Youth (Conrad story)

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name = Youth
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author = Joseph Conrad
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country = United Kingdom
language = English
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genre = Frame story
publisher = "Blackwood's Magazine"
release_date = 1902
media_type = Print (Serial)
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isbn =
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"Youth" is an autobiographical short story by Joseph Conrad. It was written in 1898 and included as the first story in the 1902 volume "Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories". This volume also includes "Heart of Darkness" and "The End of the Tether", which are concerned with maturity and old age, respectively. "Youth" depicts a young man's first journey to the East. It is narrated by Charles Marlow who is also the narrator of Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Chance.

Plot

Similar to Joseph Conrad's more well-known "Heart of Darkness", "Youth" begins with a narrator describing five men drinking claret around a mahogany table. They are all veterans of the merchant marines. The main character, Marlow, tells the story of his first voyage to the East as second mate on board the "Judea".

The story is set twenty-two years earlier, when Marlow was 20. With six years of experience, most recently as third mate aboard a crack clipper, Marlow receives a billet as second mate on the rig "Judea". The skipper is Captain John Beard, a man of about 60. This is Beard's first command.

The "Judea" is an old rig suffering from age and disuse in Shadewell basin. The 400-ton ship is commissioned to take 600 tons of coal from England to Bangkok. The trip should take approximately 150 days.

The ship leaves London loaded with sand ballast and heads north to the Tyne river to pick up the cargo of coal. The trip takes 16 days because of inclement weather, and the battered rig must use a tug boat to get into port.

The "Judea" waits a month on the Tyne to be loaded with coal. The night before she ships out she is hit by a steamer, the "Miranda" or the "Melissa". The damage takes another three weeks to repair. Three months after leaving London, the "Judea" ships off for Bangkok.

The "Judea" travels through the North Sea and the Channel. 300 miles west of the Lizards a winter storm hits. The storm "guts" the "Judea"; she is stripped of her stanchions, ventilators, bulwarks, cabin-door, and deck house. The oakum is stripped from her bottom seams and the men are forced to put "watch and watch" in order to keep the rig afloat. After weathering the storm they must fight their way against the wind back to Falmouth to be refitted.

Despite three attempts to leave, the "Judea" ultimately remains in Falmouth for more than six months until she is finally overhauled, recaulked, and refitted with a new copper hull. During the laborious overhaul, the cargo is wetted, knocked about, and reloaded multiple times.

The rats abandon the reshipped rig and a new crew is brought in from Liverpool (because no sailor will sail on a ship abandoned by rats).

The "Judea" ships out to Bangkok, averaging 3 miles per hour. Near the coast of Western Australia, the cargo spontaneously combusts. The crew attempts to smother the fire, but the hull cannot be made airtight. Then they attempt to flood the fire with water, but they cannot fill the hull. One hundred and ninety miles out from Java Head, the gases in the hull explode and blow up the deck.

The "Judea" hails a passing steamer, the "Sommerville", which agrees to tow the wounded rig to Anjer or Batavia. Captain Beard intends to scuttle the "Judea" there to put out the fire, and then resurface her and resume the voyage to Bangkok. However, the speed of the "Sommerville" fans the smoldering fire into flames. The crew of the "Judea" is forced to send the steamer on without them while they attempt to save the ship's gear for the underwriters.

The gear is loaded into three small boats, which head due north towards Java. Before the crew leaves the "Judea", they enjoy a last meal on deck. All three boats make it safely into a Java port, where they book passage on the steamer "Celestial", which is on her return trip to England.

Analysis

"Youth: A Narrative" is a story within a story about the exuberance of youth and the romantic illusions that the young have about life. The narrator of the frame story is unnamed; he describes a story told by Marlow. The reader is reminded of the context of the frame story by repeated insertions of the phrase 'Pass the bottle.' This rhetorical device distances the readers from the romantic tale, but it also creates some of the ambiance of the oral tradition. This tradition of oral tales in important to understanding and analyzing the story.

