Joseph Conrad

Amy Foster
Pre-reading tasks:
1. What do you know about life and creative activity of J. Conrad?
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer. He was born on December 3 in 1857. He is regarded as
one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently
until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent), he was a master prose stylist who brought a
distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical
setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe.
Joseph Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of
nineteenth-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors,
including T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner and Graham Greene. Many films have been adapted from, or
inspired by, Conrad's works. One of the most famous adaptations of his work is Apocalypse Now (1979), by
Francis Ford Coppola. It was adapted from Heart of Darkness.
Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national
experiences and on his personal experiences in the French and British merchant navies to create short
stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, while profoundly exploring human
psychology. Appreciated early on by literary critics, his fiction and nonfiction have since been seen as
almost prophetic, in the light of subsequent national and international disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries
He died on August 3, 1924.
2. What features were typical for his writing style? What were his favourite topics?
Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works contain elements of 19th-century realism.
His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous
authors.
Whether due to his multi-linguistic capacity and his late coming to the English language, or to the
international nature of his early life and experience, Conrad's most distinctive and striking feature is his
writing style. Any newcomer to Conrad will be immediately struck by his winding, indirect, tautological,
and sometimes frustratingly ambiguous narrative structure. Adjectives are placed stutteringly,
punctuation positioned awkwardly, and first readers will find his prose hard-going. But with Conrad,
perseverance is the key: after a short while it starts to become clear that the stuttering, awkward syntax is
not the work of someone struggling to get to grips with the English language, but in fact someone who is a
master of it.

