Conrad’s Ambiguity In Colonialism A Narratological Reading Of Lord Jim

Lord Jim, a representative sea novel by Joseph Conrad, was firstly published in 1900 and is regarded as a monument in the history of the British literature. This thesis, based on Gerard Genette’s narrative mood, narrative voice and narrative tense in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, intends to analyze Lord Jim’s narrative art and meaning. Furthermore, through the analysis of the narrative skills, this thesis aims to explore Conrad’s ambiguous attitudes towards colonialism. This novel uses multiple narrative perspectives, including zero focalization and inner focalization. Meanwhile, the inner focalization contains Marlow’s speaking and his writing to a “privileged man”. Thus it produces a polyphonic effect, which makes the readers doubt its reliability so as to be alert to the presence of the ideology. The protagonist—Jim, represents the colonizers’ greed for material grabbing to enslave the colonized by their transmission and spreading of western values under the cover of civilizing “the savage”. It is actually hegemony and colonialism. From the narrative perspective, the narrator has the thought of the superiority of the white and the Eurocentrism, which conveys Conrad’s support for colonialism. However, the narrative language reflects Conrad’s question about colonialism to a certain extent.