The subject of youth is understood through its juxtaposition with old age; beginnings and endings have a circular relationship in this tale. The first juxtaposition is created by the frame story; forty-two-year-old Marlow reflects back upon himself at twenty. The distance of twenty-two years gives the theme of youth more meaning.

Within old Marlow's narrative, the twenty-year-old Marlow is contrasted with the sixty-year-old skipper and the grandfatherly third mate. Marlow states: "I felt like a small boy between two grandfathers." Youth and age are also united within the person of Captain Beard. He is an old man with an old face, but his eyes were "amazingly like a boy's, with that candid expression some quite common men preserve to the end of their days by a rare internal gift...". The voyage is also a union of beginnings and endings. Despite his advanced age, this is Beard's first billet as Captain. Similarly, it is Marlow's first billet as second mate, and it is his first trip to the East. These firsts are juxtaposed with the dramatic, fiery end of the "Judea". This is not only her final voyage, her sinking symbolizes the end of an era in maritime history: the end of the masted rig and the beginning of the age of the steamer.

The relationship between youth and age is one of romance. This is most prominently demonstrated through young Marlow's relationship with the "Judea", he states: "I remember it took my fancy immensely. There was a touch of romance in it, something that made me love the old thing - something that appealed to my youth!" That 'something' is the impression or experience the storyteller strives to recreate for the audience - the dynamic of the young interacting with the old. This romance converts young Marlow's harrowing experiences on the "Judea" into adventures. He feels a thrill with each new danger: the flooding, the explosion, and even the final fire. In the death of the "Judea", Marlow experiences the "trial of life"; he experiences the ship's motto: "Do or Die."

"Youth" is also a 'coming of age' story and the burning of the ship could represent the loss of Marlow's youth. Although he leaves his youthful illusions behind, at the end of the tale, Marlow clearly misses the optimism and romance of youth. The story ends with the phrase "the romance of illusions" which time and age have seemed to destroy.

Joseph Conrad's "Youth" is a story within a story: the unnamed narrator relates a story told by Marlow, a character which Conrad used in several of his 'sea stories.' Marlow, the main character, tells his tale to four men, all of whom have the 'sea' in common. Marlow's tale is about his first trip to the Orient. The story is based on Conrad's biography and the ill-fated voyage of the "Palestine," but the tale is not, in every detail, autobiographical.

Marlow's tale, told more than 20 years after the fact, is about his berth as second mate on board the "Judea" when he was only 20 years old, hence the title and continued references to 'youth.' Although his youth made the journey seem more exotic and exciting, the voyage was dangerous and, ultimately, ended in failure. Indeed, the sea seems to be against Marlow and the crew of the "Judea".

Marlow and the crew experience a series of misfortunes throughout the voyage. However, "Youth" is a dark comedy. For example, at first the ship leaks and the men must continuously pump water out of the hold; but after the cargo catches fire, the men must pump water "into" the hold to try to extinguish the fire. The scene of the men sharing a "last supper" of cheese, bread, and stout while the ship is slowly sinking is darkly humorous. Even the image of the rats, which leave the newly refitted "Judea", comes back to haunt Marlow and Mahon when they realize that the rats' instincts were perhaps superior to man's "intelligence."

"Youth" is essentially a quest tale: Marlow, the youthful quester is ostensibly on a journey to deliver a cargo of coal to Bangkok. However his voyage is really a voyage of self-discovery: virtually every trial that Marlow undergoes brutally tests his nerve, strength, patience, and loyalty. Marlow is changed forever by his quest; he has become a man.

In addition to the quest or initiation archetype, there are other important symbolic elements to this story.

