Joseph Conrad's writing has fascinated millions with his vast journeys to faraway places, sojourns in distant lands, and an all-powerful force of nature that disrupts everything. The concept of writing about seafaring comes directly from Conrad's adventures, as he undertook many voyages throughout his life. Intentionally or not, Conrad's personal understanding of people, ships, and nature mirrors his use in his books, such as Typhoon, Falk, and Heart of Darkness. Conrad's stories not only tell a fictional narrative of events occurring in another universe, but also describe what Conrad himself believes about reality based on his personal experiences. Joseph Conrad's writings feature lone sailors aboard isolated ships to colorfully describe Conrad's worldview. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Conrad's personal experience with the sea relates directly to the details of his novels, connecting Conrad's works to Conrad's memories. Many novels written by Conrad come from actual memories of Conrad's life. During his personal travels, he sailed from Bangkok on a ship to Singapore, and in his novel Falk the characters interact in the port, a place where Conrad spent a lot of time. On a voyage to the port of Java, he sailed on the ship Highland Forest under the command of Captain John MacWhirr, and in the typhoon Captain MacWhirr sailed for Asia. Heart of Darkness describes a man who becomes captain of a steamboat on the Congo River, and Conrad did the same in his personal travels. These novels serve not only as entertainment but also as a reminder of memories that Conrad himself experienced and recorded using his own worldview. The main characters in Conrad's writings actually insert Conrad into the story. In Heart of Darkness, as the main character recounts his life's journey, a passerby states that “his remark didn't seem surprising at all. He was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence” (Heart of Darkness 447). The beginning of the novel features a group of men on a ship in silence, and then Marlow begins to describe his life. This reflects what the reader gets from reading his books: listen to Conrad tell his story. Therefore, in this novel, Conrad can use Marlow as a representative of himself. A similar example comes from Falk, in which the narrator states, “This reminds me of a preposterous episode in my life, now many years ago, when I first obtained command of an iron barque” (Falk 270). Then the narrator describes the whole story. Even if the physical representation of a visible Conrad archetype (such as Marlow) does not appear in the novel, it remains a narrative element that symbolizes what Conrad himself does in writing his novels. Although Typhoon does not include any designated narrator, a main character uses the same name as a captain in Conrad's life story. Conrad writes “Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy which, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind” (Typhoon 195). This pointed suggestion provides a connection between Conrad's life and Typhoon, in the sense that Conrad's experience overflows into his writings. Furthermore, Ian Robinson writes in “Conrad's Belief in Victory” that “like Dickens, Conrad is not supposed to be a philosophically sophisticated novelist. But both can have as clear philosophical notions as they want." Conrad's writing, according to Robinson, includes vague or clear philosophy. Indeed, Conrad's writings contain agreat amount of philosophical details and suggestions that may connect his life and philosophy to his writings. All three of these works include a connection to Conrad's personal life and journey that help explain how Conrad reflects his worldview in his writings. The ships create divisions between people and nature that expose Conrad's views on nature, solitude, and civilization. In Typhoon, a voyage ship faces a powerful typhoon in the ocean. There are two sides to the novel: those on board the ship and the forces outside the ship. This construct clearly separates humanity from the power of nature and illustrates Conrad's view that nature contains immense power, enough to have a "wind [that] strangles [MacWhirr's] howls" (Typhoon 218). Using this, Conrad goes on to describe the sovereignty that nature holds over one's life, both physically and emotionally. In Falk, living on ships isolates people from each other and shows the sorrow and difficulty of living alone. Falk, a lonely man who "lived aboard his tugboat, which was always racing up and down the river" (Falk 278) finds that "[it] is harder every day to live alone" (Falk 300). Due to the fact that Falk lives alone on board a ship, he finds life difficult. The use of a vessel emphasizes Conrad's disgust with loneliness creating a divide between Falk and society. In Heart of Darkness, the characters on board the ships possess qualities of nobility and civility, while the people who are not on board act wildly and are therefore called "savages". A fight breaks out between the people on the river banks and the settlers aboard the steamboat. Marlow “distinguished, in the depths of the tangled darkness, naked breasts, arms, legs, staring eyes, – the bush swarmed with moving, glittering, bronze-colored human limbs” (Heart of Darkness 476). He can't see people, but only parts of them, immersed in darkness. The men on board the