Epilogue

Abstract

To claim that Conrad shares existential ways of seeing to a remarkable extent is not, of course, to say that he comports with them in every last detail. But whatever incidental shades of difference there may be, they by no means subvert the overall view of Conrad as an existentialist. Nor does an existential reading ultimately make Conrad’s sense of things appear more optimistic than the novels cumulatively imply. Although Conrad severely mutes the achievement of authenticity through action, commitment and love by frequently depicting it as very short-lived, his presentation of authenticity as brief is not at variance with existential views, which never posit authenticity as an enduring state. We recall Sartre insisting that an individual constantly needs to formulate a fresh project for attaining a fuller sense of self as soon as each current project stops imparting authenticity; the ‘new project’ then ‘rises’ on the ‘ruins’ of the ‘prior project’ that has decayed into inauthenticity (Nothingness, 476). Man, Kierkegaard reminds us in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript (84), is ever ‘in process of becoming’ amid a world of flux, whose ‘wholly brute’ assaults undermine man’s valiant efforts so remorselessly that Sartre considers man ultimately to be ‘a useless passion’ (Nothingness, 506, 615).