The story's written in first person past tense and is wonderfully close to the voice. This is what I love about the book. You go so deep within the character's mind, and of course the character is the most important aspect of a book. So yes it's about a young captain (narrator) who, insecure on his new stranger ship with his stranger crew, sneaks a man onboard in the middle of the night and really latches on to him. The man had escaped from his own ship and the captain, intrigued by the "sharer's" physical appearance and situation which so resembled his own, decides to help the man hide for a few days on the ship until finally the captain risks all of their lives and the ship to get the man safely to the shore of a tiny little island. Great stuff. Narration.
The narration is so unbelievably unreliable. I mean it's creepy how unreliable it gets. The guy's a mess, really. He starts out pretty decent: nervous but tranquil, orderly, normal, even eloquent, and then comes the guy. The character's great. He has so many issues, he's so rich in content. Anyway, that's the beauty of the book, the character-change which, being that the story is in first person, affects the writing style so dramatically, and all for the better, I think, concerning intrigue at least. I could go on for miles about this story. Honestly. Ages. You've seen my other entries, and well, it does seem impossible but I was holding off a torrent of words for the other books, and the one fighting at my barrier here is a monster making the other torrents look like little tumbleweed. So thus I will force myself to concentrate now on one subject alone: the answer to the question, "Does the man, Leggatt, exist in the book?"
I think no, but that's probably because that answers a lot more fun. Why else ask the question? There is the obvious argument about how the captain of the other ship comes to our ship and starts asking about Leggatt.However, well, putting that aside, there really is nothing. Leggatt comes, the captain sees him, and Leggatt leaves. That's actually the entire story, and I know it seems boring, but the interesting bit is that the captain gets so attached to him. I feel like I'm going in circles. Okay, well sorry about that. There's he physical appearances for example. I mean, when you describe someone so thoroughly, it s a bit creepy. Anyway, there's that the captain then is convinced they look exactly alike. That's pretty impossible and when the captain of the other ship, the Sephora, comes on, he doesn't make any remark like "By Jove, you look just like Leggatt!" He is suspicious, which is pretty interesting because why would anyone hide Leggatt? but doesn't probe much further. So yes, there's no proof that these two actually look alike. I think it's just Mr. Crazy wishing it in his mind.
Then there's that thing about how much time he spends describing their proximity. I guess I'm just describing just how much the character gets obsessed with the character now then, and how much this might be homosexual... Right, well yes, it comes up constantly, with the whole "our shoulders almost touched", whispering in the ears and all that. Gosh, it is actually pretty vivid. The captain lends his clothes to Leggatt and thinks Leggatt looks even more like him, he looks in on Leggatt while he's sleeping. Really..
Well, then there is the fact that he actually hides him. I mean, when you find some naked guy swimming in the dead of night and you look exactly into each other's eyes after you work out that that thing isn't actually a headless corpse floating about, most people'd run away. Not our captain though. He hides him. Then, you'd think one might consider actually getting the crew together, giving them a little talk of warning and then revealing Leggatt and saying, "Alright what do we do?" But no. Our guy thinks this Leggatt is all the world and the sun and the moon and the universe, and if he is shown, all hell would break loose and demons and whatnot. No, no, no captain. You're overreacting, it's not all that bad at all. But he hides him,keeping him all o himself and almst having a nervous breakdown every single time the steward steps into his room, every time he has to stp on deck, every moment he's away from his double. That's just so darn obsessive. Really. But then there's the strangeness of how Leggatt agrees, freaking out everytime some insignificant thing happens. And what, finally he decides he ought to spend the rest of his life alone going mad on a rock in the middle of the Pacific? That's so wrong. There are so many alternatives. But this is the most romantic, symbolic, and overall haunting of them all, and knowing our captain, that's the choice he would choose for this fantasy version of himself.
Hooray, we have returned to the idea of reality and fantasy! Great, so I said based on our character. Let's expand. Who is the captain? Hmm, well my interpretation is that he's an insecure, introverted, shy young man with too large of an imagination and too little company to keep him straight. What we really know is that he's young and new to the ship. Immediate insecurity. Then you get him being hesitant, thinking of all his actions before and then after he makes them, like the whole volunteering for anchor-duty. And from this you also see his decency, taking care of his crew, being aware of time and not feeling superior, actually feeling he fails in asserting his title of superiority. He does turn a bit vicious towards his mate though, later on, but that's just nerves, I think. Yes, there we go, we start seeing change.
