The Shadow-Line
By Joseph Conrad and Mint Editions
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A new captain must lead his crew to safety and face his own internal struggles as he works to overcome disrespect, insanity, and coming-of-age all while sailing on an unforgiving sea.
There is an invisible line that divides life into a before and after—adolescence and adulthood. The unnamed narrator of The Shadow Line is painfully aware of this, but is unsure where the line lies in his life. He recalls a number of rash decisions he has made, some more recent than others. Soon after he impulsively quits his comfortable job as a shipmate, the narrator meets two men who each test him in different ways. Captain Giles, a wise, patient man, tries to be a positive influence on the narrator. Hamilton, a snobby man with a sour attitude, is able to invoke anger as if he were trying to win an Olympic medal for it. This ignites the narrator’s poor relationship with irritation, as he has the tendency to lash out with hostility at even mild annoyances. Consequently. The narrator gets into pointless feuds. When he is offered a new job as a captain, controlling a ship and crew, Giles attempts to guide him and nurture the admirable and necessary qualities of a leader, including encouraging the narrator to manage his anger. However, once the narrator boards his new ship, and meets his new crew, including the previous captain, the lessons he learned from Giles are immediately challenged. Now, facing disrespect, heightened responsibility, and the perils of the sea, all with his pride at stake, the narrator must navigate where he stands in relation to his own shadow line, and whether he will keep the habits of his youth, or grow into the man he needs to be.
The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad explores important and relatable themes of the internal conflicts everyone must confront as they age. Drawn from his own life experience, Conrad depicts the sea setting with vivid imagery and unmatched detail. With mysterious and complex characters, The Shadow Line depicts the universal struggles of the transition between life’s phases set to an intriguing and thrilling setting.
Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line is now available with a new, eye-catching cover design and is reprinted in a modern font, creating an approachable reading experience for a contemporary audience.
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With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.
Joseph Conrad
Polish-born Joseph Conrad is regarded as a highly influential author, and his works are seen as a precursor to modernist literature. His often tragic insight into the human condition in novels such as Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent is unrivalled by his contemporaries.
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Reviews for The Shadow-Line
240 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I picked up this book much too casually and without any forethought, and because of this, didn’t give to the book the time and energy that it deserved. This is one of Conrad’s later stories, and happens to have a lot of autobiographical elements, in that it focuses on a young man who gets a commission to lead a ship into the Orient. Conrad’s first command was to sail a ship called the Otago from Singapore into Bangkok. Despite the death of the previous captain and the less-than-auspicious circumstances, Conrad decides to lead the ship anyway. The ship only managed to cover 800 miles in three weeks, and every crew member except Conrad and the onboard cook were stricken with debilitating fever. “The Shadow-Line” supposedly refers to the anonymous protagonist’s transition from callow boyhood to maturity when he takes up command of the ship and all that entails. The main character certainly does take an exceeding amount of pride in his first role as captain. However, different readings inevitably produce different interpretations – and the story has been taken as everything from a metaphor for the outbreak of World War I to some sort of meditation on the supernatural. The store never really “goes anywhere.” It works well as a psychological study of a character, but I think this takes a longer story - something more on the order of “The Heart of Darkenss,” which at least *felt* longer and more developed. There, you came away knowing the kind of people that Marlow and Kurtz were. Here, that development was lacking, and what almost never happens while reading a book happened to me – I didn’t even feel compelled to finish the last several pages. Maybe I’ll pick this up again in several more years, and be more cautious of the kind of fiction Conrad is interested in writing.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is the story of a young man who takes over command of a sailing ship that is haunted by it's previous captain. This is my second book by Conrad. I had already read Heart of Darkness and I found that amazing classic to be just mediocre for me. I read this book hoping that maybe I just hadn't been in the right frame of mind, but I came away still feeling not emotionally moved or even entertained by this story. Not a bad book, but not that compelling or memorable for me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slow to start, with hero having lost track a bit and landing a command almost by accident. The story itself lacks grip in the early pages. But once he sees his ship and effectively falls in love with it, the writing gets tight focus: the ship, the weather, disease, madness, will-power, with a hint of the supernatural. In essence autobiographical, with much scholarly ink spilt on the details thereof, but what does it matter? Great style, great story.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A young sea captain gets his first command after he quits his comfortable position as first mate somewhere in South East Asia. This command tests him to the limit and takes him over the shadow line, that line that separates insouciant youth from responsible maturity. The days are filled with a curious mix of inactivity and tension, as their ship barely moves due to lack of wind and the crew get sick one after the other. To top it all off his first mate is sure the ship is haunted.
The book is written from the perspective of the young captain. His struggle with the loneliness of command, the separation of himself from those under his command, his doubts and feelings of guilt for things beyond his control are a nice read, though at times quite a rambling one. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Short but gripping. An insight into how the crew of a ship must pull together to survive, no matter what is thrown at them. As ever, Conrad's understanding of human nature is to the fore, and his language as elegant as ever.