The sea was the greatest of mysteries to Conrad; it was also the harshest and most familiar of facts, and throughout his stories of ships and seamen who sailed them runs this duel line of meaning: romantic and realistic, the adventure and the struggle.
The three stories in this volume, written a different periods of Conrad‘s life, illustrate at once this twofold vision and the way in which his treatment of it changed. All three are concerned with crisis of sea life and weather. "Typhoon" is a tale of men who must pit themselves against the violence of a storm. "The Shadow Line" and the 'Secret Sharer" turn on an opposite, though hardly less ominous mood of the sea, a dead calm. Conrad’s sea stories are always more than struggles with nature, for the outward conflict which makes up a sailors life becomes a setting and a mirror for man’s conflict with himself. Here are three of Conrad‘s finest stories of the sea and of the men for whom it’s a fact and condition of life.
Title: | The Shadow Line, Typhoon and The Secret Sharer |
Author: | Joseph Conrad |
Language | English |
Publisher: | A Doubleday Anchor Book |
Publication Date: | 1959 |
ISBN Number: | Not Applicable |
Format: | Mass Market Paperback |
Pages | 272 |