The “Obscure Odyssey” of the Object in Conrad’s “Karain”

Abstract

Published in Tales of Unrest, “Karain” is one of Conrad’s most enigmatic Malay stories. It continues to draw critical attention because of the ambivalent status of an object, a gilded (not gold) sovereign, offered by a group of sailors to a native chief, Karain, in a curious scene of redemption. Obviously the shining sovereign does not have the same value for the sailors and for Karain, who sees it as an amulet, a “charm”, an image of the Great Queen: almost a fetish that will fill the gaps of his existence. The gilded sovereign has two sides: one which is attractive to the imagination and one which is commonplace – it was not worth much in the Victorian era. In structural terms, the coin materializes the two sides of the object of desire – both as an object of fascination, and as a mere nothing. If we refer to the Lacanian notion of the sublime as “an object raised to the dignity of the Thing”, what appears is the deeply ironic value of such an ideological object. Back in London, the frame narrator presents Karain’s remote story as “this Thing”: as a sublime object raised to the dignity of the Thing. From the reader’s point of view, the sovereign/story with its charm and rich ambivalence both covers and shows the void, the “nothing” against which the modern artist creates with his/her own object: here, the written word.