On the surface this is perhaps a reference to his switch from stories concerned
with the sea to Nostromo's concern with life on land. But a more instructive
illustration of the "change" can be glimpsed at the end of Lord Jim
(1900). There Stein, the defender of the romantic dream as a bulwark against the
abyss of meaninglessness and self-doubt, is seen "'preparing to leave all
this; preparing to leave...' while he waves his hand sadly at his butterflies."
The Conrad who returns in Nostromo has indeed left "all this,"
exchanging Stein's dubious optimism for a willful decent into the abyss, in which
Stein's romantic dream is portrayed as the engine of all human predation, and
its new defender, Antonia, can only say that "men must be used as they are."