Customer Reviews

The Shadow Line

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed reading about the main characters experience of crossing the line from youthfulness into true adulthood. Conrad's eloquent, descriptive, and almost surreal writing style allows the reader to almost experience the stagnation, heat, and frustration that envelop the characters in this book. Perhaps not Conrad's best book, but certainly a good read, and it is quite short and to the point. Especially if you have an affinity for sailing and the power and majesty of the sailing vessels of old. I have always felt that there is a certain amount of effort required to enjoy Conrad's books, but I also feel that this, in a sense, is directly proportional to effort in life. The more you put in, the more you get out.

THE SHADOW-LINE is not one of Conrad's more obscure works, but neither is it among his most famous. It is short, beautiful and very accessible, and deserves to be read. It is about growing up, growing into ones self and conscience, with the understanding that sometimes external events come along to force the maturation process nearly overnight, and if you are lucky, you swim. As he states in the author's note that has accompanied the text since the second edition, his mind was on his son Borys and his comrades who were off fighting in World War I at the time. The landscape of his story, though, comes out of his own youthful experience at sea.

The unnamed first person narrator of THE SHADOW-LINE has already distinguished himself at sea but is still a young man given to youthful emotion and brashness. He has decided that despite friendships, his love of the sea and his skills, that there is an absence of meaning to his career and he is emphatically throwing it off at a South Seas port with the intention of going home. But then he is made the one offer he cannot resist: his own command of a full-masted commercial barque that has come to port after the captain had gone mad with disease and was buried at sea. The narrator quickly pushes to get back out on the open seas despite the fact that the first mate seems to be growing increasingly sick. Suddenly stuck out where he had originally wanted to be, the narrator is faced with the spread of illness across the crew and the discovery that his deceased predecessor had destroyed the ship's pharmacy in his derangement. The responsibility of the situation would be terrible in any circumstances, much less a first command.

The Penguin edition contains a lengthy critical introduction (ridden with spoilers, by the way), an annotated critical bibliography, and text notes. The latter define technical and arcane terms but also note where the story dovetails with facts of Conrad's own life. All of these are useful, but the novel itself is what is valuable here, with its memorable characters and honest descriptive passages of both exterior and interior worlds.

One of Conrad's best novels, less profound than Heart of Darkness, certainly, but more economically written and featuring a narrator that more readers will identify with.

The Shadow Line is a nice sequel of sorts to Conrad's great story "Youth." In that, he showed how we often interpret events differently as youngsters and years later as adults. In The Shadow Line, the young protagonist has to improvise under stress to deal with the big world he's grown into.

Like all Conrad's works, this is wordy and slow by current standards, but well worth the time and effort to read it. Great practice for high-school seniors and college freshmen who want to step up to real literature.

I feel entirely unqualified to be critical of a master writer such as Conrad, but in my view this novel is not in the same league as his others. I'm more a fan of Lord Jim and Victory and was expecting something along those lines. This novel deals with the inner emotions and thoughts of a young sailor who suddenly becomes a ship captain. There is very little action, but the storyline is still somewhat interesting. I just don't think its one of Conrad's better works; possibly because I was expecting something entirely different.

The shadow-line is a classic coming-of-age tale. The title is fitting - dramatic seafaring events push the narrator towards, and eventually over, that hazy line between youth and adulthood. Conrad's themes and lessons are timeless and he made it short and easily digestible. Recommended especially for teens and those studying the art of leadership.

Conrad's first and last command as a captain provided material for 3 long stories of semi-autobiographical nature, all in a way variations on the same theme: growing up under pressure. The 3 are The Secret Sharer, Falk and then this one. Each is about leaving Bangkok as the new captain of a troubled ship, and about running into new trouble.

The Shadow-Line was written quite a bit later than the other 2, in 1915. One reviewer called it a war story. There is some truth in this, in the sense that it was written during WW1, and it is dedicated to Conrad's son, who went to war for England. That's the ultimate enforcement of adulthood.

The narrator has just abandoned a good job as mate on a ship under local flag, sailing the Malay Archipelago, for no good reason but out of youthful rashness. (That had been the time that gave us treasures like the Lingard trilogy and Lord Jim.)

Surprisingly, he is offered a golden opportunity: a job as skipper of a sailing ship. The previous captain has died and a replacement is needed. The chief mate is apparently a bit off his rockers, that's why an outsider must be called in to fill the captain vacancy. The job is plagued with all sorts of threatening trouble: diseases, dead calm, madness, ghosts. Our freshman captain has to cross the shadow line from youth to adulthood, to become a responsible leader.

Conrad tells us of his, presumably, own maturing process with surprising lightness. This is not pondering Marlow of the early phase, this is a different voice, this is somebody who can stand outside himself and watch and take himself less than dead serious.
The ghost aspects: some claim that this is really a ghost story. Nonsense, this ghost is just the hallucination of a sick sailor, Conrad put no credibility into it at all. He was a rational person.

If compared to Conrad's great stories, like Youth or Typhoon or the Secret Sharer, I would not put the Shadow-Line on the same level. But good enough for 5 stars it is any day.

As a true Conrad lover I must say that this is a very ggod read though not among Conrads greatest (Nostromo, the secret agent). To focus on the good points: it is less wordy than lesser works like Victory and has the (expected) cast of strongly drawn characters. The story seems a bit slow (doesn't Conrad always?) and Conrad readers may have a sense of dèja vu, but he lets the content develop out of the story and less from philosophical meanderings (cf. Victory again).

