Debating The Self-Self-constitution And Its Dilemma In Joseph Corad’s Lord Jim

Lord Jim is one of Joseph Conrad’s most important novels, it was written during the period that The Great Britain was going from properous to deline, and it intensively reflects conrad’s exploration to Man’s Self-Consititution in modern society. The pluralism of modern society connected human closer to each other in physical distance, but also fragmented people’s life and caused the dilemma of Self-Constitution. The problem of identification brought by pluralism become the core problem of his works. As one of moderism classics, Lord Jim engaged Conrad’s deep thoughts on Self-Constitution dilemma and how to break through it.This thesis takes territory,language and body as cutpoints, and then explores Conrad’s writing of Self-Constitution dilemma, and digs up the strong sense of cautions on self-Constitiution, moreover, tries to find out the author’s solutions to this dilemma and reveal the modern apocalypse of Lord Jim. Chapter One:Introduction. This part mainly classifies research status of this novel, and presents the research value and methods of this thesis. Chapter Two:The Seperation of Self and Outside World. This part discusses the loss of Subjective during the process of modernity maily from two aspects:"Loss of Homes" and "Loss of Language". Chapter Three: Seperation of Inner Self. Conrad regards body as carrier of spirit, he thinks the incompleting of body is exteriorization of spirital crisis. Chapter Four: Self-Constitution and Impossibility of the constitution. Conrad thought that there were solidarities between human and world, between individual and others, between one and oneself, one can precisely locating himself only through this solidarity. Conrad warns human to keep respective to nature, and appeals to construct trust and solidarity between self and others. On the other hand, Conrad deconstructs trust and that declares the impossibility of self-constitution. When Conrad realized that people in modern society are lack of respects and the impossibility of trust, he proposed a final solution to this dilemma-suicide. Characters fulfil their self-constitution by suitide.