Comprehension questions:
1. What does the narrator tell the readers about his friend, Dr. Kennedy? What features
are emphasized in the description of his appearance?
Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. He had begun life as
surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards had been the companion of a famous traveller, in the days when there
were continents with unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him known to scientific
societies. And now he had come to a country practice—from choice. The penetrating power of his mind,
acting like a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence is of a scientific order, of
an investigating habit, and of that unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a general
truth in every mystery.
Associated with laugh and voice
2. In what way does the doctor describe the title character, Amy Foster? What personal
quality does he stress? What positive features does the woman have according to him? What does the
reader learn about the circumstances of her early life?
“She is very passive. It’s enough to look at the red hands hanging at the end of those short arms, at
those slow, prominent brown eyes, to know the inertness of her mind—an inertness that one would think
made it everlastingly safe from all the surprises of imagination. She’s the daughter of one Isaac Foster,
who from a small farmer has sunk into a shepherd; the beginning of his misfortunes dating from his runaway
marriage with the cook of his widowed father—
 “She’s the eldest of a large family. At the age of fifteen they put her out to service at the New Barns
Farm. I attended Mrs. Smith, the tenant’s wife, and saw that girl there for the first time.
3. What does the field at sunset remind the narrator about? How does the narrator describe
farmers and their daily life?
With the sun hanging low on its western limit, the expanse of the grass-lands framed in the counter-
scarps of the rising ground took on a gorgeous and sombre aspect. A sense of penetrating sadness, like
that inspired by a grave strain of music, disengaged itself from the silence of the fields. The men we met
walked past slow, unsmiling, with downcast eyes, as if the melancholy of an over-burdened earth had
weighted their feet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their glances.
4. In what way was Yanko different from the people who surrounded him?
Active? Funny? Full of emoyions? Not afraid? Loving? With respect
5. How did he get to the village? What was the true place of his destination? Why did he
look astonished at the sea view? Describe his trip in detail.
Shipwrecked in the bay, A poor emigrant from Central Europe bound to America
At first by train
6. Where was the young man from? What reasons made him leave his native village?
Where did he get the money to do it? What did the doctor assume of Yanko’s character from his
stories about past?
He was a mountaineer of the eastern range of the Carpathians
Money, gold
Sold cow and horses
! He was different: innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a
man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense
ignorance from his future.
7. How did the people who met the young man for the first time react to him? Why did they
treat him in such a way?
Thought he was a maniac, children threw stones, people ran away
8. What did Amy Foster do to be taken for a 'gracious lady' by the young man?
Gave him bread without disgast
9. How was Mr. Swaffer’s attitude to Yanko different from the one of his neighbours (the
Smiths)? What have you learned about this man and his ways from the story?
When Mr. Swaffer started the mare, the deplorable being sitting humbly by his side, through weakness,
nearly fell out over the back of the high two-wheeled cart. Swaffer took him straight home. And it is then
that I come upon the scene.
10. Under what circumstances did the doctor meet the young man for the first time?
“I was called in by the simple process of the old man beckoning to me with his forefinger over the gate
of his house as I happened to be driving past. I got down, of course.
“‘I’ve got something here,’ he mumbled, leading the way to an outhouse at a little distance from his
other farm-buildings.
“It was there that I saw him first, in a long low room taken upon the space of that sort of coach-house.
(Swaffer)
11. What was the main problem of Yanko? What surprised him about the people of the
region and their style of life? What differences did the young man mark? Where did he find a bit of
consolation? Why didn’t he commit a suicide according to the doctor?
“If it hadn’t been for the steel cross at Miss Swaffer’s belt he would not, he confessed, have known
whether he was in a Christian country at all. There was nothing here the same as in his country! The
earth and the water were different; there were no images of the Redeemer by the roadside. The very
grass was different, and the trees. All the trees but the three old Norway pines on the bit of lawn before
Swaffer’s house, and these reminded him of his country Everything else was strange. Conceive you the
kind of an existence overshadowed, oppressed, by the everyday material appearances, as if by the visions of
a nightmare. At night, when he could not sleep, he kept on thinking of the girl who gave him the first piece
of bread he had eaten in this foreign land. I wonder whether the memory of her compassion prevented
him from cutting his throat.
 12. What event changed the Swaffers’ attitude to the young man? In what way did it change?
Rescued their granddaughter
Miss Swaffer, all in black and with an inscrutable face, would come and stand in the doorway of the
living-room to see him make a big sign of the cross before he fell to. I believe that from that day, too,
Swaffer began to pay him regular wages.
13. With time passing Yanko became adjusted to the new life. But there were still some
things that amazed him greatly. What were they?
He became aware of social differences, but remained for a long time surprised at the bare poverty of the
churches among so much wealth. He couldn’t understand either why they were kept shut up on week days.
There was nothing to steal in them. Was it to keep people from praying too often?
14. What Yanko’s peculiarities were seen as causes of scorn and offence to the inhabitants of
the village?
His rapid, skimming walk; his swarthy complexion; his hat cocked on the left ear; his habit, on warm
evenings, of wearing his coat over one shoulder, like a hussar’s dolman; his manner of leaping over the
stiles, not as a feat of agility, but in the ordinary course of progression
15. Why didn’t the man come back to his native land?
Had no money
16. ‘But sometimes, cocking his hat with a little conquering air, he would defy my wisdom’.
What wisdom is meant here? What did Yanko claim to defy it?
He had found his bit of true gold. That was Amy Foster’s heart;
17. What was the reaction of the people when the young man started his courtship with
Amy? What about her reaction to it?
. Every old woman in the village was up in arms. Smith, coming upon him near the farm, promised
to break his head for him if he found him about again. But he twisted his little black moustache with such a
bellicose air and rolled such big, black fierce eyes at Smith that this promise came to nothing. Smith,
however, told the girl that she must be mad to take up with a man who was surely wrong in his head.
18. What did Amy’s family think about Yanko’s proposal of marriage? Why did he go to
Mr. Swaffer to ask for his permission to marry? What was the Swaffers’ reaction to it?
Were against
I don’t know whether old Swaffer ever understood how much he was regarded in the light of a father
by his foreign retainer
19. How did Yanko react to the birth of the child? Why?
When the boy was born, he got elevated at the ‘Coach and Horses,’ essayed again a song and a dance,
and was again ejected. People expressed their commiseration for a woman married to that Jack-in-the-box.
He didn’t care. There was a man now (he told me boastfully) to whom he could sing and talk in the
language of his country, and show how to dance by-and-by.
20. Why did Yanko keep saying to the Doctor that ‘women are funny’?
His wife had snatched the child out of his arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a
song such as the mothers sing to babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it some harm.
Women are funny. And she had objected to him praying aloud in the evening.
21. What reason did Amy give the doctor for not taking her sick husband upstairs to their
bedroom?
‘Oh! ah! I couldn’t sit with him upstairs, Sir.’
“‘I can’t help it, sir,’ she said stolidly. And suddenly she clapped her hands and looked right and left.
‘And there’s the baby. I am so frightened. He wanted me just now to give him the baby. I can’t understand
what he says to it.’
22. Why did Amy run away from the house leaving her dying husband alone?
Was afraid of his voice and words
23. What did the doctor consider to be the main reason of Yanko’s death?
“Eventually I certified heart-failure as the immediate cause of death. His heart must have indeed
failed him, or else he might have stood this night of storm and exposure, too. I closed his eyes and drove
away.
24. In what way did different people react to this death?
 Amy did nothing
Father thought it was for better