Alright, well, there's the original captain: decent, hesitant, inferior, insecure, introverted, shy, yadayadayada. Then what does he become. Well, he doesn't go up on deck anymore, shirking his duty. He yells "Steward!" all the time and calls the rest of the crew pathetic and such, whimpering.He becomes terribly dodgy too in his actions. He brings the rest of the crew to their moment of death, the ship too, doing this impossible turn in the water, almost crashing, and all for this guy, and Leggatt's not all that great either. While he's turning the ship, he's totally authoritive, as well as when he's spelling out his master plan to Leggatt about the sails and such. Captain definitely would not have been able to come up with that in his old insecurity and hesitation. I mean, the old guy was scared of ghosts, seeing corpses walkking about and all, and now, he's practically a daredevil. After the turn, the crew are sure to respect his ability and I'm sure he's gotten to know the ship very well now. So yes, it could have been a good thing huh. Except for the fact that he got there through this huge tangential endeavor int othe insane.
Concerning Leggatt, Leggatt killed a guy with his bare hands. That's not all too good a thing to say when you first meet a guy. leggatt did though. Strangely enough, our captain was totally fine with it. Disturbing, huh. Then well, what if Leggatt is imagined? What would he have been imagined for? Well my interpretation is that Leggatt is an adventure that Captain wants but can't find. Leggatt is a fantasy of extraordinary for a man who is too far into the ordinary. Leggatt is interesting, daring and all his. The captain holds Leggatt's life in his hands, or at least he would like to think so. See sometimes, you want to be important. You want to influence somebody a lot, even if it is for the worse. You just want to matter, and to matter especially to someone you love. Leggatt gave our guy importance, and so power. Leggatt forced captain to take initiative. Was our guy wanting to have this transformation and just not able to? Well that's just it, maybe. I think so, and I think he went about having the change by going all Fight Club and making his subconsious a real person. That's pretty weak of him, but well, he managed it. I like the way he thinks anyway. It makes for a good book. Nice and dense and a bit creepy, and I like creepy stuff, psychologically creepy that is.
Also there's that hint dropped pretty obviously with the whole he's my double thing. I mean, come on, can it be more clear. The captain literally refers to Leggatt as his other half, his sharer, his twin, his second self. When they are apart, the captain says he has that uncomfortable feeling of when your mind is in two places at once. That's really because they are the same person, I think. It's pretty creepy if it isn't to say the truth of it.
There's this quotation about what captain thinks when he sees Leggatt for the first time down in the water. Last thing, I promise. Well, I'll include it below, but basically he says that he sees Leggatt and is afraid he wants to come on board, naturally, but then finds it all the more frightening to imagine him not wanting to come on board. How cool a way of thinking is that? I mean, you always are afrais of having to personally face something strange, so the first pat's normal enough, but then to go beyond, to think of what else may happen, that's special. I mean, what if he did just turn around, all white and slippery, in the black water of the midnight and just swim away, dipping down into the water and disappearing. That is the creepiest thing ever. Ever! That's merman stuff right there. Sea people. I mean, when you see someone swimming and then drowning in the ocea, that sucks but it's fine because it happens. However, if you see a man have a chance to survive and calmly just turn away and dissappear, it's a bit difficult to imagine them drowning for if they could drown, which they would, why turn away? But then, if he does turn around, then you can't imagine them possibly drowning, so what's the alternative? You swim forever? You have gills? You find some strange oxygen city underwater? It's so absurd and unnatural that it's creepy, and in a way the potential and possibility of it is even more frightening than it as a reality. Gosh it's so creepy, so slippery and moon blue. Shivers. And this is mostly just one sentence and it has no real significance either except maybe to consider to the eerie, fantastic, and unreal light that covers this whole story, and thus contributing to the Leggatt doesn't exist theory. Maybe. But anyway, isn't it nice that Conrad does this stuff in one sentence just because he can. Skills man.
So that's it. I know you're dying to read that quotation so here it will come. I'l let you dive into the wonders of Conrad-world. It's nice and dense and flamboyant and beautiful. Amazing. Heart of darkness will come soon. In the meantime,
Read folks, Read.
"It was inconceivable that he should not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that perhaps he did not want to."
"On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fisherman now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitiation as far as the eye could reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sky shone smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an inperceptible ripple. And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the sky."
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