Story summary
Resumo de Falk
- 8 min de leitura
- 9 parts
- Áudio em breve
A tugboat captain with a monopoly on a river and a secret from ten years ago wants a German captain's niece.
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Falk em resumo
Resumo: 8 min de leitura
- Tempo de leitura
- Cerca de 2 h1 h 35 min fast, 2 h 25 min slow
- Duração
- 28.700 palavras
- Nível na biblioteca
- Médio longer sentences, everyday words
- Primeira publicação
- 1903by Joseph Conrad
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Quanto tempo leva para ler os clássicos · Atualizado
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Falk in short
Sailors at a Thames inn hear an older captain tell of his first command in an Eastern river port. There he meets Hermann, who lives with his family aboard the spotless Diana of Bremen. He also meets Falk, the silent, bearded owner of the only tug, who holds every ship at his mercy.
What Falk is about
What does a man do when a tug captain with a monopoly on the river decides that you are his rival? A young English captain, new to command in an Eastern port, is about to find out.
Falk is a novella by Joseph Conrad. Old sailors dine at a shabby inn on the Thames, and one of them, a captain over fifty, tells a story from his youth. You get a comic and strangely tender tale of a spotless family afloat, and a huge, silent man whose beard and yellow eyes frighten everyone. Behind the comedy sits something darker.
Para quem é. You will enjoy this if you like sea stories told by a talker at a dinner table, comic portraits of gossips, and odd love stories.
The story in 9 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
Old sailors at dinner begin a tale
The book opens not at sea but at a table. Several men tied to the sea dine at a small inn on the Thames. So they do what sailors do. They tell tales of wrecks and short rations.
A barque goes by under tow, with a woman in a red hood pacing the poop and holding a ball of grey wool. One guest remarks that the skipper has his wife aboard. That small sight stirs a man over fifty, who has commanded ships for a quarter of a century. He says it reminds him of an absurd episode in his life.
Someone asks whether Hermann was a hero. The old captain answers that he was no hero at all. He was a master mariner who looked like a well-to-do farmer. That sets the tone. This is a story about ordinary people under strain.
The narrator looks back at his younger self with amusement and some shame. He took his troubles very seriously then, and the telling often laughs at him.
The takeaway is that this tale comes from a man who remembers his youthful foolishness and tells it with a smile.
- 2Comece grátis para ler
A floating cottage and its spotless family
Hermann owns the Diana of Bremen, a heavy, blunt-bowed barque that looks like a farm wagon with a stern.
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A troubled young captain and a silent giant
The narrator is not yet thirty and in his first command.
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Falk drags the Diana away at dawn
Hermann and the narrator race each other quietly to be first in line.
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A search for a drunken pilot goes badly
Cut off from steam, the narrator faces going down the river under sail.
- 6Comece grátis para ler
A card game on the verandah decides the voyage
The narrator leads Falk by the arm onto the verandah.
- 7Comece grátis para ler
The ambassador carries a message into the cabin
At the rocky islets where ships wait for cargo, the narrator watches the Diana through binoculars and wonders what the misfortune could be.
- 8Comece grátis para ler
Self-preservation is the law Falk lives by
The story keeps returning to one idea.
- 9Comece grátis para ler
Hunger, respectability and a narrator who tells it slant
The story's hunger is more than a matter of food.
Read all 9 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- The narrator A young English captain, new to command and short of money, who needs Falk's tug to get his sick crew out to sea.
- Falk A huge, bearded Scandinavian tug owner who rules the river, lives on rice and fish, and longs to make a home with Hermann's niece.
- Hermann A stolid German captain who lives aboard the Diana with his family, dreads the cost of going home, and distrusts Falk.
- Hermann's niece A quiet, magnificent young woman of nineteen who helps with the children and whom Falk wants to marry.
- Mrs. Hermann Hermann's kind, stout wife, who welcomes the narrator aboard and watches Falk's courtship with growing unease.
- Schomberg An Alsatian hotelkeeper and relentless gossip who spreads rumours about Falk and the narrator.
- Johnson A former sea captain, now drunk and living with a local wife, whom the narrator hopes to hire as a pilot.
How it ends (spoiler)
Falk confesses that on his old ship, the Borgmester Dahl, adrift and starving, he killed the carpenter in a duel and survivors ate him. Hermann is disgusted, but the niece weeps out of pity. Hermann relents within a day, and the couple clasp hands in the sunshine. Years later the narrator returns and finds the Falks gone, and the town says he won his wife at cards.
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Dúvidas sobre Falk
What is Falk by Joseph Conrad about?
It is a novella told by an older captain about his first command in an Eastern river port, where a silent tug owner named Falk, a German family on a barque, and a hotel gossip tangle his life.
Who is Falk in the story?
Falk is a huge, bearded Scandinavian who owns the only tugboat on the river and so controls every ship's departure. He lives simply, rarely speaks, and wants to marry Hermann's niece.
What does the name Diana mean in Falk?
Diana is the name of Hermann's barque of Bremen. It recalls the goddess of the hunt, but the narrator finds it absurd for a slow, homely ship that serves as a family home.
Is Falk a true story, and when was it written?
Falk is fiction, though Conrad drew on his years as a merchant seaman. It was written in the early twentieth century and tells its tale as an older captain's memory.
Is Falk easy to read?
Its short length, its dinner-table frame, its comic portraits and its lively narrator make it approachable. Scenes of towing, gossip and courtship move quickly, and the dialogue is plain.
Cite esta edição
Conrad, Joseph. Falk. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/falk.
Conrad, J. (2026). Falk. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/falk (Original work published 1903)
Conrad, Joseph. Falk. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/falk.
@book{conrad2026falk,
author = {Conrad, Joseph},
title = {Falk},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/falk},
note = {First published 1903}
}
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