Discussion Questions:
1. The narrator states that Dr. Kennedy’s intelligence is ‘of a scientific order, of an
investigating habit, and of that unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a
general truth in every mystery’. How do you understand this idea?
That he could find something pleasant in every creature
2. The Doctor claims that there is no love without imagination and the fact that Amy Foster
fell in love proves that she had one. What do you think about this statement?
She could imagine his story without understanding his words
3. Some of the researchers are sure that the main character of this story, Yanko Goorall,
was a Ukrainian. Do you agree with them? What facts from the story make you think so?
Traditions, description of dances? Religion? songs
4. What did the doctor compare Yanko Goorall to? Why did he use this comparison?
Recollect the scenes when this comparison is used. What do they have in common? When did the
doctor use it for the last time and why?
But he struggled instinctively like an animal under a net, and this blind struggle threw him out into a
field.
swinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage,
5. Joseph Conrad headlined the first version of this story ‘The Castaway’( отвержений).
Why could he change the title for ‘Amy Foster’?
To attract reader and play on contrast (expect romantic novel)
6. In ‘Reflections on Exile’, written in 1984, the founder of postcolonial theory, Edward
Said called ‘Amy Foster’ ‘perhaps the most uncompromising representation of exile ever written’. Do
you agree with this statement? Why or Why not?
No possibilities to come home
No people you love
No money
No traditions

Vocabulary and Translation tasks:

I. Explain the meaning of the following words and expressions in English:
Quaint; -extraordinary
a clump of trees; - a green area
dilapidated;- shabby
an immense edifice;-huge building
the penetrating power of his mind; - energetic thought
a corrosive fluid; - acrid liquid
precarious existence; - doubtful life
unimpeachable testimony; - perfect evidence
an inexplicable caprice; - strange whim
an indelible stamp; - unforgettable mark
the rickety trellis-work; - shaky grating
an inscrutable mystery; - incomprehensible secret
an aptitude;- ability to do something.
to snatch at the pony's bridle, - to control the horse
his passionate remonstrances;- impressive objections
II. Translate the following phrases into Ukrainian:
a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap; пагорб, не вищій за сміттєзвалище;

an inertness that one would think made it everlastingly вялість, яка, як можна подумати, убезпечує
safe from all the surprises of imagination; від усіх сюрпризів уяви;
 in the toils of his obscure and touching destiny;
nondescript and miry creature;
the dread of an inexplicable strangeness;
the weirdness of this silent encounter fairly staggered
him;
in the accents of overwhelming conviction;
his lithe and striding figure;
a sombre sort of wonder and indignation;
a hundred futile and inappreciable reasons;
that language that to our ears sounded so disturbing, so
passionate, and so bizarre;
the frigid splendour of the sea, immense in the haze
у трудах своєї незрозумілої і зворушливої
долі;
неповторне і веселе створіння;
страх перед незрозумілою дивиною;
дивність цієї мовчазної зустрічі досить
вразила його;
в розмовах, що переповнені
переконливістю;
його гнучка і крокуюча постать;
похмурий вид здивування і обурення;
сотня марних і незначних причин;
ця мова, яка для наших вух звучала так
тривожно, так пристрасно і так дивно;
холодна велич моря, неосяжна у серпанку

