Patriotism (Prince Roman)
The opening of “Prince Roman” suggests the political tone of the era in which the narrator writes with a pithy little metaphorical observation about the state of patriotism at the time. Patriotism, at least according to official government line of the day is:
“a somewhat discredited sentiment, because the delicacy of our humanitarians regards it as a relic of barbarism”
The Napoleonic Wars (The Warrior’s Soul)
The bitterly cold winter marking the slow passage of Napoleon’s insane desire to invade Russia is given metaphorical power as the determining feature leading to an unlikely but seemingly inevitable reunion at which a debt must be paid with unspeakable interest: “This avenging winter of fate held both the fugitives and the pursuers in its iron grip.”
Falk
The title character of “Falk: A Reminiscence” becomes a complicated player in a drama based on the least complicated of human abominations: cannibalism. But even cannibalism becomes a complex and thorny issue in the complicated world of market economics. And as such, it is an absolutely true metaphorical fact of life about Captain Hermann that:
“This Falk was the plague of his life.”
The Objective Narrator (Amy Foster)
Like many of Conrad’s stories, “Amy Foster” engages the very construction of narration as an essential aspect of the narrative. Like so many of his stories, this one features an unnamed narrator who is tasked with relating to the reader a story told to him by another. So, in effect, many Conrad stories are aptly compared to the joke of “I know this guy who knows this guy who said that.” In many circumstances so little is known about the de facto narrator that a reader is forced—without necessarily realizing it—to depend upon the reliability of the person who is really relating the tale. In this particular case, Conrad puts into his mouth of his de facto narrator a metaphorical description that acts a coded signal to the reader that all doubts about the reliability of the first-hand witness can be put aside:
“The penetrating power of his mind, acting like a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition”
In other words, Dr. Kennedy has no ulterior motives, but can be counted upon to boil down all essential elements of the story he relates to the bare facts. There is no outside agenda. There is just the truth.
Paranoia (A Tale)
At its heart, the narrative of “A Tale” seems to be nothing more than a fantastically suspenseful and atmospheric display of paranoia at work. The main character is the captain of a ship who has come upon something suspicious on a very foggy night and boards a cargo ship to get to the bottom of things. Every single fact points to innocence, but the captain remains convinced of a guilt of some crime. This paranoia reaches a point stretched almost too far to allow for even the heaving of a breath and Conrad paints this moment of extreme psychological despair with a sentence stretched nearly to the point at which its metaphorical foundation will also snap:
“And the Englishman felt himself with astonishing conviction faced by an enormous lie, solid like a wall, with no way round to get at the truth, whose ugly murderous face he seemed to see peeping over at him with a cynical grin.”
