المناقشة على your-comments-on-almayers-folly
rama
Here after I finished reading the first half of Conrad's "Almayer's
Folly", I finally can declare that I like it so far.
From literary points of view:
Actually I feel that each part of this works deserves to be stopped at
and give some comments, but I'll just deal with the most obvious ones
here.
From the very beginning of the novel, we are introduced to the main
character "Kaspar Almayer" and his dream, that the story revolves
around, and the word "dream" appears several times trough the first
part of the story. The dream is to get rich so that he can take his
daughter, Nina, and travel back to Amsterdam, but formerly, it has
been only money & gold that he would find in the river, Pantai. Once
he looks at the river and finds "no tinge of gold on it this evening",
then he follows with his sight the tree trunk flowing in the current
of the river and then can get itself free from the current, here he
envies it, because unlike himself "that inanimate thing" could do what
he can't. He then gets back to his past & remembers his first arrival
at Macassar, his former life with his parents, his first encounter
with his father- in law to be, Tom Lingrad, about his wife's life as
young, he recalls the point that triggers his dreams of wealth & gold,
when the other seamen tell him of Lingard: "You know, he has
discovered a river" which they think contains a lot of gold. This
Lingard wants to marry his adopted daughter to a white man, so he has
seen in Almayer his wish, and he plans for this match. And so what
takes place, Almayer gets married to Linfarad's daughter and have a
beautiful daughter with her. Her father gets concerned about the
little girl to be "badly" influenced by her Malay mother, he sends her
to be raised by Mrs. Vinck there in Singapore for ten years. When Nina
gets back, we notice her lost, can't make up her mind about her
identity, shall she takes her father's or mother's? Once Almayer
gets informed of the coming of some English men, so he starts building
a house that is left half-finished, in order to receive those gentle
men, he names it with "Almayer's Folly". Some time later, a young man,
Dian Maroola, comes to the eventless town of Sambir and brings along
with him some new topics to the people there. But his significance
lies in Almyer's idea to use him in order to realize his dream of
finding gold down there in the river. But the other role for him is to
take over Nina's heart, and he gets some help from her mother, who
wants her daughter to get something she had failed to meet, getting a
native, Malay husband, all of this has taken place without Almaly's
knowledge. Dian's presence in Nina's life makes her: "recognized with
a thrill of delicious fear the mysterious consciousness of her
identity with that being" (64). Then this Dain needs some protection
from the Dutch soldiers, he goes to Lakamba to help him with that.
Then on the following morning, the people of the town find a floating
dead body in the river, they conclude that it is Dian's body depending
on the ring and anklet they have found with the body. Here, Almayer
gets really depressed that his dream has flown away once again by the
death of the one he wants to rely on. When he gets home and tells his
daughter, he finds her reaction so cold, that he shouts at her
indifference attitude, not knowing the burning anguish within her.
This part is closed by the announcement of the arrival of the Dutch
boats.
The narration that Conrad employs just take the readers into the
characters' minds, we really can know what's going on within each of
his character. His descriptions of the physical appearance of them are
so vivid & real. And I see that this novel is a kind of personifying
of the colonization of the Victorian age. We see that Almayer is the
Colonizing country with dream of prospering economy, his wife is the
colonized one, who wishes to get rid of the control of her husband.
Nina is the new generation who can't identify their real identity
among the two clashing cultures. It reminds a lot of Forster's "A
Passage to India"
About the Muslim & Arab characters:
Up till the point where I stopped at, I didn't notice any relating to
an Islamic issue, but only Muslim & Arab characters, up till now I
found 4 named characters; Abdullah, his nephew Reshid , Almayer's
faithful servant Sumatrese Ali, and Mahmat Banjer. For the former two,
they appear by mention only more than by their bodies, and Almayer
hates Abdullah because he is good at the trading matter in the town,
that he sees in him what he lacks in himself. Reshid, after he
preformed Hajj he wants to marry Nina, and includes her with his
Harem, but her father gives many excuses to decline this demand. About
Almayer's servant, there is no much mention of him. And about the last
one, he is the first one who discovers Dian's body, & he gets him out
due to the encouragement by Babalatchi with the claimed motif of
getting a gold bangle from Almayer, and he has two wives, but on P.105
he mentions three women, so I don't know, is it a mistake by the
writer or he means another woman with his two wives. So the
characterizations of those Muslim characters just fits in the bill of
their former idea of the Muslim, polygamists, materials, money smarts,
and that they are such opportunists. So, I didn't sense any direct
abuse towards us that is intended by the author, but this opinion is a
subject to change till I finish reading the novel.
This all that I found so far, hope I find more by the class.
