Review Novel “The End of Tether”_Joseph Conrad
The End of Tether
The End of Tether_Joseph Conrad (Sumber Gambar : pdfbooksworld.com)
The End of Tether adalah salah satu dari banyak karya yang ditulis oleh Joseph Conrad.
Buku ini ditulis pada tahun 1902 dan diterbitkan oleh William Blackwood dalam koleksi Youth,
A Narrative and Two Other Stories (Jhonson, 2013).
Khusus untuk bagian The End of Tether memiliki jumlah halaman inti sebanyak 113 halaman.
Buku ini diprediksi ditulis berdasarkan pengalaman Conrad sebagai seorang pelaut yang mengenal laut
dengan baik dan segala aktivitas di permukaannya. Secara umum, buku ini menceritakan tentang seorang pelaut hebat bernama Henry Whalley
yang mengalami banyak masalah akibat salah urus keuangannya. Whalley menikahkan putri
satu-satunya dengan seorang pria yang diharapkan Whalley akan menjadi suami yang sempurna
sampai sebuah berita sedih datang kepada Whalley bahwa suami dari putrinya Ivy lumpuh dan
harus duduk di kursi roda. Whalley kemudian berpikir untuk meninggalkan semua tabungan
kekayaannya di bank kepada putrinya Ivy, tetapi karena kesalahan besar, semua harapan
kekayaannya di bank kemudian hilang dalam sekejap. Whalley kemudian menjual semua miliknya, terutama kapalnya, lalu mengirimkan sebagian
uangnya kepada putrinya, yang ia pinjam suatu hari setelah kehabisan uang.
Whalley yang malang kemudian bertemu seseorang yang memberi tahu dia bahwa Kapal Savala
membutuhkan seorang kapten. Singkat cerita, Whalley menjadi kapten kembali di Savala dan
bertemu dengan Massy yang setiap hari bertarung dengannya hingga akhirnya menipunya dan
mengambil semua sisa uang yang dimilikinya dan juga Sterne yang selalu berusaha menyingkirkan
Whalley dalam segala kondisi. Meskipun demikian, sepanjang hidupnya, Whalley cukup beruntung
untuk bertemu dengan seorang teman bernama Van Wick yang dengan tulus membantunya bahkan
sampai putrinya membacakan perpisahan terakhirnya.
……
“My dearest child,” it said, “I am writing this while I am able yet to write
legibly. I am trying hard to save for you all the money that is left; I have only
kept it to serve you better. It is yours. It shall not be lost: it shall not be
touched. There are five hundred pounds. Of what I have earned I have kept
nothing back till now. For the future, if I live, I must keep back some a little to
bring me to you. I must come to you. I must see you once more.
“It is hard to believe that you will ever look on these lines. God seems to have
forgotten me. I want to see you and yet death would be a greater favor. If you
ever read these words, I charge you to begin by thanking a God merciful at
last, for I shall be dead then, and it will be well. My dear, I am at the end of
my tether.”
The next paragraph began with the words: “My sight is going . . .”
She read no more that day. The hand holding up the paper to her eyes fell
slowly, and her slender figure in a plain black dress walked rigidly to the
window. Her eyes were dry: no cry of sorrow or whisper of thanks went up to
heaven from her lips. Life had been too hard, for all the efforts of his love. It
had silenced her emotions. But for the first time in all these years its sting had
departed, the carking care of poverty, the meanness of a hard struggle for
bread. Even the image of her husband and her children seemed to glide
away from her into the gray twilight; it was her father’s face alone that she
saw, as though he had come to see her, always quiet and big, as she had seen
him last, but with something more august and tender in his aspect.
She slipped his folded letter between the two buttons of her plain black bodice
and leaning her forehead against a window-pane remained there till dusk,
perfectly motionless, giving him all the time she could spare. Gone! Was it
possible? My God was it possible! The blow had come softened by the spaces
of the earth, by the years of absence. There had been whole days when she had
not thought of him at all had no time. But she had loved him, she felt she had
loved him, after all.
End of Tether adalah salah satu buku terbaik yang pernah saya baca dengan alur cerita yang benar-benar luar biasa. Awal penceritaan, awal konflik hingga puncak konflik diceritakan dalam alur yang sangat jelas. Isu-isu yang dibahas dalam buku ini umumnya berkaitan dengan kehidupan keluarga, pekerjaan dan terutama literatur keuangan. Buku ini secara tidak langsung menjelaskan dalam beberapa bagian tentang investasi. Saat ini, di era teknologi yang sangat canggih ini, dibutuhkan kecerdasan finansial. Kita perlu memiliki pemahaman yang baik sebelum berinvestasi tidak hanya dalam hal keuangan tetapi juga berinvestasi dalam jaringan pertemanan.
……………
His age sat lightly enough on him, and of his ruin, he was not ashamed. He had
not been alone to believe in the stability of the Banking Corporation. Men
whose judgment in matters of finance was as expert as his seamanship had
commended his investments’ prudence and had themselves lost much
money in the great failure. The only difference between him and them was that
he had lost his all. And yet not his all. There had remained to him from his lost
fortune a very pretty little bark, Fair Maid, which he had bought to occupy his
leisure of a retired sailor “to play with,” as he expressed it himself.
(chapter II, page 4)
“Oh yes! It was a miserable end,” Mr. Van Wyk said, with so much fervor that
the lawyer looked up at him curiously; and afterward, after parting with him,
he remarked to an acquaintance
“Queer person that Dutch tobacco-planter from Batu Beru. Know anything of
him?”
“Heaps of money,” answered the bank manager. “I hear he’s going home by the
next mail to form a company to take over his estates. Another tobacco district
was thrown open. He’s wise, I think. These good times won’t last forever.”
Captain Whalley’s daughter had no presentiment
of evil in the southern hemisphere when she opened the envelope addressed to her in the lawyer’s
handwriting. She had received it in the afternoon; all the boarders had gone
out, her boys were at school, her husband sat upstairs in his big armchair with
a book, thin-faced, wrapped up in rugs to the waist. The house was still, and
the grayness of a cloudy day lay against the panes of three lofty windows.
In a shabby dining-room, where a faint cold smell of dishes lingered all the
year-round, sitting at the end of a long table surrounded by many chairs
pushed in with their backs close against the edge of the perpetually plaid tablecloth,
she read the opening sentence: “Most profound regret painful duty your
father is no more by his instructions fatal casualty consolation
no blame attached to his memory. . . .”
Her face was thin, her temples a little sunk under the smooth bands of black
hair, her lips remained resolutely compressed, while her dark eyes grew larger,
till at last, with a low cry, she stood up, and instantly stooped to pick up
another envelope which had slipped off her knees on (Chapter XII, page 111)
References:
Conrad, Joseph. 1902. The End of Tether in Youth, A Narrative and Two Other
Stories. William Blackwood. London
Johnson. (2013). https://mantex.co.uk/the-end-of-the-tether/
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