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" ... the central concern of this thesis, which is to investigate the ways in which Conrad uses a particular technique (that of the first-person narrator ) to focus our attention, to secure our involvement, and to direct our sympathies. At the same time I wish to examine the extent to which the central themes or concerns of each work derive from the interaction between the narrator and the man whose experience he confronts, from "the challenging interplay of two frames of reference, two schemes of values, two sets of attitudes" that the use of a dramatized narrator makes possible." (Introd., p. 5) / Adobe Acrobat 9.53 Paper Capture Plug-in

This dissertation examines Conrad's ambivalent attitude to the value of words in human affairs. Though his critical attitude is the main focus of the argument, his positive attitude will also be considered in some detail. In the first chapter, on The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', the critical attitude is primary. In this story language is seen in relation to silence and action, and in both cases the non- linguistic element is celebrated, while words are censured. Yet the values implied by the tale leave the writer of fiction, and the narrator who emerges at the end of the story, in an uncertain position: the world presented in the novel undermines the mode of presentation which is the novel. This paradox is to some extent resolved in the following two chapters which deal with Conrad's complex response to the culture of European imperialism. Chapter 2, on Heart of Darkness, examines the ways in which words contribute to the systematic lies that sustain the nineteenth-century civilizing mission. The story is, however, not wholly critical of language, since the value of Marlow's spoken narrative is clearly endorsed. Chapter 3 offers a more detailed account of the relationship between the story-teller and his society, and of the value of Marlow's words. In Lord Jim, Marlow's account of Jim is contrasted with the account of him given by the court of inquiry, and with the notion of the hero projected in the romantic fictions which Jim reads. Once again Marlow's use of language is affirmed, while other uses are shown to be reductive, or simply spurious. The final chapter deals with Under Western Eyes. Of the four novels selected for this thesis, Conrad's "Russian novel" offers the most explicit and sustained critique of language. The novel suggests that any simplistic identification of language with "communication" is naive, if not misleading. In the conclusion I discuss Conrad's understanding of the nature and function of his own words, as set out in the preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and A Personal Record

Conrad's firmly held ideal of an ordered and stable society appears to conflict with his undeniable assault on traditional values and the revelation in his works of the inadequacy of those simple virtues which he extolled in later years. The inescapability of human solidarity does not always appear to be inherent in the moral and metaphysical isolation which besets the individual separated from his fellows. Those critics who see as most significant human isolation and the power of the irrational and their result in negation and despair are those who emphasize the force of doubt and skepticism in Conrad's works. Those who seek affirmation emphasize the ideals of duty and fidelity and their function in supporting human solidarity and a stable society. Primary in Conrad's, thought, however, was his recognition of the power of sympathy with and compassion for the suffering of other individuals. This compassion is most strikingly manifested in the relationship which I have called the sympathetic bond. It reveals both the force of individual isolation and the profound inevitability of human solidarity, man's need for order and the value of dissension, his loneliness in an indifferent universe and the liberating bondage of his commitment to the human society. When the sympathetic bond takes effect, one character enters a state in which he feels, recreated in himself, the experience and suffering of another and the effects and implications of that other's experience. Through his response to the experience and suffering of the other finite individual, he feels the claims of his own humanity acting upon him in a way which leads him out of himself into a general commitment to the claims stemming from his moral ties with all other men and to a trust in life. The sympathetic bond is felt when all other ties and values have been destroyed or revealed as ultimately meaningless unless they share in the motive force of sympathy and compassion which must invest all social organization. With an understanding of this relationship and of the need for "sympathetic imagination," we can see that any human institution must be inadequate, meaningful only as long as it takes account of the reasons for its existence, and we can see from another perspective why all virtues and ideals and all traditional values must he suspect. The frequency of identification in Conrad's works is a reflection of his personality and creative temperament. Considered in terms of technique, the sympathetic bond is an extension of the form of identification which has been called "recognition," the process of seeing oneself and the evil within embodied in the other self. But it tends to be self-forgetful in contrast to the egoism and heightened self-awareness implicit in the latter relationship. However, the process of recognition can prepare the character who experiences it for the development of the sympathetic bond. This is the case in "The Secret Sharer," "Heart of Darkness" and "The End of the Tether." In the latter two stories and in "Karain," the sufferings of the central characters instruct and inform with sympathy the younger men who feel a bond with them. The sympathetic bond brings about a selfless compassion which