* Baptism: Although none of the men is actually submerged by the water, Marlow is reborn or baptized into manhood by what he has learned through this experience on the water.
* Communion: There are a few instances of communion in the text. The first is seen at the beginning with the characters who participate in the frame story. Although the reader is unaware of how these men came together it resembles communion because of the phrase, "pass the bottle," which Marlow repeats several times in the story. The most obvious act of communion occurs when the "Judea" is sinking - instead of rapidly abandoning the vessel, the crew were sitting around the deck eating bread and cheese and drinking stout. This scene is strongly suggestive of the “last supper”. Indeed, Thomas Foster implies that all acts of "breaking bread together" symbolically re-enact communion. [Foster, Thomas C. "How to Read Literature Like a Professor". New York: Harper Collins, Inc, 2003, p.8.]
* Water: Water, often used symbolically, plays an important role throughout the entire story.:# The men need the water to sail; :# The men pump water out of the ship to stay afloat in the beginning; and:# The men need to pump water into the ship to put out the fire.
* Three: The number "three" and its multiples recur several times in the text, from the three separate "voyages" to Bangkok (the ship must return to Tyne twice), to the 300 miles that the "Judea" manages to make on its second voyage, to the six months that the ship is laid up for repairs.

Allusions

*Judea: Judea is considered the rebirth of the Jewish life. The ship’s name is "Judea" and the ship is washed by the waters and eventually submerged as an act of washing or rebirth.

*The actual ship that Conrad sailed on was called the "Palestine". Like the "Judea" this ship was carrying coal. When it left it had a leak and the crew had to return to the land. The ship then left again, but while out to sea the coal dust from the cargo exploded and the ship sank. Both Judea and Palestine refer to similar regions in the Middle East.

*Do or die: From the poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” [http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1570] by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: 'Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do "and" die.'
*Rats: Rats leaving a ship is a common superstition among sailors and landlubbers alike; it was a clue that something was not right. The rats were able to sense that the cargo was smoldering.

*Abraham: Abraham is the founding father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Abraham is the forefather of the Israelites.

*Jermyn: a street in the City of Westminster in London. Gentlemen go there to buy fine shirts.

*Miranda: When the "Judea" was run into by a steamer, Mahon yells at the mysterious ship asking for its name. "They shouted at us some name—a woman's name, Miranda or Melissa—some such thing." The "Miranda" was a steam boat which ran into an iceberg while on an Arctic expedition in 1894. It sank after hitting some sunken rocks off the coast of Greenland.

*Mann: the capital and principal seaport of Minorca; it is most famous for its cheese.

Major themes

*Initiation - "The hero undergoes a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance and immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood. . . . The initiation most commonly consists of three distinct phases: (1) separation, (2) transformation, and (3) return. Like the quest, this is a variation of the death-and-rebirth archetype." [Guerin, Wilfred, et al. "A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, 5th edition. New York: Oxford UP, 2005, p.190.]

*Quest - Unknown to himself, Marlow is actually on a quest. "The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there." [Foster, Thomas. "How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: HarperCollins, 2003, p.3.]

*Youth and age - The predominant theme of youth is understood through its juxtaposition with age and death in "Youth: A Narrative." Beginnings and endings have a circular relationship within this story. This is Marlow's first journey to the East and the final voyage of the "Judea". In a larger historical context, this story illustrates the beginning and the end of an era in maritime history: the masted rig is being replaced by the coal-fueled steamer.

Historical facts

From rigs to steamers"Youth: A Narrative" depicts an era of maritime change which Joseph Conrad witnessed first hand in his career as a merchant marine. During the nineteenth-century, the masted rig was replaced by the coal-propelled steamship. As early as 1823, the East India Company was seeking a steamship route around the Cape of Good Hope. [Hoskins, Halford L. "First Sea Voyage to India." "Geographical Review" 16:1 (1926) pp.110-116.] According to an article in the "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society", published one year after "Youth", steamers shipped two-thirds of the United Kingdom's exports by the turn of the century. [Thomas, D. A. "The Growth and Direction of Our Foreign Trade in Coal during the Last Half Century." "The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society" 16:33 (1903) pp.439-533.] Although Marlow's story in "Youth" is set in the 1880s, it reflects a turn-of-the-century understanding of the historical shift to coal-propelled steamers. Thus, the "Judea" is accurately depicted as an outdated rig surrounded by steamers. Moreover, the coal the "Judea" is transporting to Bangkok is most likely intended to fuel the steamers. Thus, the old masted rig is literally replaced by the steamer. Its romantic, fiery end symbolizes the end of a maritime era for the rig.

