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Testing for truth: Joseph Conrad and the ideology of the examination.

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From: CLIO
Date: 19940322
Author:

Joseph Conrad's short story 'Typhoon' exemplifies the notion of tests as mechanisms of social control, yet it also contains subversion of the authority of tests. The story concerns a merchant marine captain who endangers his ship in a hurricane although he has passed the official examinations for his job. His reckless inability to read the signs of nature indicates that examinations have given him an undeserved place in the social hierarchy over his crew.

Anyone familiar with Conrad's work recognizes the importance in many of his texts of the concept of a test of nature. Such a test ...

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