Conrad’s “The Lagoon” A Document of an Individual in Existential Dilemmas

Abstract

“The Lagoon” by Joseph Conrad, as some asserts, conglomerates some of the aspects of theoretical philosophy that invokes in us the wonder and questions and the readers’ long for an endeavouring to acquire a theological and spiritual perceptions. It also ranks as one of the finest specimen of short story. A note of eeriness and mystery mellowed by a sense of sadness runs through the entire story. It is a narrative story. Conrad invests the world of vegetation all along the lagoon with an atmosphere of pervasive silence and motionless. The description of the natural setting with word music and word picture has been happily blended finely attuned with the theme of the story. The elfin and gossamer like description of the lagoon as a weird aspect and ghastly reputation of “a shadowy country of inhuman strife, a battlefield of phantoms, a terrible and charming, august and ignoble, struggling ardently for the passion of our helpless hearts”, (The Lagoon, pp.63) is finely attuned to the perpetual queries of the entire human as well as individual existence.