From Voice to Vocation in The Rescue

From the first lines of the first novel, the human voice asserts itself in the fiction of Joseph Conrad. Critics have long noted and assessed the distinctive authorial voice in Conrad’s work. But as a component of the fiction itself voice operates on several planes. First, Conrad scrupulously notes the tone in which speeches are delivered; the voices of characters often precede them. Indeed, they can supplant them: in the tenebrous scenes Conrad favors, detached from their speakers, voices seem to carry on a dialogue of their own. Thus disembodied, they become part of the novel’s setting, contributing to a framework of immensities and uncertainties and abstractions. This opaque, impassive backdrop of the maritime fiction shares certain features of Paul’s worldview in the New Testament, where the visible veils the real and created but somehow autonomous principalities and powers have sway. Furthermore, Paul’s universe like Conrad’s oscillates between creation and apocalypse. Nonetheless, voice is cosmically creative and, for the individual, emerges as call, bridging the poles of a reality that retains an echo of voice in its theological guise of vocation. In The Rescue , Tom Lingard, one of Conrad’s typically wandering characters, navigates a cacophony of rival creeds and callings. His mission and the relationships it entails lack the clear, if unwelcome, calling of a Biblical prophet or apostle. He must discern the objects of faith and fidelity and steer a course where work is unmoored from calling.