Joseph Conrad is regarded by many as one of the greatest novelists in the English language and a master prose stylist. Some of his works have a strain of romanticism, but more importantly he is recognized as an important forerunner of modernist literature.
    
     'Amy Foster' is a short story by Joseph Conrad written in 1901 that makes us think about language and cultural barriers, alienation, compassion and love.
    
     Thanks a lot to Porlock for the suggestion and I hope you all enjoy it.
    
     Click here to read and download the printable version of the story.
    
     Cheers - Chris

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How is it that such a banal opening as 'Kennedy is a country doctor..' can lead to such a disturbing and such a moving story?
    
     I suggested this story of the 'supreme disaster of loneliness and despair' because it's difficult to understand how people can behave as they do (in fact in so alienating a way that two narrators are needed to real-ize its events). And yet, the primitive behaviour exhibited in the story isn't, to be truthful, entirely unrecognizable. At some level below the 'scientific' we may possibly empathize more readily with the various protagonists in the story than with either of its narrators. And perhaps no bad thing given the ambiguity of Kennedy's reference to 'Smith's lunatic', thereby also making us as readers complicit in naming the stranger in this way. And if we take the narrator's (narrators'?) perspective, the story doesn't seem to be so much about the principle protagonist and pity-inspiring victim as about Amy Foster, his beloved carer. Do we want the story to be told in this way? Or do we need to re-narrate the story for ourselves?

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Hello Porlock
    
     It's really a gift to have read this story, and I most enjoyed it because it seems to identify itself with the African and traditional way of story-telling. It gives you the description of the setting, and you can know very well the characters, but the flow of the story is tense and thick. It's rather difficulty in the begining, but after you get acquainted with the author's style you learn his art, his speed and scattered word placement and you learn how to interpret the way he describes the setting, characters (body and their spirit). I enjoy you found interesting such a story with two narrators, impressive! It worths a try to bring something new in story telling (It's my first time I have such experience). It doesn't warn the reader when and how it changes the narrator, and you can imagine it sounds like the characters themeselves narrate the story on their behalf (how many narrators do we have then? peharps none!).
    
     The girl fall in love with such a man considered madman, while the man was having to face a challenge of living away of his comunity, in a strange country he didn't choose to be. "Is it America?" He asks and even if it doen't say it, he feels he was lost, lost with his dreams, his parents waiting for the time when they'll be sharing the achievement of the dream they shared with their son when they sold their cow, to send their son into the most depressing situation. He was lucky at least two people in the strange land understood he was a man like any other man - The doctor and the "eccentric" Amy.
    
     Similar story happened in a country where parents paid money to send their children for "study" in the capital city and learned later they were tricked and sent them to the h..., but this outcast in this story is a different one, I ended up in a land where he had the change to love, have a child, dance to show his happeness, humble to get understood, and then die like any other man can die. You can feel he was not understood, but he tried to be himself by being different from all the people around. He had his culture, tradition, religion he didn't cast away..., His voice can still be heard after the story ends...
    
     Clap hands here is a good story...
    
     Tanguene

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Dear Tanguene,
    
     I found your response very moving - many thanks. In a sense, because of the narrative perspective, I think it's difficult to see the value that Yanko makes of his life, but you've succeeded in this. By 'narrative perspective', I mean that we are encouraged to see the stranger's English (to take one example) from our perspective as 'broken' rather than from his, which we never get to think about. This reminds me of Ngugi's famous comment that we never see Caliban from his own perspective, only from the perspective of his 'master'. Even Yanko's name isn't revealed till three-quarters of the way through the story, and yet we might argue that the right to a name is amongst the most important of human rights, which is why being given a name is one of the very first things that happens to us.
    
     I also was moved by the parallel you draw with today's situation, when families give up so much to send their children away for education (or football), only sometimes to be tricked. We live in a world where it's easy to feel postmodern displacement - I don't know about you, but I often feel a stranger in my own culture. But this story shows how someone can be displaced, full-stop. We have to grateful for the postmodern alternative as we pity those who are literally displaced through war, famine or, as in this story, a misunderstanding of opportunity.
    
