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Title:

The Conflicting Political Ideologies in Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

Author:
Publication: Philologica Jassyensia, IX (2), p. 229-240
p-ISSN:1841-5377
e-ISSN:2247-8353
Publisher:Institutul de Filologie Română „A. Philippide”
Place:Iaşi
Year:
Abstract:The aim of the present research is to evince the nexus of conflicting political ideologies which guide the social and individual life of the fictional country of Costaguana. On the one hand, the study highlights how politics is made use of in order to satisfy the insatiable urge for power and wealth from the vantage point of imperial powers down to the local interests of the local government of a certain city, Sulaco, whereas, on the other hand, the focus falls also upon the inherent ideological pattern which animates both the political action and the political man. As we shall see in the preamble section, ideology explained, is the fundamental predicament of human life sociologically speaking; it endorses the fact that human agency, occurred or occurring, is activated by an innate spur of desire which calls for fulfillment at any cost. It is at this point where ideology takes the lead for it sets about the contingencies or available plots for fulfillment. The enactment of a certain plot to fulfilling the desire takes the shape of a policy in social life. Understood in this sense, the social individual is inherently political, an individual who goes by a certain behavioural blueprint or set of moral or legal values in order to enlist the viable life contingency which is a result of desires being satisfied. Aristotle was well aware of this quagmire when he called the social man zoon politikon (Bowles and Gintis, 173) for there is a common socio-politico-economic agreement which regulates and ensures safe and long lasting human interrelationships in what we call human settlements as villages, cities or countries.
Conrad’s novel portrays the mire broached in the lines above, that is, to make the reader conscious about his role in the socio-economic environment as an obedient citizen unconsciously fitting either the social status of the worker, the modern slave, or that of the master, the employer, the exploiter. The novel’s action rests upon the political conflicts enacted by the native nationalists of the Monterist faction who consider foreign investments and European expatriates the thieves of the country’s wealth: in the process, the citizens of the country are caught in the middle of the conflict, citizens who join sides according to the greater bidder. The political conflicts resemble just a link in the longer historical perspective of material interests which, in the novel, are fueled by Charles Gould’s silver mine in Sulaco, a provincial town of Costaguana.
Key words:conflict, ideology, politics, Conrad, society
Language: English
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