meaning that it might be considered a character in the story in its own right. The lagoon has meaning as an object in the physical world, as a potent symbol, and as a profoundmetaphor.

The lagoon is powerfully described in the short story in great and varying detail making the physical location of the story critical to the events and meaning conveyed: "The Lagoon" could not succeed in the same way as a story if it were placed in any other setting. The lagoon is symbolic of the enmity faced between the two warrior brothers and their new-formed enemies who become enraged that Arsat would dare to take Diamelen, the ruler's concubine. In this sense, the lagoon symbolizes dark and threatening forces that loom on the horizon of individuals' choices--the potential for horrific consequences from actions in moral dilemmas.

While running off with the ruler's concubine isn't defined as a moral good, Arsat's love for Diamelen is defined as a moral good in "The Lagoon." The story also defines Arsat's love for his brother as a moral good: they are warriors together and because of their brother's love for each other are willing to risk their lives for each other. This is the moral good upon which the dilemma of the story is built: Which love must Arsat select and honor when the dilemma occurs and only one of two needful and morally good choices may be chosen. It is the lagoon that symbolizes the dark consequences of the unchosen good in any moral dilemma, a situation requiring but one choice between two (or many) morally good options.

Finally, the lagoon is a metaphor for psychological motive, the state of mind that is present when one is forced to choose when that choice must of necessity leave something equally good unchosen, excluded, and the prey of potentially drastic outcomes and consequences. The metaphor links the lagoon to the state of the human condition represented by Arsat's possibly ignoble motive's in choosing as he does: Is it love that makes him choose as he does or is it love and personal reward combined that make him so choose?

"The Lagoon" is structured by Conrad as a frame story. A frame story is one in which the opening events or situations provide the framework for a narrator or a character to digress from the present moment and tell a different story, either as a personal reflection, as in Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," or as a story told to the other character(s) in the story, as in "The Lagoon."

The white man whom Arsat calls Tuan sets the frame of the story "The Lagoon" and then acts as the audience while Arsat tells about his love for Diamelen and of how his brother helped him to escape with her. Before Arsat tells his story, but after the narrator has focalized the qualities of the physical surroundings through Tuan's perspective, Tuan arrives just prior to the moment at which Diamelen dies from a high fever. This is the precipitating event that leads from the frame, containing Tuan and Diamelen's death, into the story of Arsat's great love and the moral dilemma he faces as a result of that love. Incidentally, Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is also framed with a death from which the interior, or embedded, story digresses.