Here the character enters into a relationship with the speaker or the implied author standing behind him and our response to Nostromo, our belief in his courage and bravery, in his devotion to duty is also determined by our response to Captain Mitchell who prided himself on his profound knowledge of men and things in the country and was "really very communicative under his air of pompous reserve". Then the vantage point shifts in the manner of a camera angle and the reader sees Nostromo, through the eyes of Martin Decoud, as he writes his long detailed letter to his sister : " I realise something impassive and careless in the tone , characteristic of the Genoese sailor, who like me has come casually here to be drawn into the events for which his scepticism as well as mine seems to entertain a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he seems to care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls but also a profitable one for an exceptionally inte- -lligent scoundrel...'I suppose Don Martin ,he began , in a thoughtful speculative tone, 'that the senior administrator of San Tome will reward me some day , if I save his silver? ...This, soeur cherie, is my companion in the great escape for the sake of the great cause. He is more naive than shrewd, more masterful than crafty, more generous with his personality than the people who make use of him are with their money...(p. ). So here we have a view-point about Nostromo not totally without scepticism which prepares us for the final moral corruption of Giani Battista, 'the incorruptible'. It not only shapes our view of the Capataz but also tempers our view of Don Martin who calls Montero a gran bestia every second day in the 'Porvenir' and is in search of "effective truth"for which there is no room in politics or journalism". Thus , Conrad , the story teller, never quite admits to creating a fiction , in the manner of his pre-Victorian predecessors , " inviting the reader as they often did to sit down with them, as it were, by the fire, joining them in a game of let's pretend".9. Nor does he claim omniscience- that god-like knowledge that allowed the likes of a Fielding or a Thackeray, to know everything about everyone, to take us anywhere at all at any time, they wished, to pop in and out of the minds' of the character .
Part of the Dream Weave Walk 1999-2010