirect influence through trade and finance. Colonialism often justifies itself through claims of progress or civilization, while producing systems of inequality that benefit the colonizing power at the expense of local autonomy. Conrad believed colonialism to be a global system driven by profit and sustained by ideological illusions rather than moral principle.
In a literary context, colonialism refers not only to historical domination but also to the ways imperial power structures shape narrative perspective, character representation, and moral judgment. Colonial literature frequently explores questions of authority, voice, and representation. Conrad’s work is notable for its refusal to present colonialism as a coherent or benevolent enterprise. Instead, his narratives emphasize ambiguity or instability, as well as the psychological strain imposed by imperial systems. Colonialism in Conrad’s fiction is less a backdrop than a corrosive force that distorts human relationships. Though his works often evince racist attitudes toward colonized peoples, Conrad’s critical view of colonialism itself anticipates viewpoints from writers in the postcolonial world. Later novels like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) would describe the harms of colonialism from the perspective of those who experienced its harms.
Conrad does not portray colonial powers as unified agents of evil, nor does he idealize colonized societies. Instead, he depicts colonialism as a morally hollow structure sustained by self-interest and illusion. This approach is evident in Nostromo, which is set in the fictional South American republic of Costaguana. Although Costaguana is not formally colonized by a single European empire, it is subjected to intense foreign influence through capital investment and political manipulation. Conrad thus expands the idea of colonialism to include economic imperialism and informal empire. Conrad shows how the San Tomé mine binds local elites and foreign investors into a shared system of exploitation, while ordinary citizens remain excluded from its benefits. Colonialism is not enforced primarily through military occupation but through economic dependency, reflecting the modern imperialism Conrad observed firsthand.
The characters in Nostromo further illustrate Conrad’s colonial critique. Charles Gould, the English owner of the silver mine, believes he can bring order and justice to Costaguana through material stability. His faith in economic rationality reflects colonial ideology’s reliance on abstract principles such as progress and efficiency. However, Conrad depicts Gould’s mission as morally empty. His devotion to the mine isolates him from human relationships and reduces political life to a technical problem. Through Gould, Conrad suggests that colonial control replaces moral responsibility with mechanical systems of power.
Conrad’s narrative technique reinforces his colonial critique. The fragmented structure and shifting perspectives of Nostromo mirror the instability of colonial societies, where power is dispersed among competing interests rather than centralized in legitimate authority. The absence of a clear moral center reflects Conrad’s belief that colonial systems generate confusion rather than order. Language itself becomes suspect, filled with euphemisms about progress and stability that conceal violence and corruption. This attention to the rhetoric of colonialism anticipates later postcolonial critiques of imperial discourse. In Nostromo, colonialism operates through capital, ideology, and psychological transformation, leaving behind political instability and personal ruin. Conrad compels readers to confront the contradictions at the dark heart of colonial power.
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