The Real Existence of Passions: The Sisters and ‘The Rescuer’

Abstract

Lingard’s role in An Outcast of the Islands anticipates the creation of Marlow-as-narrator in ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Lord Jim: his struggle to understand and ‘make sense’ of Willems’s actions provides a model for a narrative method which involves the reader through the narrator’s questioning and allows the narrator to question his own values.1 Conrad, however, did not pass smoothly from An Outcast of the Islands to ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Lord Jim. Most of 1896 and 1897 was taken up with work on two unfinished novels, The Sisters and ‘The Rescuer’. In many ways, ‘The Rescuer’ is the missing link between An Outcast and Lord Jim.2 Lingard, like Willems, experiences the disruption of his sense of himself as a result of his involvement with a woman. At the same time, Lingard, like Jim, betrays a bond of trust established with his Malay friends at the sudden intrusion of strangers from ‘the white world’. In ‘The Rescuer’, Conrad explores directly the possibilities of Lingard’s character, trying to find out how that model of male identity works. As Roussel says, ‘Thematically, The Rescue is an investigation of the most obvious alternative to Willems’s last vision. It examines the possibility that men can create and sustain a world of their own values.’3 KeywordsReal ExistenceRomantic IdealAdventurous SpiritWhite WorldEastern WorldThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.