Joseph Conrad

The Arrow of Gold Joseph Conrad

During the Carlist war of the early 1870s, a young sailor, the unnamed protagonist, joins the champions of Don Carlos de Bourbon, pretender to the throne of Spain. The Carlists use the eager youth's intense attraction to the sea to persuade him to run perilous enterprises for their cause, ventures he later learns have been financed by the beautiful mistress and heiress of a rich man's fortune. When he falls in love with her, he finds himself moved absolutely by this discovery, despite the fact that she is unable to return his love fully. In the end he is left alone with his first love, the sea, his brief time with the mysterious Dona Rita marking a tumultuous awakening to a life of passion, the desolation that hides in its shadow, and the possibility of rebirth in its wake. Although not as well known as his earlier novels Lord Jim and Nostromo, The Arrow of Gold was critically acclaimed when it first appeared in 1919 and is still considered to be among the best of Conrad's later works.