ship, however, retain visibility and humanity. When conflict broke out, “the arrows came in swarms” (Heart of Darkness 476) while “the shot of a rifle right behind me deafened me” (Heart of Darkness 476). Noting the qualities associated with their respective weapons, the arrows retain a swarming, animalistic and savage quality while the rifle simply contains the word report, a much more civilized word used more in societies when reporting to a leader. From the qualities of words and images associated with "savages", Conrad uses ships here as the decisive factor distinguishing the civilized from the barbarian. Using ships as an agent of division, Conrad develops his ideas about solitude, nature, and civilization. The characters in solitude express Conrad's opinion that men do not function well alone. Numerous examples in Conrad's works highlight this perspective. In Falk, Falk is harmed by his celibacy and responds by speaking to the narrator. In their argument, “He [Falk] grabbed my hand and squeezed it crushingly. "Excuse me. I feel it harder every day to live alone. . .'” (Falk 300). The imbalance that Falk endures due to his desolation leads him to attack and physically hurt someone. In this state, he mistakenly assumes that the narrator wants to marry a woman he liked. Falk's desire for a wife comes from a sense of not being alone because he says he finds life harder every day to live alone, not because he wants children or love. Similarly, in Typhoon, sailors are pressured to write home to their wives. An example would be the ship's engineer, "Mr. Rout[, who] wrote letters; only no one on board knew how talkative he was, pen in hand, becausethe chief engineer had enough imagination to keep the desk locked. His wife really liked his style” (Typhoon 201). This means that while the engineer appears calm among the other sailors, he wishes to communicate with his wife. He wishes not to be around people who travel with him primarily for financial gain. He longs to return home to be with his wife and family. He clearly wants to leave the confinement of the ship and live a social life. In Heart of Darkness, the characters' superficial understanding leaves little knowledge of whether the men of the Congo colony wrote letters to their loved ones, but they all share respect and admiration for the man called Kurtz. When Marlow asked “who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this information, he added slowly, putting down his pen: 'He is a very extraordinary person'” (Heart of Darkness 456). Many men in the colony share a similar view of Kurtz. The universal admiration for Kurtz symbolizes the need people have for others, and in this case these men want to talk to an extraordinary man. These settlers have great expectation and hope to be with Kurtz. Holger Nüstedt, in his literary criticism “The End of the Tether: An Old Man's Rite of Passage” by Joseph Conrad, writes that Conrad “leans rather heavily on the idea of ​​initiation,” which means “the transition of young people from childhood to childhood." adulthood in so-called “primitive” societies and may therefore seem a sufficiently plausible metaphor for a series of changes experienced by young people in literature”. The concept of initiation emerges in all three of these books as characters who possess mature traits communicate with others (their wives or Kurtz). Everyone has someone they want to communicate with and without communication they feel dismayed at being initiated In society as adults, they strive to achieve the similar goal of relating to other people. Thus, the enjoyment of the company of others in all three books exposes Conrad's disbelief in joyful isolation. Ships remove people from the superficiality of life to allow characters to observe and reflect. the world Some characters engage in a change described by Shirley Galloway in her critical essay “Joseph Conrad: The Sense of Self” as “facing a process of maturation that involves the loss of youthful illusions, a process usually accelerated by. a real "trial" that tests the protagonist's professional skills as well as his assumptions about his identity and sanity. All three novels reflect a trial experienced by a character. In Typhoon, the narrator personifies a battle between sailors aboard a ship and a raging typhoon 212). Separated at sea from their seafaring companions and loved ones at home, the men were attacked and "the storm penetrated the man's defenses and opened his lips" (Typhoon 236) with a force "like the sudden crash of a ship". vial of wrath. It seemed to explode all around the ship with an overwhelming commotion and a rush of great waters” (Typhoon 212 clarifies that the typhoon not only attacks and injures the ship (which it does), but also intervenes in the innermost being of the men on board, identifying them and pouring out the anger on them and in them. In this separated and anguished state, men are forced to think about the storm, about the power of nature and about the state of their lives. Sailors concentrate all their forces on attacking the storm only physically, but also mentally and emotionally to prevent their lives from internally collapsing into despair. Furthermore, the narrator of this story fits Galloway's understanding of theevidence in Conrad's works, which causes the story to contain numerous depictions of the internal destruction caused by the storm. Conrad's narrator, Marlow, in the novel Heart of Darkness describes with great thought and feeling the journey he took to Africa. Separated from his previous life and thrust into a new job far from home, Marlow reflects on the essence of nature. He states that “going up that river was like traveling back to the very dawn of the world, when vegetation rebelled on the earth and large trees were king. