Here, then, is the secret of Conrad's atmosphere. He is the poet, working through realism, to the poetic vision of life. That intention is at the heart of his work from the first line of Almayer's Folly to the last line of Victory. Nostromo is not simply the history of certain lives that were concerned in a South American revolution. It is that history, but it is also a vision, a statement of beauty that has no country, nor period, and sets no barrier of immediate history or fable for its interpretation....
When, however, we come finally to the philosophy that lies behind this creation of character and atmosphere we perceive, beyond question, certain limitations.
III
As we have already seen, Conrad is of the firm and resolute conviction that life is too strong, too clever and too remorseless for the sons of men.
It is as though, from some high window, looking down, he were able to watch some shore, from whose security men were for ever launching little cockle-shell boats upon a limitless and angry sea. He observes them, as they advance with confidence, with determination, each with his own sure ambition of nailing victory to his mast; he alone can see that the horizon is limitless; he can see farther than they—from his height he can follow their fortunes, their brave struggles, their fortitude to the very last. He admires that courage, the simplicity of that faith, but his irony springs from his knowledge of the inevitable end.
There are, we may thankfully maintain, other possible views of life, and it is, surely, Conrad's harshest limitation that he should never be free from this certain obsession of the vanity of human struggle. So bound is he by this that he is driven to choose characters who will prove his faith. We can remember many fine and courageous characters of his creation, we can remember no single one who is not foredoomed to defeat. Jim wins, indeed, his victory, but at the close: "And that's the end. He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic.... He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct."
Conrad's ironical smile that has watched with tenderness the history of Jim's endeavours, proclaims, at the last, that that pursuit has been vain—as vain as Stein's butterflies.
And, for the rest, as Mr Curle in his study of Conrad has admirably observed, every character is faced with the enemy for whom he is, by character, least fitted. Nostromo, whose heart's desire it is that his merits should be acclaimed before men, is devoured by the one dragon to whom human achievements are nothing—lust of treasure.
McWhirr, the most unimaginative of men, is opposed by the most tremendous of God's splendid terrors and, although he saves his ship from the storm, so blind is he to the meaning of the things that he has witnessed that he might as well have never been born. Captain Brierley, watching the degradation of a fellow-creature from a security that nothing, it seems, can threaten, is himself caught by that very degradation.... The Beast in the Jungle is waiting ever ready to leap—the victim is always in his power.