Almayer's Folly

A story involving quest can be exciting and interesting because characters take on several challenges, which oftentimes take on a special meaning in their lives. In the book, Almayer’s Folly, the quest involves the life of the main character, Kaspar Almayer. The story takes place in the nineteenth century on the island of Borneo. Almayer is a Dutch colonial who became a merchant. However, Almayer finds himself spending his life on the island; after years of not being fulfilled, he spends all of his time thinking about getting off the island and away from his current life and back to Amsterdam. His dilemmas are both about a failed business and his mental suffering caused by a failed marriage to his Malaysian wife.

In the story, Almayer’s days are long and his surroundings were beginning to drive him crazy. He was feeling isolated and had depressing thoughts that everything around him had a negative impact on his life, with the exception of his beautiful daughter, Nina. Almayer wanted his freedom back and his quests included getting away from the island of Borneo, away from his evil wife and finding a way to become wealthy. Conrad writes, “He absorbs himself in his dream of wealth and power away from this coast where he had dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness of toil and strife in the vision of a great and splendid reward” (Conrad, 3). This sentence by Conrad gives us a clue that Almayer was absorbed in his dreaming and thinking about going to a better place.

When the story begins, Conrad writes “Almayer had left his home with a light heart and a lighter pocket, speaking English well and strong in arithmetic; ready to conquer the world, never doubting that he would” (Conrad, 4). This shows how Almayer began his life and why he wanted to hurry back to his youth. He suffered through a twenty-five year struggle against overwhelming odds. His marriage had a great effect on him too. His wife was jealous of her daughter’s love and fondness for her father. Conrad writes “His wife had soon commenced to treat him with a savage contempt expressed by sulky silence, only occasionally varied by a flood of savage invective” (Conrad, 17). Another passage he has to endure is accepting the financial ruin he has gone through. Almayer hits rock bottom; he sinks into depression and begins to smoke opium. He does this because his plans and dreams have disintegrated; his wife and daughter have both left him too.

A story of awakening is when a character experiences something on a very personal level. In this story, the awakening occurs when his daughter realizes she is not a pure European by blood. Nina realizes that she would never be accepted as an equal among Europeans or the whites. For this reason she chooses instead to live with the natives. As for Almayer he remains as he was. He is an example of someone stuck in a situation going