Joseph Conrad, or should I say Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine in 1857. His parents were Polish patriots and died when he was a child. As a result he was raised by his uncle. At the age of seventeen, Conrad left his uncle to begin his maritime career with the French navy. In 1878 he joined a British ship and he became a British citizen in 1886. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to his writing, in English his third language. Conrad describes himself as being concerned "with the ideal value...
certifying heart failure, cannot see the real cause".

Conrad is a foreigner in England by birth, and debt-ridden whilst writing these stories it is clear that he had something he wanted to say regarding the economic and social world he now found himself in. The references to fate and destiny only serve to make the unbelievable social and economic conditions even more appalling than they already are, when people involved in events especially when characters like the scientific Dr. Kennedy cannot comprehend what his own society has become and the detrimental effects it had on human individuals like Yanko.