Title: The Lagoon

Author: Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad is one of the most important novelists in English literature, he was
born in 1857 to Polish parents in Berdichev, Ukraine, a country in eastern Europe
that was annexed as part of Poland in 1569 but incorporated into the Russian
Empire in the 19th Century.

Characters:

The White Man: He's not identified by name, though later in the story he is
referred to as ''Tuan,'' but his description is enough for us to figure out that he's a
foreigner in a far-off land. The white man is a sailor, a traveler who has previously
passed through the Malay area. It is apparent that the white man is in charge of the
boat he's on, as he issues orders to the steersman and crew aboard.

Arsat: Arsat is a Malay who lives in a home on a lagoon, off a shallow creek and
hidden by a dense forest. He is disliked by the crew aboard Tuan's ship, but they do
as they're told and deliver the man to his friend's house. Arsat is described as ''a
man young, powerful, with a broad chest and muscular arms.

Diamelen: Arsat's mate, who is dying.

Arsat's Brother: Young man who appears in a flashback story told by Arsat. Arsat
says he died while helping Arsat and Diamelen escape from the rajah's men.

The Juragan: Steersman of the white man's boat. Oarsmen of the White Man's
Boat

Rajah: A ruler in the land of the Malays. He is mentioned in the flashback story.

Inchi Midah: Rajah's wife. Diamelen was her servant until the latter eloped with
Arsat. She is mentioned in the flashback story.

Rajah Warriors: They are mentioned in the flashback story. They chased Arsat, his
brother, and Diamelen and killed Arsat's brother.
Setting:

Time Period

The story of The Lagoon occurs sometime in the latter half of the 19th century. It
was during a period of unrest and war that the two main characters, the white man
called ''Tuan'' and Arsat first became acquainted.

Malay Archipelago

From the earliest points of the story, we get an understanding of the tropical nature
of The Lagoon. The white man is leaning over the railing of a boat. The location is
the Malay archipelago, a series of islands in Southeastern Asia. By nature, islands
offer a type of isolated environment, away from the mainlands and surrounded by
water.

Over the River and Through the Forest

The story focuses a lot on the path the both travels to arrive at Arsat’s home. The
forest is described as “somber and dull” the trees and plants rendered immobile.
Even the river is churning with a “confused murmur”. The boat’s path is headed
toward light and darkness, according to the author, with “darkness oozing out” from
between the trees. It is both mysterious and invincible. At last, the creek opens up
into Arsat’s home in the lagoon.

The Lagoon

By nature, a lagoon is a quiet body of water separated from the sea by a barrier.
The lagoon in the story is called “stagnant”, surrounded by drooping trees that have
an air or “sad tenderness” about them. The author tells us the area of the lagoon is
one “from which the very memory of motion had for ever departed.”

Plot:

On both sides of the river in the land of the Malays in Southeast Asia, not a leaf
rustles in the windless forests as oarsmen paddle a sampan eastward, away from
the setting sun, toward the sea.
“We will pass the night in Arsat's clearing," the white man tells the Malay
steersman.

The steersman plunges his paddle into the water and turns the boat into a narrow
creek running into the thick forest. When the creek widens and the water becomes
shallower, the crewmen pole their way to a wide lagoon. In the distance is a house
resting on piles.

The Malay crewmen would rather break their trip elsewhere, for they believe spirits
haunt the darkness around the lagoon. These spirits do not bother the white man,
the Malays believe, because he and others of his kind are “in league with the Father
of Evil, who leads them unharmed through the invisible dangers of this world."

The boat pulls up at the piles next to Arsat's canoe and a bamboo platform, and the
crewmen shout his name. After the white man climbs a rope ladder to the platform,
the juragan (steersman) tells him that he and the other crewmen will eat and sleep
in the boat. They pass a blanket and a basket up to the white man.

Arsat, a young man with a broad chest, comes out and asks, “Have you medicine,
Tuan?"

The visitor says no, then goes inside to see what prompted the question. On a
couch, a woman is lying unconscious under a red sheet. She is burning with a fever,
and her eyes are staring blankly upward. The Malay reports that her illness began
when she heard voices calling her from the lagoon. Now, after spending five
sleepless nights watching over her, the Malay says she is unresponsive.

“Tuan, will she die?"

“I fear so," says the white man.

For years, Arsat had been a faithful friend of the white man, even fighting by his
side when the need arose. The white man likes him—“not so much perhaps as a
man likes his favorite dog," the narrator says, but well enough to come to Arsat's
aid.

