The Functions Of The Narrative Point Of View In The Novel Lord Jim

Conrad is an outstanding English novelist of the twentieth century. In his working life as a novelist, he pays much attention to creating new narrative techniques in his works. His artistic achievement takes a major role in transforming the nineteenth century classic realist novel into a twentieth century modernist artifact. Lord Jim is one of his best-known novels.This thesis deals w'th the analysis of Conrad's great novel Lord Jim. It presents an attempt to explore the functions of the three-level narrative point of view. This thesis consists of five parts. The first part, an introductory one, offers the background of the writing, including the early twentieth century literary world, and the description of Conrad's writing.The second part provides a criiical survey of twentieth century criticism of Lord Jim, paying special attention to those critics who have made discussions on the functions of Conrad's narrative structure.The third part begins with the general introduction to the literary theory used in the analysis-Gerard Genette's, Rimmon-Kenan's and Stanzel's narrative theory.The fourth part deals with the analysis of the text. The three-level narrative point of view and the characteristics of the first person dual focalization are listedand discussed: the framing function of the omniscient point of view; the function of the first person point of view; the function of the multiple points of view and finally the dual focalizations existing in the first person narrator.The fifth part is a brief conclusion of the four narrative points of view mentioned and discussed in the above.The present study aims to show that the three-level narrative point of view constitutes a kind of polyphonic presentation, revelation and shaping of the meanings of Jim. Although the polyphonic voices do not possess any power to finalize Jim, they do help the readers to see a deeper and fuller picture of Jim, and of human nature in general.