The Idiots by Joseph Conrad - A Short story -- FAB

"The Idiots": Conrad's truly first short story, which may be counted as his opus zero; written during his honeymoon, published in The Savoy periodical, 1896, and collected in Tales of Unrest, 1898.

The story begins as an unnamed narrator is driven past a sixteen year-old boy. The driver announces that he is an "idiot," and observes, "'There's four of them—children of a farmer near Ploumar here... The parents are dead now'".

The children's story fascinates the narrator and he says, "The story of their parents shaped itself before me out of the listless answers to my questions, of the indifferent words heard in wayside inns or on the very road those idiots haunted".

The narrator learns that all four of Jean-Pierre and Susan Bacadou's children are "'Simple... Never any use!'" Their intellectual disabilities render them incomprehensible to both the narrator and to Jean-Pierre.

The narrator describes the children dispassionately, referring to them as if they are objects rather than people. For example, when the narrator uses a possessive pronoun, he chooses "its" rather than "his", suggesting the child is androgynous or animalistic.

In keeping with the narrator's experience, Conrad drew the story to an unusual, seemingly incomplete, or "illogical," ending.

Read by Gregg Margarite

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