The Shadowline is a good introduction to Conrad (either this or Heart of Darkness), but the master has given us better things

The Shadow-Line is one of my favorite Conrad novels. It ranks with Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nigger of the Narcissus. For that matter it ranks among the great works of world literature. The Shadow-Line is shorter than Conrad's other great works and can be considered either a short novel or a long short story. I suppose it is a novella. In any case, it is a rather straight forward tale of a young man's maturing and struggling with adversity. The unnamed hero, having just resigned as an officer of a merchant ship, unexpectedly gets command of a sailing ship whose captain has died. Of course, our young hero is thrilled at this stunning and unexpected opportunity. He must take the ship from Bangkok to points beyond the Indian Ocean. Alas, as soon as he sails, or rather drifts from the harbor his troubles start. No wind, disease, troubled crew members. It is all harrowing and told with gripping tension and insight by Conrad. This book has less of the murky modernist Jamesian passages than some others of Conrad's. Frankly,I don't miss them at all.

Virginia Woolf had Conrad right. I quote from a website on modernism:

Woolf wrote "He must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, how loyalty is good and honesty and courage..." Woolf believed that it was Conrad's celebration of these sailorly virtues - stoical pride in one's work, a connection to a deep and lasting tradition, action rather than cogitation - that would ensure the writer's legacy. Beyond his techniques of narrative mediation, beyond his modernist probing of epistemological uncertainty, we are left, Woolf claims, with maritime yarns that celebrate "fidelity, compassion, honour, service," what Conrad himself describes in Some Reminisces as "a few very simple ideas." Conrad the moralist and seaman trumps Conrad the modernist and explorer of the dark chasms of psychology.

I couldn't agree more. The Shadow-Line is one of the best works of Conrad the moralist and seaman. It is a story of the sailorly virtues, of honesty and courage, and humanity. It is a celebration of "fidelity, compassion, honour, service" without being in any way sappy--just a few very simple ideas.

Often called Joseph Conrad's last notable work, The Shadow-Line is not in his top tier but is a strong tale that fans will enjoy. Though it has many of his more famous and better works' obvious trappings, not least the Far East/ship setting, it is far more accessible; shorter, more tightly written, and less symbolic, it has a linear narrative and (for Conrad) very straight-forward prose. This may disappoint those who value his profound philosophical dramatization and narrative experimentation, but those who like him mainly for stirring adventure and basic human nature insight - especially if they think other elements hold him back - will like this especially. I would not advise anyone to start here, as strong early novels like Almayer's Folly and The...Narcissus (Amazon won't allow the full title) are more representative and higher quality introductions, but those intimidated by more ambitious novels may want to skip here, and all others should pick it up eventually.

Most Conrad works can be appreciated on a very simple level as rousing sea adventures, this more than others. It lacks other novels' high pitch storm scenes, but its stark depiction of a ship in extreme condition is in many ways more affecting and certainly more relatable to most. We get a vivid idea of what it was like to be at sea in a true crisis. Like many Conrad stories, it is highly autobiographical, as one might have surmised from the wealth of realistic detail. Written in first-person from the captain's perspective, it vibrantly shows the great stress of overseeing a dire situation. Conrad is known for piercing psychological penetration, and though The Shadow-Line does not take the concept as abstractly far as other works, it is highly noteworthy in showing a representative mind - young, capable, and ambitious but inexperienced - under stress. Not least importantly, we get an unrelenting expression of self-doubt, hence the "A Confession" subtitle.

As this suggests, the book is to a large degree a bildungsroman and may easily be seen as a companion to Conrad's "Youth," another entry in the genre with further similar elements. Many will identify with the narrator's malaise, doubts, and lack of direction, not least because they come from an unknown source. At least as many will understand his elation at getting his first command. He quickly becomes a sympathetic character; we truly feel with and for him, at least as much because he is in so many ways an Everyman as because of his first-person narration. Fortunately, far fewer will be able to directly relate to his severely trying experiences, but the youth-to-adulthood passage that it symbolizes has universal significance. Like "Youth," this laments the loss of illusions and ideals that are sadly inherent to aging, but in contrast to it, the advantages - such as they are - are also shown. The narrator loses much but gains a strong self understanding, not least just how far he can be pushed and how he can perform in such conditions. More importantly, he learns hard and bitter truths that only experience can teach and that he will later need to call on often.

The narrator is not the only memorable character; this indeed has some of Conrad's most colorful and memorable, much to its advantage: the eccentric, deranged Mr. Burns; the calm, faithful Ransome; the deceptively intelligent Captain Giles; the quirky and lordly Captain Ellis; the comically hapless hotel steward; the contemptibly incompetent Hamilton; and not least, the startlingly malicious first captain who mercifully appears only in short flashbacks. If Conrad holds back in other areas - or if perhaps his talent had diminished -, he is at least as good as ever here.

Despite the obvious lack of prior works' deep symbolism, some have seen the novel as a World War I allegory. There is significant biographical justification; the book was written during WWI, Conrad saying it was the only subject he could turn to, and his son, whom he says he thought of when writing, fought in the war. One can also make a good textual case; the story after all champions camaraderie as well as perseverance amid great danger including the machinations of a malevolent enemy springing from unknown malice. Perhaps above all, it holds out for a (relatively) satisfying end despite all, which would seem uncharacteristically optimistic but may well make sense in the context of Conrad's son. There is likely something in all this, but it has probably been pushed too far by those understandably if somewhat perversely determined to find strong symbolism because prior works had it. Some have also seen supernatural elements, but it seems obvious that they were meant to be taken as insanity portents; Conrad lacked belief in such things, and his Preface denounced the interpretation. None of this really matters in the end, because The Shadow-Line is strong regardless of whether it exists and would not be among his best work if it did; anyone interested in Conrad should read it in any case.

Conrad Not at his best but still worth reading. Only downside is that the actual story is only 70 or so pages long. When you read Conrad you don't want the story to end. Half the book is taken up with forwards and introductions.