The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: helped to paralyse his faculties, added to his despair.
He was no longer Edgar Byrne. He was a tortured soul suffering
more anguish than any sinner's body had ever suffered from rack or
boot. The depth of his torment may be measured when I say that
this young man, as brave at least as the average of his kind,
contemplated seizing a pistol and firing into his own head. But a
deadly, chilly, langour was spreading over his limbs. It was as if
his flesh had been wet plaster stiffening slowly about his ribs.
Presently, he thought, the two witches will be coming in, with
crutch and stick - horrible, grotesque, monstrous - affiliated to
the devil - to put a mark on his forehead, the tiny little bruise
Within the Tides |