extends beyond a concern for the individual sufferer to a general compassion for all mankind. We feel the strength of the individual's necessary commitment to the moral community in these works; the effect of the moribund state of society on that moral community is the most persistent impression conveyed by The Secret Agent. Sympathetic identification is destructive to those who experience it unless it results in an enlarging of their sympathies, and general compassion requires an outlet in social organization. Conrad suggests in The Secret Agent that the social order can be regenerated only if the sympathy and compassion of its individual members are made to work within it. The claims of human solidarity are unavoidable, however, in spite of the moribund state of society. When they are recognized, they are felt more intensely and more urgently because of this state. Their modus operandi becomes not increased knowledge, but pure power. Those individuals most affected by the disintegration of social order are described, symbolically, as experiencing the impact of an explosion, the shock of which stuns and casts a spell over them. The energy thus released is the energy of life and compassion which had previously invested society, and it is represented by imagery of explosions and the sun. At the end of The Secret Agent, we are left with a choice between the Professor, who embodies wisdom without compassion, and Ossipon, whose moral sense has been awakened by the sympathetic bond which he feels with the dead Winnie. Ossipon is destroyed by his recognition of the moral bonds which he has too long denied. In The Rover. Conrad was able to affirm his hope in the triumph of the normal and the healthy. The sympathetic bond acts to reclaim the central characters for life. Peyrol's sacrifice re-establishes a stable society; and his renunciation makes possible a return to the normal for Real and Arlette. His affirmation and trust in life is fulfilled in them; for in them is released the "sense of triumphant life." / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Joseph Conrad regarded life as the pursuit of a dream which gives man a sense of purpose in life. The individual's attempt, through action and communication, to make this dream real to himself and to his fellow men constitutes the quest for identity in Conrad's works. Chapter I explores various aspects of the quest. Because life is a "destructive element", the individual must struggle to justify his existence and make his dream come true. To be successful in this struggle, man needs self-knowledge. This, in turn, requires a commitment to the community. The quest is, therefore, ethical rather than metaphysical. Chapter II is a study of the egoistic dream. The sense of superiority over the rest of mankind causes Jim, Heyst, and Kurtz to dissociate themselves from their fellow men. Consequently, they lack a clear sense of their moral responsibility and of the destructive tendencies in their own nature. Rather than help these individuals to find meaning in life, the egoistic dream becomes the cause of their failure. Chapter 111 concentrates upon the "saving illusion", a sense of self involving a moral commitment to the community. Through involvement, the individual becomes concerned with fulfilling his moral obligation, rather than vindicating an ideal of himself. Therefore, he seeks the self-knowledge which will enable him to guard against defeat. Obedience to the claims of love and conscience in Under Western Eyes, the sense of duty towards the ship in "The Secret Sharer", and the sense of solidarity in “The Nigger of the Narcissus” enable the protagonists in these stories to fulfil their obligation to the community. Finally, Chapter IV deals with Conrad's artistic endeavour as his quest for identity. Conrad's aim was to communicate his truth to the reader. The achievement of his artistic goal required self-knowledge which he, like his characters, acquired in the struggle of life. The hard realities of life become the "terms of his appeal". Conrad's vision of life evokes in his readers the sense of solidarity which testifies to the success of his quest for identity. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Joseph Conrad's Nostromo is extremely complex in materials, methods, and attitudes towards life, and so is open to a number of approaches and interpretations. This paper, which is the result of an effort to see the novel as a self-contained literary form, is based on the judgment that, although the book has strong strains of realism and romance, it is essentially ironic both in its form and in the view of life which it embodies, as the terms "irony" and "ironic" are used by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism. The paper undertakes to demonstrate some of the uses of plot and point of view in giving form to an ironic view of life. The study considers the form for its own sake as an artistic composition as well as its function in embodying an attitude towards life, insofar as these two aspects of form can be usefully separated. Certain lines in the plot-structure are traced throughout the book, but most of the paper consists of the analysis of a number of selected scenic passages considered as independent structures. This analysis is concerned with the function of the scenes as episodes in the plot, the technical methods covered by the concept of point of view and their effects, and the total effect of the scene. The paper deals primarily with the five characters: Mrs. Gould, Charles Gould, Nostromo, Decoud, and Dr. Monygham. It considers each of them as a protagonist in a line of the complex plot, and considers the treatment of each one in relation to the control of distance by means of the techniques of point of view. Mrs. Gould, whose story contains strains of both romance and irony, struggles to maintain her belief in the private values of love and compassion and in the traditional public values of integrity and reason. Each