Would you consider The Lagoon as a tale of passion and remorse? Discuss with close textual references.

Would you consider The Lagoon as a tale of passion and remorse? Discuss with close textual references.

The soul of the short story is brevity, and critics would aver unity, too. Conrad who is usually famous for his novellas uses a relatively shorter from in The Lagoon, but detractors would claim that there is paraphernalia of themes marring the strict unity of effect. Although the short story rarely has the scope for anything more than a bore incident, Conrad’s short story is unique in its portrayal of an almost entire life. It is a sage of life that involves four diverse themes death, love, courage and guilt to select one among the four as the focal theme would appear an impossibility since Conrad’s mastery of the art makes the four themes interrelate each other.

 The entire short story diffuses an atmosphere of darkness and death. At first glance, the story would almost qualify for the Stevensoniantenet that the primary element in a short story may be a distinct atmosphere, the character serving only to enhance the effect. The entry into ‘the portals of a land from which the very moment of motion had for ever departed’ suggests the somber nature of the settling. Darkness appears ooze from the dense forest and when the white man reaches Arsat’s clearing, the first question that the European is whether he is in possession of any medicine. The description of the ill woman suggests the presence of death:

                         “………… on the young face there was the

                           Ominous and fixed expression – the absorbed,

                          Contemplating expression of the unconscious

                           Who are going to die?”

Even the white man is drawn into sympathy and move to horror and fascination at ‘the inspiration and the wonder of death’. The proximity of death which is unavoidable and uncomfortable made the stillness of the surrounding appears “untrustworthy and infamous like…. Unjustifiable violence.” The prince of death inhuman life makes the concept of starlight peace of mockery and the earth appears to be a battlefield of deadly beings.............

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