The Lagoon

"The Lagoon" is a short story by Joseph Conrad composed in 1896 and first published in Cornhill Magazine in 1897. The story is about a white man, referred to as "Tuan" (the equivalent of "Lord" or "Sir"), who is travelling through an Indonesian rainforest and is forced to stop for the night with a distant Malay friend named Arsat. Upon arriving, he finds Arsat distraught, for his lover is dying. Arsat tells the distant and rather silent white man a story of his past.

Plot

Tuan hops aboard a boat to visit a long-lost friend named Arsat. When he meets Arsat, he finds out his wife, Diamelen, is dying. Arsat then tells him a story, starting with the time when he and his brother (the brother was never given a name) kidnapped Diamelen (Arsat's wife, who was previously a servant of the Rajah's wife). They all fled in a boat at night and traveled until they were exhausted. They stopped on a bit of land jutting out into the water to rest. Soon however, they spotted a large boat of the Rajah's men coming to find them. Arsat's brother told Diamelen and Arsat to flee to the other side, where there was a fisherman's hut. He instructed them to take the fisherman's boat and then stayed back, telling them to wait for him while he dealt with the pursuers. Arsat then starts pushing the boat from shore, leaving his brother behind. He then sees his brother running down the path, being chased by the pursuers. Arsat's brother tripped and the enemy was upon him. His brother got up, then called out to him three times, but Arsat never looked back. The pursuers killed his brother and Arsat had betrayed his brother for the woman he loved, who was now dying. Towards the end of the story, symbolically, the sun rises and Diamelen dies. With Diamelen's death, Arsat has nothing because he lost his brother and wife. He now had nothing. After DIamelen's death, he tells Tuan he plans to return to his home village to avenge his brother's death. The story concludes with "Tuan"'s simply leaving, and Arsat's staring dejectedly into the sun and "a world of illusion".

Analysis

The story is full of symbols and contrasts - such as the use of dark/light, black/white, sunrise/sunset, water/fire, and possibly the most important one, movement/stillness. Arsat's clearing is still, nothing moves, yet everything outside the clearing moves. Earlier in the story, his brother tells Arsat that he is only half of a man for Diamelen has his heart and he is not whole. With Diamelen's death, Arsat becomes a whole man again. At the end of the story, motion finally enters Arsat's clearing. The movement signifies his leaving of "a world of illusion" and the fact that Arsat is finally a "free man". In the story, darkness represents ignorance and denial, whereas light represents enlightenment.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Lagoon

• "The Lagoon" as originally published in Cornhill Magazine
• "The Lagoon" by Conrad