Youth and The End of the Tether Book

This volume contains two stories written four years apart, one about a man in his early youth, and the other about an older man nearing the end of life, both written by a man who was neither youthful nor old. Age then plays an important part in both stories.

The first story is 'Youth', and it introduces Marlow to the reader for the first time. An older Marlow is recounting his first position of command in a ship while he was still a young man. He is the second mate on the ill-fated Judea, a ship that meets with two misfortunes.

Firstly, in a manner similar to the Narcissus in Conrad's earlier novel, the ship faces a terrible storm. Worse follows. The cargo of the ship has been rendered combustible by the storm, and soon the crew are fighting to control a fire on the ship. They stay afloat long enough to reach Bankok where they abandon the ship, and the ebullient Marlow makes a determined effort to be in the first boat to arrive in 'the East' as he calls it.

Marlow is the character who appears in the most Conrad stories. He narrates four tales, and is the hero of two. The essential literary device here is to have Marlow the raconteur telling the story to other sailors and travellers, and this is presumably written down later by the anonymous narrator who is one of the audience listening to Marlow.

It is a slightly peculiar device, but not intended to indicate the unreliability of the narrator, since Marlow's accounts are fairly honest. I have mixed feelings about Conrad's use of Marlow, since Marlow often indulges in some of Conrad's most high-flown storytelling, and makes a mystery out of things that are not nearly as mysterious as he claims.

The use of Marlow is a little unconvincing in other ways. Conrad defends the length of some of Marlow's stories, suggesting that there have been tales passed down orally of greater length than this. That perhaps is true. However, I suspect that the listeners, presumably including a few uneducated sailors, would have struggled to keep patient with Marlow as he piles on the polysyllabic adjectives.

This however is a problem for the future and 'Youth' is one of Conrad's more accessible stories. It contains many of the familiar elements of Conrad - men battling in the face of adversity to overcome a difficulty. It is also suffused with a kind of optimism about the power of youth to overcome. Whilst the adventures that happen to Marlow are gruelling and threatening, they do not dim his power to overcome all obstacles. It ends on a note of glamour as Marlow sees 'the East' for the first time.

However, if 'Youth' is a positive tale, 'The End of the Tether', a much longer story (the length of a novella) is a less happy one. This follows the fortunes of Captain Whalley. Once a well-known and courageous mariner, he is now getting older and struggling to find work. Spurred on by his daughter's need to find money to set up a boarding house, he forms a deal with Massy, a rather worthless ship owner.

Massy despises Whalley, but needs him to run the ship. However, misfortune strikes, as Whalley begins to go blind. He is able to hide his blindness from most of the crew, but this leaves Whalley defenceless when Massy sabotages the compass, hoping to sink his own ship and claim the insurance money. Massy succeeds in his plans, and Whalley decides to go down with his ship, ensuring that Massy's actions are left undiscovered, and Whalley's daughter will get the money she needs.

In spite of its length, 'The End of the Tether' is not a well-known Conrad story, perhaps because it is a little too lengthy and drawn-out for its subject matter. Conrad also engages in some of the chronological soup that occasionally mars his work, jumping backwards and forwards in time without warning the reader. However, it is still a well-told tragedy.

Tragedy is indeed the word, and the story has almost Ancient Greek proportions at times. Whalley is described as being very well-built, thereby recalling a hero of Greek mythology, and indeed his blindness, his destruction on his last ever voyage, and his misplaced faith in God and man seem to add to this sense of epic.

This final point is itself a form of blindness. In Conrad's stories, it never does to have too much faith in Providence or humanity. Sure enough, Whalley's faith will not prevent him going blind or from being at the mercy of the treachery of his crew - the drunken engineer, the habitually disloyal Sterne and the despicable Massy - that will lead to his death.

In his way, Massy is also a creature of Providence. He acquired a fortune through the lottery, and squandered it on the ship that he now feels trapped with. We often watch him poring over lottery numbers in a futile attempt to find a pattern that will win him another fortune. Ultimately he acquires this money by taking his fortune into his own hands and disreputably sinking his own ship.

The story should not be seen as a misanthropic or wholly depressing tale however. Whalley, in spite of his ruse in hiding his blindness, is a sympathetic character, and he finds one loyal friend in Mr Van Wyk, one of the men with whom Massy does business. Indeed the story ends with Van Wyk deciding to leave his isolation and hiding from his fellow men, and to return to the world.

The stories may differ in tone, characterisation, length and ending, but they do have quite a few things in common. Firstly, they are both seafaring stories. Conrad never forgot his former profession, and in his books his imagination frequently took him back out to the sea.

Secondly, they are tales about specifically male problems. The leading characters are all men, and female characters are glimpsed only fleetingly. Both tales have supportive and plucky Captain's wives, who we are told are dead at the time when the narration begins.

'The End of the Tether' also has a daughter in the background, who is the inspiration for Whalley's actions. She is unhappily married, and forced to consider setting up a boarding house, a profession that fills Whalley with abhorrence. However, he is anxious to help the daughter whom he loves, even though his wish to see her again is never fulfilled. The success of his endeavours is shown at the end of the story when we see her open the letter hearing about his death, and knowing that the money she needs has been secured.

A third point of similarity in the stories is that they present problems that the characters in the story are obliged to work to overcome. In 'Youth', the characters achieve a large degree of success, albeit at the cost of the ship and cargo. They escape the storm and fire without losing any lives, although one poor member of the crew is driven mad (in typical Conrad fashion, this is a mulatto, not a sturdy European without miscegenated blood).

The success in 'The End of the Tether' is one of ashes. Whalley's blindness leads to the failure of his voyage, and once again a ship and its cargo perishes. However, this time the captain perishes with them, and the only comfort for us in this is that it does ensure that his daughter is provided for.

The final point that the stories have in common is that of age. This may seem at first glance to be a polarising factor between the stories, since one is about youth and one is about age. However, it is not. Both stories are a lament to a lost youth when life was easier, and a lament about the passage of time that has led to a less certain age.

Hence in 'Youth', Marlow is recalling and grieving for a lost time when he was better able to brush off the vagaries of his work, and the other listeners share in this feeling of sadness. We catch glimpses of the future fates of some of the people mentioned - death by shipwreck, or going broke and insane. The life of a seafarer is a hard one, with no guarantee of a time of comfort and rest at the end of it.

The happier certainty of youth is also over for Captain Whalley, who is struggling to find work. He watches without envy the strutting Master Attendant performing a shore job that he could have done well, and which would have solved all his problems. Meanwhile he is obliged to deal with a new generation of shipping managers, who have never heard of, and feel no respect for, the younger Whalley, who had an island named after him. His final fate is also brought about by declining health as he gets older.

'Youth' and 'The End of the Tether' may not be Conrad's best works, but they are interesting and enjoyable tales. Conrad would return to youth and age again (in The Shadow-Line and The Rover respectively), but these earlier tales are well worth a read too.