Joseph Conrad

The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" Joseph Conrad

The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': A Tale of the Forecastle (1897; also subtitled A Tale of the Sea and published in the US as The Children of the Sea) is a novella by Joseph Conrad. Because of its quality compared to earlier works, some have described it as marking the start of Conrad's major, or middle, period; others have placed it as the best work of his early, or first, period. The author's preface to the novel, regarded as a manifesto of literary impressionism, is considered one of Conrad's most significant pieces of non-fiction writing. This preface begins with the line: "A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. The title character, James Wait, is a dying West Indian black sailor on board the merchant ship Narcissus sailing from Bombay to London. Wait, suffering from tuberculosis, becomes seriously ill during the voyage, and his plight arouses the humanitarian sympathies of many of the crew. However, the ship's master Captain Alistoun and an old sailor named Singleton remain concerned primarily with their duties and appear indifferent to Wait's condition. Off the Cape of Good Hope the ship capsizes onto her beam-ends with half her hull submerged, and the crew clings onto the deck for an entire night and day, waiting in silence for the ship to turn over the rest of the way and sink.