What were you trying to do Conrad?

We keep coming to this discussion of whether the native is given a voice or not. If he’s given one, we criticize it as the author attempting to ventriloquize or speak for the native. If the native isn’t given a voice, then we turn around and say the native is a subaltern. So what does the native have to say so that he doesn’t appear ventriloquized? In line with this is the description of the East or basically, foreign lands. If the author describes it positively, he runs the risk of exoticization. If he describes it as being in a bad state, then we say he’s being all white and pompous. How much is the author of literature in that era trapped? This is all an outcome of last week and us trying to verify whether Conrad is racist or not. I feel like I’m reading for clues to either exonerate him or incriminate him.

Which is what I was doing when I was reading the bit about the pilgrims in chapter 2- are the Muslims being typically portrayed as dogmatic followers of the faith? Conrad keeps reiterating how they all have abandoned everything just for the sake of going Mecca. And why are they “the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief” (he later repeats similarly “exacting faith”)? Conrad’s personal view that Islam was demanding in its requirements? The German skipper likens them to “cattle” and like cattle they are abandoned on Patna, nothing to be heard from them except that one “water” request.

OR is Conrad suggesting that their faith saved them? Even the “screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers…seemed to wink at her (Patna)…as if in derision of errand of faith”. This seems speculative but like I said, am trying to exonerate Conrad as much as incriminate him.

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