III. Translate these sentences into Ukrainian:

1. I had the time to see her dull face, red, not with a mantling blush, but as if her flat cheeks had
been vigorously slapped, and to take in the squat figure, the scanty, dusty brown hair drawn into a tight knot
at the back of the head.
1. Я мав час роздивитись її тьмяне обличчя, червоне, не з рум’янцем, але ніби її пласкі щоки були
енергійно побиті, і приземисту фігуру, рідке, запилене каштанове волосся, затягнуте в тугий вузол на
потилиці
2. There are other tragedies, less scandalous and of a subtler poignancy, arising from
irreconcilable differences and from that fear of the Incomprehensible that hangs over all our heads—over
all our heads.
2. Є й інші трагедії, менш скандальні та з більш тонкою гостротою, що випливають із
непримиренних відмінностей та страху перед Незрозумілим, що нависає над усіма нашими головами
- над усіма нашими головами.
3. Yes, it was in her to become haunted and possessed by a face, by a presence, fatally, as though
she had been a pagan worshipper of form under a joyous sky—and to be awakened at last from that
mysterious forgetfulness of self, from that enchantment, from that transport, by a fear resembling the
unaccountable terror of a brute.
3. Так, їй було властиво бути одержимою обличчям,, присутність, фатально, ніби вона була
язичницькою поклонницею під радісним небом - і нарешті прокинутися від цієї загадкової забуття
про себе , від цієї чарівності, від того переходу, через страх, схожий на незліченний жах жорстокості.
4. But here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being lithe,
supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as though
the heart within him had been buoyant.
4. Але тут, на цій самій дорозі, ви, можливо, побачили б серед цих важких людей істоту гнучку,
пружну і з довгими кінцівками, пряму, як сосна, з виглядом чогось, що тягнеться вгору так, ніби
серце в ньому було бадьорим.
5. At last, watching his chance, by a sudden charge he bundled him headlong into the wood-
lodge, and instantly shot the bolt.
 5. Нарешті, бачачи шанс, раптовим зарядом він з головою поклав його до лісового будиночка і
миттєво вистрілив
6. The rain, the wind, the darkness he knew; he understood the bleating of the sheep, and he
remembered the pain of his wretchedness and misery, his heartbroken astonishment that it was neither seen
nor understood, his dismay at finding all the men angry and all the women fierce.
6. Дощ, вітер, темрява, яку він знав; він розумів блекання овець, і він пам’ятав біль його
жалюгідності та нещастя, його розбите через здивування серце, що його не бачать і не розуміють,
його тривогу від того, що всі чоловіки розгнівані, а всі жінки люті.
7. And tilting his head knowingly, he tapped his breastbone to indicate that she had a good
heart: not hard, not fierce, open to compassion, charitable to the poor!
7. І свідомо нахиливши голову, він постукав грудьми, щоб показати, що вона має добре серце: не
тверде, не люте, відкрите для співчуття, благодійне для бідних!
8. But he twisted his little black moustache with such a bellicose air and rolled such big, black
fierce eyes at Smith that this promise came to nothing.
8. Але він закрутив свої маленькі чорні вуса з таким войовничим виглядом і закотив такі великі,
чорні люті очі на Сміта, що ця обіцянка зійшла нанівець
9. I wondered whether his difference, his strangeness, were not penetrating with repulsion that
dull nature they had begun by irresistibly attracting.
9. Мені було цікаво, чи не прониклись його відмінність, його дивність, в ту тупу природу, яку вони
зачали, непереборно притягаючись.
10. Ah! but you should have seen stirring behind the dull, blurred glance of these eyes the spectre
of the fear which had hunted her on that night three miles and a half to the door of Foster's cottage!
10. Ах! але ви повинні були бачити, як за тупим, розмитим поглядом цих очей ворушився привид
страху, який охопив її тієї ночі за три з половиною милі до дверей котеджу Фостер!