Contextualizing and comprehending Joseph Conrad's "The Return."

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1996 by the Kid Billy

The socially definitive "partly difficult" achievement, of course, is the "easy mastery over animals and needy men" made possible for members of the ruling class by centuries of contrived legalities and selective applications of raw military force. It is these contrivances that sustain the conditions that make the above identification of beasts and destitute human beings more than mere syntactic caprice, and which result in people "in distress" assaulted by "spiteful" noise like "fusillade," as they face an infantry-like "band of brothers" in "dark overcoats and shiny boots" erupting "headlong" from the first-class compartment and flourishing "evening papers" and "umbrellas."

The strict conformity of their dress and mannerisms denotes their determination to avoid any "black hole" of potentially damaging ideological interrogation and thereby keep surfaces intact. Those who possess great economic power can use it to evade an awareness of the consequences of their access to privilege. Hence, "No one spared . . . a glance" to a "tottering old man . . . over his stick," and Hervey and his "brothers" likewise pass a "disregarded little woman in rusty black . . . in distress." However, it is difficult to practice only partial impercipience. Even the "evening papers" these men ritualistically carry are of little interest, treated like "stiff, dirty rags." As a result, the members of this singular "band" are distinguished by an inclusive deficiency of awareness that ultimately defines their great vulnerability, for these "brothers" secure their illusions of superiority and security only by negating their own dubious fraternity--they share a "kinship of indifferent faces" that "would resolutely ignore each other," and their eyes had "all the same stare, concentrated and empty, satisfied and unthinking."

The only authentic individuality in this opening paragraph is exhibited by the very people whom Hervey and his ilk, with "healthy pale faces," carefully neglect visually, emotionally, and economically. Largely invulnerable to the "icy draught" that causes a crippled old man to "cough violently over his stick," Hervey is "good-looking and healthy," and, secure in his protective wraps, he can walk "in the rain with careless serenity." Still, the old man's "woollen comforter" confers a certain worthy divergence. Like the "rusty black" garments of the "disregarded little woman," it differs to advantage from the "dark overcoats" of the "lot of men" emerging in stereotypical ranks from the train. More important are this woman's possessions and mode and route of travel, for she has "both arms full of parcels" and "ran" and "bolted" into a "third-class compartment." Apparently boarding the train on her frantic way home to a family housed somewhere beyond the fashionable suburbs, her heavily laden yet eager return at the end of the day parallels the simultaneous journeys homeward of the fatuous, tepid Hervey, who bears only "a smouldering cigar," and his irresolute, alienated wife, even as its energetic deprivation subverts by contrast the Herveys' supercilious lives.