Typhoon

This fragment is taken from a celebrated short story by Conrad, remarkable for its
description of a terrible storm at sea, as well as for the portrait of a modest and brave ship
captain.
W. Allen said about Conrad in The English ovel!"
Conrad had known #rench from childhood and was widely read in its literature, but he
did not begin to learn English until he was twenty$three. That he should have learnt it to such
purpose as to become a master of our prose %&' is one of the most remarkable facts recorded in
literary history. (et the fact itself, together with his romantic e)tra$literary career as a sailor in
e)otic waters, may easily blind us to the essential nature of Conrad*s genius as a novelist. +e is
not great simply because he pulled off a remarkable fact, and though he is a novelist of the sea
and of e)otic places, he is much more. +is life at sea provided him with a store of e)periences
that he drew upon for the material of his fiction, but the true value of the sea and of the e)otic
places was that they offered him what might almost be called the laboratory conditions in which
he could make his investigations into the nature of man and the springs of action.!
The story Typhoon is seen through -uks*s eyes, but the author does not use the .st person
narrative. The two heroes of this scene go through a very dramatic, tense e)perience. Although
they have seen many storms at sea, this one seems to be fiercer than any other. Their lives are in
danger, the ship may be crushed any moment. /n such moments, people*s behavior is 0uite
significant. obody can pretend to be different from what they really are. Although two boats
had been blown away, captain 1acWhirr didn*t lose his courage. +e knew that the ship would
resist. And he was right because finally they succeed in this confrontation with the storm.