The white man goes back outside. Darkness is overcoming the last of the light, and
in a short while the lagoon reflects the stars. He opens the basket and eats supper,
then gathers twigs and builds a fire on the platform to create smoke to repel
mosquitoes. While the white man sits smoking, Arsat comes out and reports that his
woman continues to burn with a fever and asks again whether she will die.

“If such is her fate," the white man says.

Arsat goes back in and tries to rouse her. She does not respond. He comes back out,
sits by the fire, and speaks of the old days when he and the white man fought
together. After the fighting was over, he recalls, the white man went his way, and
Arsat and his people lived in peace under the rulership of a rajah. In time, Arsat
says, he fell in love with a young woman named Diamelen, the servant of the
rajah's wife, Inchi Midah. Diamelen returned his love. One day, he eloped with her
with the help of his brother. Taking with them some rice, they fled to the nearby
river and paddled their way to the sea. His brother had the gun that the white man
had once given him. Chased by the rajah's men, Arsat and his brother paddled
furiously along the coast through the night and into the morning. Weary beyond
measure, they stopped on the sandy beach of a bay to rest and eat rice. While
Diamelen kept watch, the brothers lay down to rest. But just as they had done so,
she cried out. The rajah's men were approaching in a prau. Arsat's brother, who
knew well the area along the coast, urged Arsat to run into the forest with
Diamelen. "I shall keep them back," Arsat's brother said, "for they have no firearms,
and landing in the face of a man with a gun is certain death for some. Run with her.
On the other side of that wood there is a fisherman's house—and a canoe. When I
have fired all the shots I will follow. I am a great runner, and before they can come
up we shall be gone."

With Diamelen, Arsat did as his brother suggested. At length, while hearing the ring
of his brother's gunshots behind, they came to the fisherman's house at the mouth
of a wide river. A man came out of the house. The Malay overpowered him, and he
and Diamelen paddled away in the canoe. When Arsat heard shouting, he turned
around and saw many men chasing his brother.

Literary Devices: Imagery and Symbolism

Conrad, a highly talented stylist, developed the foreboding atmosphere of "The

Lagoon" with imagery that emphasizes the somber stillness and motionlessness of
the forests and waters, foreshadowing the stagnancy of the lagoon and the
spiritless life of Arsat in his lonely wilderness retreat with Diamelen.

At the end of the straight avenue of forests cut by the intense glitter of the river,
the sun appeared unclouded and dazzling, poised low over the water that shone
smoothly like a band of metal. The forests, somber and dull, stood motionless and
silent on each side of the broad stream. At the foot of big, towering trees, trunkless
nipa palms rose from the mud of the bank, in bunches of leaves enormous and
heavy, that hung unstirring over the brown swirl of eddies. In the stillness of the air
every tree, every leaf, every bough, every tendril of creeper and every petal of
minute blossom seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility perfect and
final.

As Conrad draws the reader deeper into the story, he mixes into the stillness the
darkness of the forest, which symbolizes the darkness in Arsat's heart.

Immense trees soared up, invisible behind the festooned draperies of creepers.
Here and there, near the glistening blackness of the water, a twisted root of some
tall tree showed amongst the tracery of small ferns, black and dull, writhing and
motionless, like an arrested snake. The short words of the paddlers reverberated
loudly between the thick and somber walls of vegetation. Darkness oozed out from
between the trees, through the tangled maze of the creepers, from behind the great
fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness, mysterious and invincible; the
darkness scented and poisonous of impenetrable forests.

Several passages contrast darkness with light, which symbolizes the world that
Arsat left behind for his forest retreat: "In a few moments all the stars came out
above the intense blackness of the earth, and the great lagoon gleaming suddenly
with reflected lights resembled an oval patch of night-sky flung down into the
hopeless and abysmal night of the wilderness." When Diamelen dies, morning light
begins to drive out the darkness of the forest, signifying a change in Arsat. An eagle
soars heavenward, symbolizing the rising soul of Diamelen. Here is the passage:

After a chill gust of wind there were a few seconds of perfect calm and absolute
silence. Then from behind the black and wavy line of the forests a column of golden
light shot up into the heavens and spread over the semicircle of the eastern
horizon. The sun had risen. The mist lifted, broke into drifting patches, vanished into
thin flying wreaths; and the unveiled lagoon lay, polished and black, in the heavy
shadows at the foot of the wall of trees. A white eagle rose over it with a slanting
and ponderous flight, reached the clear sunshine and appeared dazzlingly brilliant
for a moment, then soaring higher, became a dark and motionless speck before it
vanished into the blue as if it had left the earth forever.