The Imperial Eyes: Reading Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and The Secret Sharer

Abstract

The research examines similarities between Joseph Conrad’s white-European- adventurer voice in Lord Jim and The Secret Sharer, both seafaring narratives written in the heydays of European imperialism. This research work seeks to question the rationale after Conrad’s sympathy toward European victims and empathy toward other non-European and native-African people. The nature of authority that Marlow, Conrad’s mouthpiece and narrator, seems to establish in both texts is imperial, including description of landscapes, the people and their culture. The present work attempts to unmask psychological ambiguities inherent in Conrad from his socio-political standpoint, and the underlying ambition behind Conrad’s memorial reconstruction of Jim and the motif implicit in Conrad’s narratives.