of the four men is engaged in a struggle to achieve or maintain a sense of his own value. The paper interprets this struggle in terms of the formation and transformation of identity in relation to symbols of authority, both private symbols such as parental figures and public symbols such as social class and country. The essential irony of the plot lies in two factors. The symbols of authority are either inadequate or corrupt, and the sense of one's own identity is an illusion, a belief with no objective basis. It is a psychic necessity, but it leads to self-deception and is frequently destructive. Nostromo's story, which combines strains of satire and romance, leads to a resolution full of ironic qualifications, but suggesting the triumph of the romantic egoist who rejects all symbols of authority. The handling of point of view is extremely flexible both in its use of implicated narrators and observers and in the variety of relationships between the impersonal narrator and his material. The fluidity in the handling of point of view has an aesthetic value and is also functional in presenting an ironic view of life. The use of implicated narrators emphasizes the discrepancies resulting from the insurmountable limitations of man's knowledge either of himself or of other people, and suggests that there is no ultimate truth within which these discrepancies may be reconciled. The control of distance also has ironic implications. The paper analyzes some of the technical factors in the control of distance, and finds that there is no really sustained attitude towards any of the chief male characters. The effects range from satire to tragic irony. The shifting distance is functional in creating an image of a world in which unequivocal judgments are impossible and in which, as Conrad said, "The comic and the tragic jostle each other at every step." Nostromo is an example on a vast scale of literature in the ironic mode, defined by Frye as "an attempt to give form to the shifting ambiguities and complexities of unidealized life." The working out of the complex plot and the remarkable fluidity in the handling of point of view dramatize these ambiguities and complexities but they do so in a way which helps to create artistic order from the materials of chaos. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Tragedy and comedy are, in Conrad's phrase, "but a matter of the visual angle." Tragedy focusses on the individual, comedy on the human community, but each must partake of the other for completion. The aesthetic form of a work of literature represents an order which prevails against the chaos of events, producing in the reader a tension between aloofness and involvement. Conrad's failure to find a technique capable of fully achieving this tension caused his early works to fall short of rendering a tragic vision, but his discovery of the possibilities inherent in the use of a narrator allowed his fiction from The Nigger of the "Narcissus" to Lord Jim to transcend his earlier limitations. By the time he wrote Under Western Eyes, Conrad no longer needed a narrator such as Marlow to achieve distance and was able to utilize his narrator in other ways. In doing so, he was able to create a more traditional tragedy. Almayer's Folly, the most successful of the "Maylayan" novels, presents Almayer’s tragedy as ironic comedy, and only occasionally falls into the cynicism to which its pessimistic philosophy is prey. An Outcast of the Islands. however, despite advances in characterization and plot development, is too overtly and discursively philosophical to succeed. And The Rescue, with its romantically tragic philosophy and tone, proved to be a cul-de-sac. Breaking off from work on The Rescue. Conrad found, in his experience as a seaman and in the employment of a narrator, means of liberation that allowed him to write an almost wholly positive work, a comedy of salvation through communal effort. The somewhat inconsistently used narrator allows the reader to comprehend both the decadent influence of Wait, the "nigger", and the benign influence of Singleton, who "steered with care," without losing sight of the tale as aesthetic work. Marlow, narrator of "Heart of Darkness" and Lord Jim, performs somewhat the same function, but is technically consistent and stands in a much more complex relation to the story. "Heart of Darkness" provides the tragic point of view to complement The Nigger's comedy. Lord Jim represents Conrad's first achievement of a sustained tragic vision, yet it is not a tragedy; its center is divided between Jim's tragic experience and Marlow's tragic awareness. The complex narrative method allows the reader to participate in Marlow's search for understanding through recognition of Jim as "one of us. " An image is created which has the sculptural quality of lacking inherent point of view, but which is never completely sharpened. Jim is important to Marlow for the romantic illusion to which he is true and which seems to offer a possibility of finding dignity. Stein's butterflies symbolize this dream, while his beetles symbolize the counter-illusion of the realists like Brown. Marlow, aware of the illusory nature of both, seeks an integrated vision. The language teacher of Under Western Eyes is used differently from Marlow. He is ironically presented as an impartial recorder of events, helping to clarify the political differences but human similarities between Russia and the West. Razumov is unlike Jim in that he starts from a "realistic" illusion of worldly success and is brought by circumstances to a vision of human contact, a radical transformation, and one of which he is fully aware. The novel is a tragedy in the conventional sense and is a profound treatment of the relation between a man and his society, yet, despite such effective techniques as the use of Christian allusions to establish a shared set of values, it lacks the richness of Lord Jim. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1931 A41