Spontaneous combustionThe steam engine and steam-propelled ships made coal one of the United Kingdom's greatest exports by the end of the nineteenth-century when Conrad was writing. [Thomas p.446] The constant need to transport coal created situations like the one described so vividly in "Youth": spontaneous combustion. Spontaneous combustion is still a problem faced by ships transporting coal. [Blazek, Christopher. "The Influence of Moisture on the Spontaneous Combustion of Coal." Benetech Report. 1 March 2001.]

Although the exact causes of spontaneous combustion are still not fully understood, [Kaymakci, Erdogan and Vedat Didari. "Relations between Coal Properties and Spontaneous Combustion Parameters." "Turkish/English Journal of Environmental Science" (2002) pp.59-64.] Conrad's description of the physical events that preceded the spontaneous combustion of the cargo on the "Judea" accurately reflect twenty-first-century knowledge. Conrad summarizes the events, stating: "You see it was to be expected, for though the coal was of a safe kind, that cargo had been so handled, so broken up with handling, that it looked more like smithy coal than anything else. Then it had been wetted - more than once. It rained all the time we were taking it back from the hulk, and now with this long passage it got heated, and there was another case of spontaneous combustion." The handling caused breakage which sped up the oxidation of the coal. Although the presence of water can be used to reduce the risks of spontaneous combustion, when water evaporates from thoroughly soaked coal, it can make coal more porous and encourage oxidation. The evaporation of the water would also work to help release flammable gases trapped in the coal, such as sulfur. Although the rats which Marlow sees abandoning the ship may be read as a mere superstition or a literary symbol of impending doom, their exodus can be explained by the release of gases from the newly reshipped coal. In the re-coppered hull, the rats would have been quickly overwhelmed by these gases. The overhaul in Falmouth turned the "Judea" into a copper combustion chamber: gases were trapped but oxygen still leaked in. However, the heat and the long duration of the journey would have been the most significant factors in the spontaneous combustion (it is important to remember that although January is winter in the northern hemisphere, it is the middle of summer south of the equator, thus the "Judea" spent most of its journey around the African continent, in the heat).

Conrad's distinction between the smoldering coal and the open flames also reflect current knowledge. The "Judea" would have been able to travel with smoldering coal in the hull and possibly make it to Bangkok. However, once a smoldering fire breaks into open flame its temperature doubles and becomes lethal.

Publication history

1881 Conrad begins writing of "Youth" June 1898 Conrad ends writing of "Youth" Published in 1902November 13, 1902 - the volume "Youth - A Narrative, and Two Other Stories" is published in "Blackwood's Magazine" First American edition was published by McClure, Phillips in 1903 Second British edition was published by J.M. Dent in 1917 1921 William Heinemann brought out "Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories" as part of a limited British edition of the collected works 1923 published by Doubleday in America and Dent in Britain as part of the first general collected 'editions'

Three other forms still in existence
*An incomplete manuscript
*A section of typescript
*The Blackwood's Magazine

References

External links

* [http://conrad-centre.w.interia.pl/pages/chronology_en.html Joseph Conrad's Chronology]
* [http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=title%3Ayouth%20creator%3Aconrad%20-contributor%3Agutenberg%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts "Youth, a narrative; and two other stories"] , available at Internet Archive (original edition scanned books)
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9361 "Youth"] , available at Project Gutenberg (computer generated audio)
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/525 "Youth"] , available at Project Gutenberg (plain text)
* [http://www.termisti.refer.org/nauterm/dicten.chtm#en Maritime Terminology]
* [http://www.visit-thailand.info/images/maps/thailand-map.gifMap of Thailand]