The Luck of The Shadow line

The Shadow line,  by Joseph Conrad (1917), is a very intriguing novel from the psychological point of view. The novel tells the story of a young petty officer, dissatisfied with his present work life. Symbolically, he sees a kind of shadow line that divides his youth full of enthusiasm from the life that he is leaving:

“I will not consider here the origins of the feeling in which its actual title, The Shadow-Line, occurred to my mind. Primarily the aim of this piece of writing was the presentation of certain facts which certainly were associated with the change from youth, care-free and fervent, to the more self-conscious and more poignant period of mature life.”

With this awareness, he suddenly leaves his job, wandering without a destination.  The fate offers him the chance at getting command of a ship in Bangkok, because the old captain was ill. However, the navigation appears to be full of difficulties for the young Commander, and he had to cope with several unexpected events. They can’t sail in that calm, most of the crew fell ill, and there were no medicines on board.

The young Commander, however, has the strength to face problems with new energy, and he assumes that he has achieved a remarkable level of maturity through the encounter with the adversities faced by the navigation. The novel is pervaded by a strong emotional tension, which in the end fascinates the reader, who follows step by step the inner maturation of the protagonist, who would   give a new dimension to his life.

“This book was written in the last three months of the year 1916. I remember that period of my sea-life with pleasure because, begun inauspiciously, it turned out in the end a success from a personal point of view, leaving a tangible proof in the terms of the letter the owners of the ship wrote to me two years afterwards when I resigned my command in order to come home. This resignation marked the beginning of another phase of my seaman’s life, its terminal phase, if I may say so, which in its own way has coloured another portion of my writings. I didn’t know then how near its end my sea-life was, and therefore I felt no sorrow except at parting with the ship.”

The Shadow line is a novel that could easily inserted  in the pathway  of the European narrative tradition of the so-called Bildungsroman, or  novel of self-development and education, because of the hero’s efforts to overcome personal conflicts and objective difficulties, and of which   Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795) by Goethe is  universally recognized  as the first typical example. But the same Conrad recognized that luck played a key role during his juvenile period:

“I suspect now that luck had no small part in the success of the trust reposed in me. And one cannot help remembering with pleasure the time when one’s best efforts were seconded by a run of luck”.

So luck was with him. On the other hand, we all need a bit of luck in our lives:

“Only the young have such moments. I don’t mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection,” the same Conrad said.

Sources:

1. Conrad, The Shadow Line, London, William Heinemann, 1921, Author’s Note, pp. IX-XIII, and p. 1.