SHORT STORY

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NOTES

BACKGROUND

Between 1883 and 1888, Conrad sailed the Malay Archipelago—a

group of Pacific islands that includes the Philippines and

Indonesia—in British merchant ships. He used the knowledge

he acquired of the region—of its language, landscape, and

customs—to enrich his seafaring tales. It is likely that Captain William

Lingard, revered as a spellbinding storyteller among sailors of the Malay

settlements, was the model for Marlowe, who appears as the narrator

of several Conrad stories.

T

he white man, leaning with both arms over the roof of the

little house in the stern of the boat, said to the steersman—

“We will pass the night in Arsat’s clearing. It is late.”

The Malay^1 only grunted, and went on looking fixedly at the

river. The white man rested his chin on his crossed arms and

gazed at the wake of the boat. At the end of the straight avenue

of forests cut by the intense glitter of the river, the sun appeared

unclouded and dazzling, poised low over the water that shone

smoothly like a band of metal. The forests, somber and dull, stood

1. Malay (muh LAY) native of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia.

1

2

3

About the Author

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was one of the most

distinguished English-language novelists of his age,

despite learning English as a third language after Polish

and French. An orphan at 11 and a refugee at 16,

Conrad spent years traveling around the world as a

sailor, and used sea-voyages and countries he had

visited as the basis for his deeply introspective fiction.

His work deals with self-discovery and exploration of the hidden depths of

the self.

The Lagoon

Joseph Conrad

IL21 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon