Chapter 2 - Maps and Victory, “Geography and Some Explorers,” “The Secret Sharer” and An Outcast of the Islands

Summary

The chapter explores why there are symbolic depictions of space from above – maps of the fictional environment – in many of Conrad’s manuscripts. I suggest that Conrad constructed and used hand-drawn maps as part of his creative writing process, as if he needed a map to navigate his own fictional world. Three of Conrad’s manuscript maps are linked to passages in his fiction that contain factual mistakes; it is unclear whether the maps led him astray or whether he produced the maps because of the complicated geography. The maps’ existence can be attributed to more than attempts at understanding the coordinates of the fictional environment. Among twentieth-century writers, Conrad was one of the artists most involved with maps and charts, both in his literary and especially in his professional life. However, although Conrad needed maps to write, it is not apparent that we need them to read – unless we seek to better understand the genealogy of the text and the creative process.