1. SharifahFatinAthiraBt Syed Uzir
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ENGL 2515 Literary Genres III: The Novel and Short Story
Section 1
Topic:
A Comparison of Joseph Conrad’s Almayer’sFolly ;The External and Internal Social and
Cultural Context.
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2. Almayer’s Follyis a novel which tells a story of KasparAlmayer, an English man, who
dreams of wealth and power and for that, he is willing to marry a Malay woman, Mrs. Almayer,
who is the adopted daughter of Lingard. KasparAlmayer also set up a perfect plan where he
thinks that he will make a huge fortune in Malaya and then live a luxurious life in Amsterdam
with his beloved daughter, Nina. However, things do not go according to his will and he is stuck
in the foreign landwithout even achieving anything (Almayer’s Folly, 1895).
The author ofAlmayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczów, a part of Poland
which was under the colonization of Russia, now known as Ukraine. His original name was
JózefTeodorKonradKorzeniowski (Sherry, 1972). Almayer’s Folly was first published in
1895and the novel is his first ever novel in his writing career.Not only that it is his first novel, it
is also his first attempt of writing in English, which is not his first language (Watt, 2000). When
he first arrived in a British port in June 1878, he did not know even a single word of English, his
career in the merchant-navy for twenty-year brought him to the Dutch East Indies, Australia, the
Congo, India, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Mauritius, and South Africa (Donovan, 2012).
Most of these places became the settings in Conrad’s literary works. For instance, a place called
the Berau, where Conrad travelled to by ship with its small Malay settlement of TandjongRedeb
(the novel’s Sambir), appears in the novel Almayer’s Folly (Sherry, 1972).
This novel is said to be influenced by Joseph Conrad’s experiences which include his
travels to Borneo and other places in the Malay Archipelago. This inspired him in writing his
first novelAlmayer’s Folly. Apart from that, since Conrad spent most of his times sailing to
numerous parts of the globe, the Malay Archipelago included, he is somewhat influenced by the
cultural and social context of the setting. Even the first word from his first novel portrays the
linguistic influence of the Malays: “Kaspar! Makan!” (Almayer’s Folly, 3).From here we can see
how good Conrad was in acquiring foreign languages. Even though English was his third
language after Polish and French, he was able to produce a novel which then become one of the
world’s classics that is Almayer’s Folly. Plus, there are even a number of words in AF that is in
Malay, another foreign language to Conrad.
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3. On the other hand, Almayer’s Follyis set in the late 19th century in an isolated island
which is a part of Borneo in the Malay Archipelago.This place, as mentioned above is an actual
place where Conrad has travelled to in 1887. In the novel, the protagonist, KasparAlmayer is an
English man who was born in Batavia. He then followed Captain Tom Lingard, whom he met
when he was working in Macassar in the quest for fortune. Because of his greediness for wealth
and power, he marries Mrs. Almayer as requested by Lingard and ends up living in
Sambir.KasparAlmayer always dreams of living a luxurious lifein Europe. As much as he heard
about the English world from his mother, ironically he has never been to Europe even once in his
life. As an English man, born in a foreign land and has never stepped foot into the English world,
KasparAlmayerfeels that he is living in exile and isolated by the people of his own kind.
During Conrad’s travel to the Malay states, he met the Asians for the first time. It
influenced him on writing novels which characters are the “colored people” (Watt, 2000). Novels
like Almayer’s Folly, Lord Jim, and An Outcast of The Islands contain characters of different
races like the Malays, Arabs, Chinese, and Indians. These characters are inspired from the real
people that he met during his travels to the Malay states. As the Malay Archipelago was known
as the port of traders, in AF, Conrad shows the influences of Arab, Chinese and Indian during the
late 19th century through some of the characters like Syed Abdullah, the Arab trader, Jim Eng,
Mr. Almayer’s neighbor, and Babalatchi, the assistant of Rajah Lakamba.
The Malays in the eyes of Conrad is not a race that is de-civilized. In fact, as he was also
being exiled ever since he was a child, he understands their situation and feels sympathetic
towards the outcasts and slaves in the isolated parts of Borneo (Donovan, 2012). This is
portrayed and reflected in Conrad’s representation of Malays in his novels. Being exiled as a
child and having to live under the control of the Russian colonizers in his own Polish land,
Conrad’s reaction to colonialism is a vague and blurred one.
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4. Donovan claims that although many critics say that Conrad is both against and for
imperialism, it is strongly possible that Conrad himself is in conflict with the very idea of
imperialism itself (Yeow, 2009). For instance, in Almayer’s Folly, though KasparAlmayer is an
English man and is very proud to admit that he is one, he has never been to the English world
and has been living in the Malay world his whole life. Therefore, somehow his identity is similar
like that of the Malays. Plus, he even marries a Malay girl and has a “half-caste” child, Nina.
“The white people” in the late 19th century was considered as the most superior. People who
were nonwhites were considered as “the colored people”and had no significance whatsoever
(Yeow, 2009). Even though Nina is considered to be as a nonwhite, Almayer loves her dearly
and tries to raise her up to the standards of the white people. That is why he sends her off to
study in Singapore to become one of them. This shows that Almayer is in conflict with the idea
that he is not even supposed to marry a Malay girl in the first place and what more having to
admit that he has a nonwhite child.
In conclusion, the social and cultural context of the novel is heavily influenced by
Conrad’s views of what he saw during his career as a seaman. Through his travels to the parts of
the Malay world, he observes the people of the region mainly from their cultural and social
aspects. There were certain situations in AF that are reenactments of Conrad’s real life events.
Therefore, the aspects do not differ that much inside and outside of the novel as the characters
from the novel itself are inspired from actual people whom Conrad met (Watt, 2000).
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5. REFERENCES
Conrad, J. (1992). Almayer's Folly. (J. Berthoud, Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.
Donovan, S. (2012). Introduction : Conrad Under the Sign of the Transnational. Studia
Neophilologica, 5.
Sherry, N. (1972). Conrad. Great Britain: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Watt, I. (2000). Essays on Conrad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yeow, S. A. (2009). Conrad's Eastern Vision : A Vain and Floating Appearance. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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