“Tell me something…Why not tell me a tale?”
This request would make a very appropriate title for a compendium of Conrad’s greatest short stories. Most of his stories are structured as an after-the-fact recounting of past events and episodes, often mediated through the perspective of narrator who did not bear witness to those events. In this particular instance, the man whom the woman asks to tell her a story actually was not just present, but an agency of consequence in the account of an incident from his past which has continued to haunt him. Whether the narrator is actively interested or a disinterested objective reporter, the purpose remains the same. By distancing the teller from the story either through time or lack of agency, the manipulation of narrative perspective allows Conrad to more seductively reveal the secrets lying at the heart of the inner story.
“Water! Give me water!”
This is a perfect example of how Conrad depends upon his narrative experiments to engender meaning and effect in his stories. “Amy Foster” is yet another story that is narrated after the fact by a character who cannot be considered either the protagonist or antagonist. And, in this particular, the narrator is also clearly not the title character. The quote above is not from the narrator, but is rather the words of Dr. Kennedy as the narrator relates them, but in fact the words are not really Kennedy’s either, but the English translation of the words that Yanko Gorrell, the actual protagonist of the story was crying out in the grip of a fever. Dr. Kennedy relates to the narrator what the man said in English, but when Yanko Goorall was feverishly crying out for water, he was not speaking English, but instead in his own foreign language which his wife Amy had not yet learned to understand. All she heard was seemingly mad gibberish and, fearing for her life and that of her child, she ran from him. Only later through the disinterested observer’s narration does the full tragedy of that circumstance become clear.
“…the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for the eyes…one or two of us, pampered by the life of the land, complained of hunger. It was impossible to swallow any of that stuff.”
The opening paragraphs of this bizarre little story is one of Conrad’s most gruesome little jokes in his manipulation of narrative perspective. The story opens with a seemingly mundane accounting of a group of seamen eating at a London hostelry with the narrative voicing their complaints about the quality of the food. In fact, however, this critique of landlubber food by committed seamen is a macabre bit of foreshadowing for the story twists on a single horrifying revelation by the one of the characters: that at one time, under specific circumstances, he resorted to cannibalism.
We were driving along the road from Treguier to Kervanda. We passed at a smart trot between the hedges topping an earth wall on each side of the road; then at the foot of the steep ascent before Ploumar the horse dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped down heavily from the box.
This quote has the unique distinction of being the opening line to Joseph Conrad’s very first short story. It was inspired by a sight he witnessed and written during his honeymoon and then published in 1896. Among its other uncommon attributes are the lack of a sailor, the relatively straightforward narrative structure and the fact that its story is almost unlike anything else that the author ever wrote. It is a strange domestic horror story more than anything and most critics have dismissed it as being remarkable only for its placement within Conrad’s over canon.
