As I continue my Joseph Conrad kick, I’ve come across Typhoon, a story not from the perspective of Charlie Marlowe and not in the same monologue style as The Heart of Darkness or Youth, but with the same intensity and high-seas danger.
In this story, the main plot isn’t really the storm itself, a typhoon along the coasts of China. It’s not the story of Captain MacWhirr and his wife, who often travels with him but missed this terrifying leg of the trip. Nor is it that of Chief Mate Jukes or Fireman Bates or Chief Engineer Rout.
Instead, it’s a story about the countless “Chinamen tween-decks”, a cargo of migrant workers—each with his small wooden box of silver saved from hard labor—hoping to get home safely to their Motherland in FoKien. The plot is their fate, as they roll about the hold—unsecured during a dangerous typhoon—in a bloody, tangled mess. I was a bit surprised in this story to see that most of its action took place during the first half of the gale, leaving the “eye of the storm” and its just-as-dangerous second-half to brief sentences and summaries in the form of letters from the crew.
I enjoyed this story more than either Heart of Darkness or Youth, mainly due to Conrad’s surprisingly powerful and descriptive language and the misdirection he employs. While reading, I wasn’t sure which avenue of storyline to follow—for even on such a tiny ship, there were many—a literary device which kept me engaged to the last. That his climax [SPOILER] was how this crew prevented news of the Chinese tragedy from leaking was satisfactory, because I as a reader was certainly invested in the fate of not only the poor souls in the hold, but also of the ship’s crew for letting such a thing happen.
While reading, I wondered if the British crew was being cruel to the Chinese in the hold. My 2018 brain says “absolutely,” but in literature, that’s not allowed. Instead, I must step back 116 years to Conrad’s era. When doing so, I realize that we can’t call the event “dehumanizing the Chinese,” for during that era of sea travel, many crowds of migrants of all races sailed in the cramped quarters of such ships. Instead, we must recognize this crew as merely a business entity offering transport to clients using the methods of the time. This business recognized too late its faulty (or non-existent) safety features aboard their ship, they worked hard to fix them, and they eventually compensated the victims in as fair a manner as possible. We can’t hold this crew up as vanguards of Equality, but for 1902, they certainly proved themselves considerate.
Three books down, and I’m loving Joseph Conrad. I can’t wait to find out what else there is to learn about the adventures of the sea, this time in The Secret Sharer.
©2018 E.T.
Read More from Joseph Conrad:
- Heart of Darkness (1899)
- Youth (1898)
- Typhoon (1902)
- The Secret Sharer (1910)
- Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (2020; adapted by Peter Kruper)