康拉德的作品的中心主题是自我。他把对主观世界的探索和对客观世界的探索紧密地结合在一起，赋予超越自我的意义。他运用西方文学传统中源远流长的象征比喻以及安排时空。本书的内容可分为青春，跃进前哨，秘密的分享者和黑大副四个部分。

他的作品生动形象地表明：人生的意义存在于对它的追求之中，人生的意义是无限的，对它的追求也是无止境的。

1.Youth

 青春

2.An Outpost of Progress

 跃进前哨

3.The Secret Sharer

 秘密的分享者

4The Black Mate

 黑大副

An Outpost of Progress(跃进前哨）

              1

There were two white men in charge of the trading station.Kayerts,the chief,was

short and fat;Carlier,the assistant,was tall,with a large head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs.The third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger,who maintained that his name was Henry Price.However,for some reason or other,the natives down the river had given him the name of Makola,and it stuck to him through all his wanderings about the country.He spoke English and French with a warbling accent,wrote a beautiful hand,understood book-keeping,and cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits.His sife was a Negress from Loanda,very large and very noisy.Three children rolled about in sunshine before the door of his low,shed-like dwelling.Makola,taciturn and impenetrable,despised the two white men.He had charge of a small clay storehouse with a dried-grass roof,and pretended to keep a correct account of beads,cotthe cleared ground of the station.

It was built neatly of reeds,with a verandah on all the four sides.There were three rooms in it.The one in the middle was the living-room,and had two rough tables and a few stools in it.The other two were the bedrooms for the white men.Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all furniture.The plank floor was litered with the belongings of the white men;open half-empty boxes,town wearing apparel,old boots; all the things dirty,and all the things broken,that accumulate mysteriously round untidy men.P62