Again themes from the novel itself are continued in the Author's Note, in this
case narrative complexity. We are shortly to hear quotes from this book, from
both the seaman and his criminal interlocutor, but by the time we reach them we
are likely to forget that we are getting them "second-hand" and probably
altered. Compare the narrator of Nostromo, who briefly admits that he is
relating the story from hearsay ,
and Decoud's letter in Chapter 2-7, with its obscuring depths of hand-me-down
information (see ).
Nostromo's unreliable narration conveys its theme that the accurate receiving
of facts is impossible due to the distorting lens of human interpretation.