To-morrow

Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 57K words
Chapters: 6

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.To-morrow by Joseph ConradAuthor: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 9, 2006

Editor's review

To-morrow is a short but taut work by Conrad, built around waiting, expectation, and disappointment, with characters who expose obsession and self-deception within a limited setting. Conrad excels at creating psychological pressure through restrained narration, and this piece continues his gaze into the darker corners of human nature: beneath calm conversation undercurrents stir, and the ending tends to leave resonance rather than resolution. Its compact length makes it a good entry point into Conrad's fictional world and a good classroom text for discussing narrative perspective and character motivation. As a public-domain eBook the text is freely available, making repeated close comparison easy. A caution: Conrad is not a writer who wins readers with brisk plotting, and first-time readers may find the pace slow and the information indirect; read with the question "what is this character avoiding?" and it becomes easier to enter his narrative logic.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to enter Conrad's fiction through a short work
Literature lovers who enjoy psychological portrayal and understated narrative
Teachers and students who need a short text for classroom discussion
Writers studying narrative perspective and character motivation

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plot and fast pacing
Readers expecting a clear ending and full explanation
Beginners with little English reading experience who are unfamiliar with long sentences

Reading tips

On the first pass, focus on dialogue and pauses and notice who is evading and who is pressing.
After finishing, look back at the opening and compare the characters' expectations with the outcome.
Note the context each time a character mentions "to-morrow" and observe how its meaning shifts.
If the pace feels slow, read half, stop to retell the plot, then continue with the second half.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What kind of work by Conrad is this?

It is a short work of fiction on the themes of waiting and expectation, belonging to Conrad's novella and short-story output. It is not driven by adventure plot and focuses more on psychology and narrative tension.

Do I need to know Conrad's biography before reading?

Not necessarily. The work can be read on its own. Knowing that Conrad writes about the darker side of human nature with restrained narration can help set reading expectations, but it is not a prerequisite for understanding the text.

Why does the plot feel unclear as I read?

Conrad's narration often leaves deliberate gaps, hiding key information in dialogue and pauses, and the ending is not fully explained. This is central to his style; read it as a psychological puzzle you must actively piece together.

Comments

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About the author

Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 Author

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a novelist best known in English literature for his sea and colonial fiction, with 39 of his works held in this collection. Public information is limited, so his biography is not detailed here. Such representative works as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, Typhoon, The Secret Agent, The Shadow Line and Victory show that he often set his stories against the sea, the jungle and foreign ports, following characters as they face isolation, danger and moral dilemmas. His prose is restrained and measured, his structures often rely on retrospection and multiple points of view, and his psychological portraiture is finely drawn. He raised the adventure story into a serious examination of human nature, loyalty and the pretenses of civilization, and his influence on later English fiction has been profound.