Digital Object Identifier
The image of an outpost has often been associated with a corner of civilized society which denotes isolation, segregation, and separation from the heart of civilization—a corner where isolation situates inhabitants in a position of constant tension between moral constraints and an achieved liberation from it. Joseph Conrad’s portrayal of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness reveals a man’s shunning the world of commonplace values and morals of the white European society, ending up becoming instead the ‘king’ of an outpost in colonial Congo. On the other hand, Majid in Syed Waliullah’s Lalsalu represents the figure of a religious beacon to the people of a village who despair for an anchor. The article aims to analyze how such outposts (both literal and metaphorical) serve as crucibles and impact the gradual transformation and transgression which underlie acts of moral decadence and persistent submission to greed and brutal ambitions.
Dr. Sraddha Nag. “Perilous Peripheries: Isolated Outposts as Moral Crucibles in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Syed Waliullah’s Lalsalu.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 2026, pp. 830–844. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n2.53.
Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · Crossref DOI ·
the-criterion.com