Nostromo

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

aaron asks:
"Sorry, Don and folks, I know not NOSTROMO...can somebody brief me?
 
aaron"


Conrad's NOSTROMO is set in the isolated South American town of Sulaco,
apparently on the Western coast of Colombia, during a time of economic
imperialism and civil war--nothing new in Colombia!  (See the wars of Col.
Aureliano Buendia for a cross-reference.)  It's too long and complex to detail
in full here, but the background is about the gradual awakening of this town
and its breaking away from the main country (probably inspired by Panama's
war of independence--which was abetted and made possible by Teddy Roosevelt,
all toward the aim of getting rights for that canal).

Among other things, an American-backed company secures rights for silver mining
near the town--and in order to keep the silver from government troops, some of
the characters--Martin Decoud, a journalist of French ancestry, and Nostromo,
the chief of the stevedores, himself an Italian garibaldista from Argentina and
Italy, strand the ship with its cargo on an island in the mouth of the bay that
forms both an entrance and a natural barrier for Sulaco.  The journalist winds
up committing suicide and Nostromo takes advantage of everyone's belief that the
silver was sunk to gradually make himself richer.  All of this leads, inevitably
to disaster for himself and others.

So far, this sound pretty different from 100 YEARS--and it is.  Conrad, the
modernist rationalist, is quite different from the postmodern magical realist,
Garcia Marquez.  But there are interesting parallels--
1) both novels play with time in complex--albeit different--ways.  Conrad moves
back and forth in time, anticipating events long before they happen and 
requiring double-takes when they do occur (something the novel has in common
with HEART OF DARKNESS), while Garcia Marquez encompasses the history of the
universe within the arbitrary limit of 100 years of the history of Macondo--
also using repetition of names and events to suggest a cyclical pattern that
eventually and entropically winds down to nothingness.

2) both settings are isolated towns in a country not unlike Colombia.  Macondo
is cut off from the outside by mountains and the sea; Sulaco is too.  Not only
 do the mountains form a physical barrier in the latter case, but the sea is
impassable until the arrival of steam engines--since the bay that fronts the
city has no winds to power sails.  But both isolations are permeable.  One
reason for my interest in the parallels is a statement one character makes to
the leading lady of the city--something like "Is it possible that you have
existed here, in your solitude, for a hundred years?"

3) both works detail exploitation of natural resources, backed by U.S. 
interests--bananas in Macondo, silver in Sulaco.  The railway plays a key
role for both.

Having said that, Conrad gives little attention to the native mestizos--they
get little better regard than the natives in HEART OF DARKNESS and the main
characters are all European or of European descent, a Europe in miniature--
British, French, Italian.  And the ending suggests that some slight progress
has come to Sulaco at last, where Macondo blows away in a storm that also
is the very text we are reading.

Anway, NOSTROMO is a complex work that like HEART OF DARKNESS is both racist
and anti-imperialist, both rationalist and anti-Enlightenment.  It's my
favorite Conrad work.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)