Victory Book

Victory by Joseph Conrad is a dark, psychological thriller.

Like all of Conrad’s work, his mastery of the English language is immediately evident and he uses descriptive language of which D.H. Lawrence would be envious, especially when describing the villains. Victory is also reminiscent of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and in turn may have influenced Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

Conrad created two of the most devilish, animalistic and brutish villains that ever plagued a story and are as bad as characters from Dickey or McCarthy. Additionally, Victory displays some of the most complex characterizations of Conrad’s bibliography. A careful student of Conrad’s work can see shades of Kurtz in Mr. Jones. As with many of Conrad’s writings, this deals with isolation, world-weariness, and distinctions between “civilized” and “native” societies and the ironies of atypical behaviors in each. Between the antagonists there is a recurring theme of tame versus untamed actions.

It seems that fans of Conrad generally fall into two camps, those who choose as their favorite Heart of Darkness and those who would select Lord Jim. I am definitively in the Heart of Darkness group, though I recognize the power of Lord Jim. F. Scott Fitzgerald said of Nostromo that if he could have written but one book, he would have wanted that book to be Nostromo. Victory, though it deals with many common themes of Conrad’s work, is a unique work in his canon and has a charm all its own and I could see where someone could say that it is his or her favorite.