crumbling conrad

Last week we talked about collapsing binaries in HOD. This week, I found it almost impossible to ignore the (and this is of course completely subjective) deeply ingrained theme of failed establishments. Before the dust of one crumbling framework can settle, another one pops up (or rather, down).

Crash 1: Take the repeated allusion to ships for instance—how many of them are damaged, derelict, sinking? If a ship can indeed be said to represent human conquest of the sea/unknown, then we can read these ships as floating and failing institutions of sorts.

Crash 2: The maritime industry is also a failed establishment: firstly because officers onboard the Patna are described as debased, alcoholics, violent, morally questionable (leaving pilgrims to drown is just mean, bordering on blasphemous), and secondly because even the team of inquirers set up as a watchdog system to oversee the former can be read as itself flawed and indicative of internal contradictions—Captain Brierly defects to be on Jim’s side, arranging for him to run away.

Crash 3: Language as a stable institution pretty much also crumbles in the text. Words like “water” or “cur” generate much misunderstanding and violence, characters seem unable to find the words to say (terms like “magnificent vagueness” and “glorious indefiniteness” cue this), and French is left untranslated (something which should trigger ideas about authenticity and the limited capacity of language as a conveyor of meaning).

Crash 4: Patusan, arguably, is de-established place, a backwater. Even its political structure crumbles since the people want to overthrow the rajah, and later on Jim (since men try to assassinate him).

Why all the anti-establishmentarianism? Perhaps a modernist desire to resist absolutism or reflect the increasingly fragmented and unstable quality of a world that is going to the dogs is in play here.

(298words)