Best wishes
Jehan Al-Maghamsi
Here are my notes after reading Almayer's Folly, though I have
to contradict Rama this week because so far I don't like it and
though the novel seems easy to understand, I feel that it has
so many complex ideas that need to be thought over again:
We find in Almayer's Folly a group of people with different races,
religions, ethics and ambitions. Almayer is living in the clouds of
his dreams aspiring to earn a fortune and live happily ever after
with his half-caste daughter away from his savage surroundings
in which he lived most of his life. His greed for money and power
and his failures in getting them makes him sink in the self pity
and elusion seeing only the misery of his life, never noticing the
agony in which his daughter has lived trying to find a place for her
in the world. She is the result of a convenient marriage between
her father and a native woman and thus she is a daughter of two
conflicting cultures exiled from both races. After so many years of
trying to adjust to the white people's life, she returns humiliated
and disgusted with that part of her heritage and starts adopting her
mother's native legacy and so she seeks the power that would make
her fit in the world by falling in love, against her father's wishes,
with a native man who would make her a queen over his people. Then
there other characters who are led by their ambitions to be involved
in Almayer's life: Lakamba and his Muslim slave searching for the
gold,
the Arab traders, the ones who destroyed Almayer's business, trying to
spread their own power in the area, and Dain who tries to smuggle
gunpowder and in the process wins Nina's heart. Their stories are
told through an omniscient narrator using flashbacks and monologues.
Though there some images of Islam in the novel so far, yet we can
see that, on contrast with Vathek, it is not the main issue which
Conrad is trying to criticize here. We have the same stereotypes of
the other works about Islam: harem, slaves, tyranny and greed.
Almayer sees the Arabs as his enemies because they were better
than him in trade. He considers Abdulla's offer for his daughter to
be a wife for his nephew as a derogatory insult looking at the dowery
he offers as a price to buy her. There are also Muslim slaves: Ali,
Almayer's faithful slave and Babalatchi's Lakamba's slave. Babalatchi
is portrayed as a cunning manipulating old man who cares only about
his survival and would anything for the sake of his own benefit.
Iman alshehri
The novel talks about Almayer is an European trader living in a trading post somewhere in Malaysia. From the beginnig, it was clear that this Almayer was acting from greed and ambition when he married a Malayn woman to get his hands on his father-in-law's treasure, and he believes that he will be able to ditch his "native wife" later on.
He dreams of escaping to Europe after making himself wealthy and bringing his daughter with him also. But as time drags on it becomes obvious that he is going nowhere with his life. He did not even get richer. Indeed, his daughter ends up deserting him by eloping with a native who takes her to his own village. Not being a pure European by blood, she realizes that she would never be accepted as an equal among Europeans or the whites that is why she chooses live with the natives.
The story exposes itself to a racist interpretation. We see in the beginning Lengad tried to convince the European man ,Almayer to marry his daghuter on .p.10 " Nobody will see the colour of your wife's skin……..There will be millions".
And we see Amayer himself said many racist words such as ( savage -half a savage ) to his wife and his daughter. But I think that Mrs. Almayer was a savage woman who hates civilization and that appeared when she burnt her furniture . But I think Mrs Almayer's unkindness comes from the nature of her upbringing and the way she's been treated by white people (including Lingard and Almayer), not from her race as Amayer sees her and all women in Malay. And for him that is the reason for sending his daughter to Singapore to be a civilized European woman unlike her mother.
The story has an oriental tone in mentioning that idea of polygamy. For example, Rashid has many Malyan women and Muhammad Benjir has two wives.
I see that some of the Musilm characters in the novel are presentd as people who are honor, loyal, and successful as traders. But that did not prevent Conrad from being racist.
However, the work talks about the idea of colonialism in Malya as in Forster's a Passgae to India. Here we have a conflict between two cultures ( eastern – western ). And Samber was picture as a territory was controlled by Duch and British.
That is all
Nuha B.
I hope you are all doing well. Regarding Almayer's Folly, I have to
admit that this novel was not as interesting to me as Vathek, I felt
as if it was slow paced and to put it bluntly, boring, at times,
although the last few chapters do become slightly more interesting.
And although many of the characters are Muslims and they are living in
a predominately Muslim country, I feel as if the allusions to Islam
are few and far in between.
Also, the racism in this novel is very blatant, with the constant use
of words such as “savage” “uncivilized” “white-man” “half caste and
mixed blood”, and the slightly derogatory tone one detects in the use
of words like “Arab” and “Malay”.
The women in the novel are also represented in a less than pleasant
manner, described as slaves and being abused or abusing the men in
their lives. Nina seems to be the sole exception, but that can be
attributed to the prevalent racism in the novel, as she is not purely
Malay, but has some “white” blood in her.