     This story is moving for me because it's about such a fundamental injustice - a person of so many admirable qualities finds himself in a society where stupidity, ignorance and prejudice prevail, even, when we read carefully, amongst those like ourselves who are educated and well-intentioned. We use the expression 'broken heart' in such a trivial sense compared to the story of heart failure that Conrad tells. I think this story is truly educative because after reading it, it's impossible to look at an outsider without empathy.

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Written in 1901, but story is amazingly topical- people trafficking, rejection of migrants, "the supreme disaster of loneliness and despair."
     The narration- typically with Conrad- involves someone familiar with the story (Kennedy) telling it to someone new to the scene (the I figure). This seems to make it relatively easy for the reader to engage with the I figure, sharing his curiosity about the dull figure of Amy Foster, when Kennedy calls out to her.
    
     Yanko's sketchy account- pieced together by Kennedy- of his travels- may owe something to slave narratives of C185th and 19th. But these descriptions of deception, ingenuous acceptance of the vision of a better life abroad, of "places where true gold could be picked up on the ground", in the end are perhaps less impressive than the descritions of the English countryside. And the prejudice against Yanko, which affects even Amy....
    
     Fascinating story- tks, Porlock.

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Dear Porlock,
    
     I enjoy your response like the continuation of the story. It's for us (readers) to suspect, doubt, be afraid or compassionate with a situation in a story. We may not be right in our search of the truth in this mystery, but "there is a particle of truth in every mystery", one of the narrators warns us.
    
     One truth I suspect as such true particle in this story is that: Yanko was "a bird caught in a snare". I had the feeling that at least two people understood him, but as I reread the story I have the feeling that the flow of the story is tricky for any view to be a challenge to be proved right - his last words were: I had only asked for water-only for a little water...", "Why?", "Merceful" and Amy was "Gone" then he expired. this is very sad, "I bilieve he felt the hostility of his human surroundings." The adjective and names given to him are like "madman", "funny tramp", "insane"...tough you get some "good" and human words given to him by Kennedy, but we should learn to trust not on Kennedy's speach on behalf of a man who lost his speech - Yanko speaks very little in the story, we know him through other peoples' sight, while in his emotion he thought of all the "people being sad".
    
     It reminds me of The Arrow of Rains's story (Okey Ndibe), where a man telling the truth was being forced to tell lies before a trial, for in reaviling the truth he would only be tagged a MADMAN - It's like silence or death!
    
     About the parallel with today's situation we get the answer in the story - "... which of us is safe?"
    
     Tanguene

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Dear All
    
     I'm really glad Porlock has convinced me to take this story because even it being a bit longer than the others we have read so far, after the initial paragraphs the narrative really flows - as Tanguene said- and you really cannot put it down before the end.
    
     For me the whole story is a tale of the impossibility of human communication. It doesn't matter how hard we try to understand each other there will always be cultural barriers that are impassable. It is not just a matter of language but of sensitivity. At the end of the day, social and historical patterns and our intimate fears would prevail, as they did for Amy. This is a tragic picture of human relationships, indeed.
    
     The use of two narrators is very common in Conrad, he uses this technique in 'Heart of Darkness' and also in a couple of other short stories such as 'Youth: A narrative' and 'The Informer'.
     I would like to ask Porlock, why he thinks Conrad resorts to this sort of framing so frequently and what effect it causes on him.
    
     Looking forward to your replies.
     Cheers - Chris

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Hello,
     It's really an interesting story, told as an African one, long with a large array of vocabulary and lessons for everyday life.E.g In part 12. When he talked about Beggars "the children in this country were not taught to throw stones at those who asked gently for comassion" The education starts in the family, learning good manners about living in society. And old men are used as dictionary to pass their knowledge to the young generation (part 16). In Africa, old men are traited with respect because of huge knowledge that they carry.

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Hi Pasi and all
    
     First of all, I'm really glad to see you back here Pasi and all my love to your new-born daughter.
    
     The passages you mentioned also shocked me a bit, but I think this is one of the great things in this story. The way Conrad defamiliarise what would otherwise be common ground for us. He makes us look at the *native* population of England using some of the narrative tecniques that are used to depict the *African savages*, so frequently descibed in this way in colonialist literature. It's all a matter of perspective, indeed. I think this was absolutely brilliant.
    
     Cheers - Chris

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