The present paper is intended to deal with the identity problem in the novel Almayer's Folly by the Polish-born English novelist Joseph Conrad who has been acclaimed as “Giant in Exile” (Gurko) and “Poland's English Genius”(Bradbrook), hoping thereby to demonstrate the novel's importance as an exploration of identity and to show that in this early work Conrad had already exhibited his psythohistory and concern for identity as a displaced person.
The word identity was first created by psychologist Erikson who postulates that man's life consists of eight stages in which identity formation is the most important process. He classifies man's identity statuses into four categories: foreclosure, diffusion, moratorium, and achievement. One must try to come to terms with the crises in different life stages to get to the status of identity achievement. And a person achieving identity of his own will become more integrated with a sense of anchorage and wholeness and psychosocial equilibrium, and feel himself to be the master of his fate.1