I’m hoping the novel proves to be more interesting as we progress in
our reading. And I have to say that while the novel might not be
interesting to me personally, it does allow us to enter the mind of
the western mentality regarding Arabs and Muslims and the way they
perceive us and the struggles between them and us.
Mona Al-khidaidy
Hello Evryone,
This novel has the common theme of Joseph Conrad's novels, which is a
young European man who goes for an adventure beyond the seas seeking
treasures. I do not feel that the novel is about Islam and Muslims as
much as it is about the clash between the West and the East in
general; it is about greed, racism and discrimination. Almayer arrived
to Massacar as a simple young man, and like any other European he
started to think how to discover the treasures on this oriental place.
He met an English Pirate who promised him an immense fortune if he
married his native adopted daughter; the father had sworn to make his
adopted native daughter to marry a white man. So, Almayer married her
not out of love but out of greed and her father's fortune which made
her despises white men.
From the beginning of the novel, we see Almayer is engaged in a stream
of his dreams like the stream of the river he was watching. He always
dreams of finding the gold treasure and fleeing to Amsterdam with his
half-cast daughter, Nina. He was not worried about his mixed blooded
daughter amongst the whites because of her great beauty and his wealth
by then. As a young girl, Nina was sent away to be educated as a white
European person, but she was annoyed because she did not feel that she
belonged to the white race; as a grown up woman, she despises the
whites and she falls in love with a native prince. Nina can be seen as
a weapon of her mother; Mrs. Almayer uses her daughter to get revenge
from the whites and especially from her father, Almayer. She helped
and encouraged her daughter to marry the native prince and the two
women fled with a good fortune and left the father fortuneless and
lonely. So we see the conflict here within the same family which is
mixed, Western father and Eastern mother, and the victim is the
daughter who does not feel she belong to any side and thus she follows
her heart and marry the man she loves.
See ya all 2morrow :)
Riham Alam
Hi,
I'd like to shed the light over some points on Almayer's Folly:
• Conrad's technique in writing: He used the process of flashbacks
and foreshadowing of events at the beginning which can confuse the
reader a little bit.
• Descriptive images: For example, describing the river when it was
calm or furious, describing landscapes and furniture. He gave his
objects liveliness as if they represented the people themselves.
• Dreams and obsessions: Almayer left his parents in Amsterdam and
travelled to Borneo to fulfill his dream and ambition of becoming a
rich and a decent man. Unfortunately, he commits his first folly or
mistake by marrying Lingard's Malay adopted daughter. He thought that
by this relationship he would gain her father's fortune. By this act
he became greedy and immoral. By setting his goals on greedy bases
thing started to get more complicated. Because he had a daughter, he
became more obsessed with the idea of being rich and returning back
with his daughter to Amsterdam. He sent his daughter to Singapore for
a better education until he improves his financial status. However,
years passed so quickly and his daughter came back suddenly. He was
ashamed of his status and his wife that they were still poor and that
he didn't accomplish anything yet. All these pressures of his failure
with his wife, his business and his daughter turned into a daily
torment that made him clutch harder to his obsessive thoughts of
being rich.
• Materialism: Most of the characters were materialistic. Almayer ,
seeking his father in law's treasure made him almost mad when he saw
the dead body of Dain. He didn't care about the man as much as he
cared about his material loss.
• Mrs. Almayer had a hungry appetite for richness. She allowed her
daughter to have a secret affair with Dain in return of materialistic
greed.
• Nina had no feeling toward her father and mother because all she
cared about was her future life with rich Dain.
• The Arabs were represented as rich and greedy. All that they cared
about was their luxurious life and how to increase their pleasure by
women and trades.
• Stereotypes and racism: In this novel, Conrad was highlighting the
European's views of racial stereotypes. Almayer as a white man saw
himself superior than the savages as he always called the natives.
• Expressions about the Arabs in the novel: " there was no mercy to be
expected from Arab or Rajah"p28," Arabs in long white shirts and
yellow sleeveless jakets walked ------towards Almayer's gate -------
only to get a glimpse of the young girl"p.32," Reshid is a violent
scoundrel, and there is no saying what he may do---He would not dare.
Arabs are all cowards"p.47," the Arabs; their lies are very great!
What are they? Chelakka!"p.53," the Arabs were on the river, bound on
a visit to the home- staying Lakamba. This caused him many sleepless
nights, spent in speculating upon the kind of villainy those estimable
personages were hatching now"
On 24 ديسمبر, 22:36, rama <to_endles...@hotmail.com> wrote:
