Joseph Conrad’s life as a nomad and globe-trotter serves to connect him to the vital nerve centre of contemporary cross-cultural encounters. The terror of the ‘unknown’ and the ‘other’ and the sufferings of the homeless, the dispossessed and the exile served as a paradigm for Conrad to deconstruct the theme of madness that haunts the alienated self. The loneliness of an individual gathers substance from his Polish background and his experiences as an exile from Poland. For much of his life Conrad was a seaman; this enabled him to observe at close quarters the colonialist rapacity in Africa and other parts of the globe. The vulnerability of the ‘self’ against the ‘systems’ forms the backdrop of his fictional works. Despite the opacities about Conrad’s colonial ideology and political stand, the oppressive presence of the colonizer made it necessary for the writer to dismantle the discourse of ‘unreason’ in various locales and contexts. The present study analyses Conrad’s fiction to problematize the horrors of madness in the absence of restraints of culture and civilization and suggests a possibility for the notions of wholeness, integrity, and ‘reason’.

Dr. Praveen Mirdha has an M.A., English (Gold Medalist), an M. Phil. (ELT) from Banasthali Vidyapith, Banasthali, and a Ph.D. on Joseph Conrad’s Fiction from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. She has been teaching English Literature and Language for the last twenty-two years. She began her teaching career at Banasthali Vidyapith, Banasthali and then joined the Department of College Education, Government of Rajasthan, Jaipur. Since 1995, she has been teaching at Government College, Ajmer and Government Girls’ College, Ajmer. Dr. Mirdha has also been a member of BOS with M. D. S. University, Ajmer and has worked as a subject-expert for Rajasthan Public Service Commission, Ajmer. She has prepared course material for the Distance Education Learning Programme of Vardhman Mahaveer Open University, Kota. Dr. Mirdha has research publications on Partition Fiction in the Indian Sub-Continent and Joseph Conrad’s short-stories. Her literary interest include fictional writings, gender studies and women’s writings, travel writing, cross-cultural literature and literature written or translated in Hindi.