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was hot, thick, heavy, lethargic. There was no joy in the brightness of the sun” (Heart of Darkness 467). Marlow sees nature as untamed (mostly) by man, where large trees were important rather than skyscrapers. Nature is strong, firm and dark. Marlow believes that the isolation of the forest resembles that he felt he had "lost your way on that river as you would in a desert" (Heart of Darkness 467) even though a river contains a set path upon which one travels. The loss Marlow experiences stems from internal thoughts created by his remote adventure, not from any navigational failures. In this river, left to himself, he meditates on nature just as the narrator of Typhon describes his battle against the sea. Marlow embodies the young person described by Galloway, in the sense that Marlow becomes aware of the expansiveness of nature and becomes lost, losing his identity due to the ordeal he finds himself in. In contrast to the other two books which begin with people in society entering secluded thinking, Falk describes a mysterious single man who becomes a married man. He “approached without sympathy, staring at you with his yellow eyes from the deck, and dragged you out as disheveled as the rigging, as heavily as the decks, with a callous haste, as if you were executed” (Falk 279). Falk hates his job and "feels it harder every day to live alone" (Falk 300). Due to Falk's complete isolation on a ship full of feelings and inner depth for many years, Falk longs for company. The social abandonment that Falk faces causes him to feel pain and depression and he goes to work as if he were walking to die. Galloway's concept of finding identity in the midst of a trial is reminiscent of the pain Falk feels as a single man, and his plight of leaving this pain lays bare his loss and forces him to recognize his own weakness. Although this book incorporates the desolation differently than the other two books, it still creates significant meanings about Conrad's worldview. In all three books, men cut off from others reflect on the world in which they live. Characters in distant lands, isolated from their homeland, give Conrad a unique vehicle to discuss white supremacy and the common belief of Social Darwinism. In all three works, people of other races are considered barbaric, chaotic, and ambiguous. Most of the Typhoon's passengers called "Chinese men" all gather together in a large room of the ship with large trunks storing valuables. When the storm hit the ship, the chests opened and suddenly "all these clumsy Chinese [are] rising in one body to save their property" (Typhoon 229). The Chinese fought so hard that “with each launch of the ship they hurled that wandering, screaming crowd here and there, from side to side, in a whirlwind of shattered wood, torn clothes, rolling dollars” (Typhoon 229). The fighting on the ship during the storm symbolizes the carnage wrought from the depths within of all those aboard the ship and further describes how the storm affects all people,threatening the separation between ship and sea. In covalent validity, the storm soon and completely overwhelms the Chinese, pushing them as a racially differentiated group into depravity and greed. The sudden change of the Chinese in the midst of the storm reflects social Darwinism because only the group of Chinese falls into chaos while all the other white men aboard the ship retain the ability to continue working. Furthermore, the Chinese do not work for the ship, but live under the authority of the white men on the ship. In addition to the perspective that the Chinese symbolize the storm's effect on individuals, the Chinese only serve to disturb the other race attempting to survive the brutal storm. In Falk, a similar situation occurs where the narrator hires a Chinaman to help him on his ship, and “before the end of the third day he had revealed himself to be a chain smoker of opium, a gambler, a very bold thief, and a world-class sprinter” (Falk 274). In short, the one person of note from another race earns considerable disrepute for his or her inability to do the job properly. This minor, cameo appearance of a person of another race illustrates the idea that people of other races do not possess the skills and discipline necessary to work a "white man's job". In Heart of Darkness, Conrad separates the colonists from the colonized to describe how the white race contains more nobility and civilization while the indigenous people of the Congo are made up of savagery and primitiveness. Marlow describes the Congo as having “sandbanks, swamps, forests, savages, – very little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink” (Heart of Darkness 447). This statement elevates Marlow and the colonizers above the Congolese people, stating that good food for civilized people rarely comes along. Overall, the way Marlow describes the Congo as dark, with “no