Analyse the symbloic meaning(s) of the cross

Joseph Conrad`s story ‚An Outpost of Progress’ is set on a trading station at the Congo River in Africa where two men have been send to run it. Their names are Kayerts and Carlier and they are completely uncapable of operating the station, which contains of three houses and „some distance away from the buildings“ (p.10, l.16- 18) stands a cross „much out of the perpendicular“ (p.10, l.18) where the first chief of the useless station is buried. First of all, the cross is a religious Christian symbol, which stands for death and sacrifice. This gives the reader directly the first inidication of how the story will continues and how it probably could end. Kayerts and Carlier visit it one time and they commiserate the man, who is buried unter the tall cross and they vow that they will care of themselves so that they will not end like the first chief, who died of fever.

 

From the first pages on the cross accompany the two white men, who get lazy after a while, sitting on the veranda and doing nothing.

One day, Carlier goes out and replants the cross firmly and it seems as if he arranges it unconsciously to be Kayerts grave. All this foreschadows the destiny of the two white men.

 

As the reader expected it, Kayerts and Carlier are getting very lazy and dissatisfied after a while, because they slowly notice that the station is useless and that nobody looks after them. The spend days with eating nothing, but rice and drinking dark coffee, waiting for a glint of the steamer, which actually ought to come. But neither this day nor that day the steamer appears on the Congo river and they „become daily more like a pair of accomplices than like a couple of devoted friends.“ (p.30., l.11-12). And one day, it was bound to happen, the conflict brakes out and ends tragically. Being responsible for killing his companion, Kayerts feels desperate and horrible. He thinks one night about his situation („and now found repose in the conviction that life had nor more secrets for him: neither had death!“, p.34, l.30.) and in the end he chooses the cross to commit suicide, although he is not a Christian.

The cross, known as a symbol of death, was also chosen by Kayerts to clarify the meaning of his guilt and atonement and to show the Managing Director, how it will ends if people were send into the wilderness, without any civilisation around.