The novella seems more concerned, not with misinterpretation per se, but with how we act on the knowledge we gain through letters and other forms of communication. Perhaps even more so than Conrad’s previous fiction, The Shadow-Line seems preoccupied with texts, stories, narratives, writing, reading, communication, and interpretation.īut unlike, say, Under Western Eyes or Heart of Darkness (which features a book found in the middle of the jungle which appears to have notes written in ‘cipher’ this later turns out not to be some secret code, but marginalia written in Russian), these textual communiqués which litter The Shadow-Line are not always designed merely to be misconstrued often they convey their message plainly enough. However, in some ways we might see The Shadow-Line as a box of texts, as a textual collage made up of numerous narratives, bits of text, and literary allusions: the direct and more oblique references to Hamlet and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (we can add to this list The Tempest and various books of the Old and New Testament), the reference to fairy tales, the warning letter from the doctor, the letter to the Chief Steward, the letter of recommendation the narrator writes for Ransome, to say nothing of the metaphorical reference to the ‘page of a book had been turned over disclosing a word which made plain all that had gone before’. Hamlet is not the only Shakespeare play which the novel’s narrator quotes or alludes to, but it is by some considerable way the play he refers to the most. Suggestions of madness and the supernatural are present in Conrad’s novel, making Hamlet an important thematic inter-text for the novella. ![]() Shakespeare’s play is all about a ghost and the moral and ontological questions the appearance of this supernatural being into the natural world poses for the play’s title character.īut the appearance of the ghost in Hamlet also raises questions regarding the sanity of the title character: Hamlet resolves to pretend to be mad while he investigates the claims made by the ghost of his father, but whether he is merely pretending, or whether the whole experience ends up sending him mad, is a moot point. ![]() But these are seen as either unavoidable facts of naval life (malaria was a common disease among sailors travelling to places such as the Far East), or as the result of bad management by the former captain (who sold the quinine which would have treated the crew’s malaria and refilled the medicine bottles with a useless substitute) or by the narrator himself (his immaturity which leads him to reject the initial suggestion of having a first mate on board with him).Īnother suggestive inter-text is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which Conrad alludes to at several points (this is when a well annotated edition of the novella comes in especially useful: we recommend The Shadow-Line A Confession n/e (Oxford World’s Classics) ).
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