joy in the brightness of the sun” (Heart of Darkness 467) connects exactly with the way Marlow describes the people of the Congo. The people and the environment also intermingle on several occasions, one of these before the confrontation at the river when Marlow discovers that "the bush swarmed with moving, glittering, bronze-colored human limbs" (Heart of Darkness 476). Not only does Marlow find the Congo repugnant, but the people who live there are a natural extension of his dislike of the Congo. It suggests that one race, the white race, contains civilization and nobility that no other race can match. Conrad's stories around the world lead Conrad to specialized discussions of social Darwinism and racism. Conrad's placement of the ships brings to light his belief in the sovereign hand of nature over human action. Out at sea during the Typhoon, the ship suffers an attack from nature. The typhoon holds the existence of everyone on board in its hands and can sink the ship at any time. Like a real person, "The Nan-Shan was being ravaged by the storm with a senseless and destructive fury: the test sails torn from the extra seals, the double-strap tents blown away, the deck blown away, the sheets burst, the rails twisted , the light screens broke and two of the boats were already gone” (Typhoon 215) throughout the novel, Conrad uses personification to describe how the sea behaves as an independent person attributes, in this case a great deal of anger. nature does not act by chance because it retains the qualities of a real person described here not by chance but by will, and the life of everyone on board the ship is under the 'almighty authority of nature. Starting from this idea, Falk includes an accident that would never behappened if nature had not intervened. The character Falk spends his days towing boats up and down the river, but damages the vessel he tows. This ship belongs to Captain Hermann, whose niece Falk wishes to marry. With so much at stake, Falk fails to do the job he was supposed to do for one of the most important jobs of his life! The narrator exclaims “The damage! The damage! What about all that damage! There was no cause for harm” (Falk 287). This event cannot be due to chance, because Falk made a lot of effort to ensure that he did not harm himself so that he would have a better chance of marrying his niece. Under nature's authority, however, the ship is damaged. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow describes the river as “dead at the core. And the river was there, fascinating, deadly, like a serpent. Phew!" (Heart of Darkness 450). Marlow notes that nature itself seems alluring, but as deadly as a serpent. As the archetypal representative of Conrad's experience in this story, he recognizes the power that nature holds over his head, knowing how deadly and powerful it can be. Conrad's placement of nature builds his thoughts on how nature controls the fate of humans, overriding their free will sailors without direct communication with home must act on a whim, parallel to Conrad's advocacy of adaptability and improvisation in remote places. In the midst of a typhoon storm, Captain MacWhirr reads a book about typhoons. After reading and reflecting on it, he stolidly states “You don't find everything in books” (Typhoon233). ) With his experience at sea, MacWhirr believes that simply studying books does not teach men enough and that they need to learn more outside of books, such as experience at sea, to truly know and understand gravity of the storm. While the fact-based books provide MacWhirr with facts and figures, they fail to tell him about the internal conflicts he would experience during the storm Conrad describes. When books fail, Conrad believes it is necessary to improvise to ensure the ship's survival, and when the storm hits, events occur that cannot easily be discussed at length in a book. For example, some passengers' trunks open and they start fighting about everything in the center of the ship. Events like these force the captain to act on a whim based on the situation and not rely solely on what the book says. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow travels to Africa for a job as a ship's captain, and after meeting a man and "told [him] who I [Marlow] was, [said] that my steamer was on the bottom of the ship. the river. I was amazed” (Heart of Darkness 458). After this incident, Marlow's plans change to "fish my [Marlow's] command out of the river" (Heart of Darkness 458) instead of starting up the river. Marlow now has to change what he plans to do and for a few months he has to work on repairing the ship. His profession, similar to MacWhirr's, requires spontaneity. It should be noted that the ship sank primarily because the company, “in a hurry” (Heart of Darkness 458) hired a “volunteer skipper” (Heart of Darkness 458) to sail upriver. In this sense, acting on a whim maliciously forces Marlow to change his plans. Conrad, therefore, makes a distinction between intelligent improvisation and being careless because it includes negative and positive improvisations. If he wanted to just describe how useful all improvisations are, he would have used another story that didn't involve the great rush that improvisation requires. Improvisation in Heart of Darkness describes the indispensable need for good improvisation and ruins it if.