Amy Foster’ is a short story by Joseph Conrad. Conrad’s story, told in a realist style, is deeply infused with irony and symbolism. The bay looms behind the quiet life of the village in the first lines of the story, representing the presence of the rest of the world that the townspeople cannot quite keep out. Conrad, heavily influenced by the adventure tale, uses the expected outlines of the story of a castaway washed up in a new land to tell a much darker, ironic story.
Conrad’s own history as a Polish immigrant to this area of England clearly influenced “Amy Foster, ” which highlights failures of communication between people of different ethnicities and between men and women, as well as concerns about the author’s ability to communicate with his audience.