Reviews for Almayer's Folly

The average rating for Almayer's Folly based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-24 00:00:00 Jefferson Cox [By the way, as an old classic, this novel is available free on-line from various sites such as gutenberg.org] This was Conrad's first novel. It's a tale of personal tragedy and colonialism. The setting is on the southern part of the island of Borneo, present-day Indonesia,. formerly the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch are nominally in control in that Dutch warships appear now and then to show the flag but the area is so isolated and relatively unimportant that Almayer is the only Dutch settler in the region, indeed the only white person. It's a frontier and there's no real government. Arabs, Chinese and Malays compete for trade and economic control. The time is the late 1800's but slavery is still practiced despite its formal abolition by the Dutch. Almayer has blown the little fortune he had building two European-style houses in the wilderness. He still schemes with other fortune-hunters to pursue gold up the river where the head-hunters live, but his only real ambition is to get out. He hates his shrewish-Malay wife but he loves his beautiful daughter by her, whom everyone refers to a "half-caste." She so beautiful that she is a local legend and Dutch sailors hear of her before they even arrive on his river. Almayer has many follies. Locals use the title to refer to his newest house, but it could apply to both of his European-style houses in that tropical wilderness. His hope that British rule will replace Dutch rule is folly. (He hopes for this even though he is Dutch.) His dreams of searching for gold are folly. Marrying the wife he did was folly. But so is believing that he will get enough money to take his daughter to Europe and leave this god-forsaken place behind - and that his daughter shares his desire to leave. (Almayer himself has never been to Europe, he just dreams of it.) Almayer's own Malay wife literally screams constantly at him and the servants. This is the main reason why they live in separate houses. Some of the locals say she's a witch; all agree she's a witch spelled with a 'b.' The young woman loves her father but she has no interest in his dream of going to Europe. The plot has a bit of a soap-opera air about it as various wealthy local men eye his daughter and conspire (and try to bribe) her mother for her hand. Almayer begins a descent into alcohol and opium. There's plenty of racism and misogyny to go around in the novel (published in 1895) where there are multiple groups jockeying for control and resources: the indigenous Malays, Arabs, Chinese and the Dutch. Each group has nasty stereotypical opinions of the others. Some examples are seen in talk of two young Malay girls who are "no better than dressed-up monkeys." Or a Dutch sailor who speaks of Almayer's daughter: "You can't make her white but she's a good girl for all that." Of a Malay slave girl we are told she is a "half-formed savage" and when she is hurt she suffers the "dumb agony of a wounded animal." But what's interesting is how Conrad takes shots at the whites (Dutch), so one might say he's an equal opportunity racist. His wife hates her husband as his fortune declines and as he spends his time dreaming of senseless adventures. She hates the European style house and furnishings: she burns the imported furniture for cooking fuel and she tears down the European drapes to make clothing for her servants. The daughter turns against white culture and says at one point to the Dutch sailors "I hate the sight of your white faces." One of the Arabs says of the daughter "She is like a white woman who knows no shame." And one the Malay leaders says, "I am like a white man talking too much of what is not men's talk when they speak to one another." It's been said of Conrad's most famous book, Heart of Darkness, that the book is ambiguous in its outlook on colonialism since it seems to attack Belgian colonialism while praising that of the British. The same could be said of Almayer's Folly: Almayer seems to be anticipating a coming golden age of British occupation when the Dutch will be overthrown and he builds his new house largely in anticipation of the good times to come when the British arrive. This book (and others by Conrad) is a fascinating read in trying to figure out what his message is. Is he decrying racism by accurately portraying how it was blatantly talked of and practiced in his times? Or, is it as Chinua Achebe (author of Things Fall Apart) famously said: Conrad is simply a racist? A sample of the writing: "She drew back her head and fastened her eyes on his in one of those long looks that are a woman's most terrible weapon; a look that is more stirring than the closest touch, and more dangerous than the thrust of a dagger, because it also whips the soul out of the body, but leaves the body alive and helpless, to be swayed here and there by the capricious tempests of passion and desire; a look that enwraps the whole body, and that penetrated into the innermost recesses of the being, bringing terrible defeat in the delirious uplifting of accomplished conquest….Men …wish to live under that look forever. It is the look of woman's surrender." Here's a good article about some of these issues in the context of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Top photo of an Indonesian man being tried by a Dutch court from alamy.com Map showing Borneo from npr.org The author from brainpickings.org

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-19 00:00:00 thomas walker First published in 1895, Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel, written within a year after he stepped onto the dock after his long career at sea. Set in colonial Borneo, Almayer's Folly deals with many of the themes that he would return to again and again over his successful and influential career as a writer: a dependency on the seas and the river trade, colonialism, race - particularly as between the natives and the European colonists, distinctions between Eastern and Western cultures, and a fundamental, soul searching journey to determine and explore the dissimilarities between good and evil. I tend to compare every Conrad novel to his 1899 masterpiece Heart of Darkness, but this novel bears the closest resemblance to his later work Victory, with its plot twists and intrigue. The most striking element of this book is the antagonistic relationship between Almayer, a European colonist blindly and pathetically paralyzed by his greed for gold and a psychologically misplaced racial identity and his Malayan wife who despises him. Repeatedly styled as a "witch" Mrs. Almayer and her husband vie for the love and affection of their daughter, Nina, who may be a personified Conradian metaphor for the duality of colonial tension.