ABSTRACT
Conrad sensed that he himself is the perpetrator of the real outrage, that the true anarchist in this tale of faineant incendiaries is the author himself. Conrad perhaps spoke truer than he knew. Conrad refers to her tragic suspicion that 'life doesn't stand much looking into', but he presents the confirmation of this, not as tragedy, but as the blackest comedy. Conrad offers his 'whole treatment of the tale, its inspiring indignation and underlying pity and contempt' as proof of his 'detachment from the squalor and sordidness which lie simply in the outward circumstances of the setting'. Conrad must surely have realized that the most troubling aspect of his dark book was the jeering unconcern with which it handled the destruction of its chief characters. Conrad, as severe as Virgil, tells his story in a mockingly ironic way designed to exclude pity for its victims: scorn overwhelms compassion.
