Politics of Irony in Joseph Conrad’s Victory: An Island Tales

Abstract

Conrad's Victory highlights the so– called idealist people by applying discursive strategy that comprises the social and political scenario. The social circumstances of Heyst make its politics inevitable in the mix of the said meaning with the unsaid one. Conrad emerges from the dialectical tension between the outward presentation of Heyst as true revolutionist with better insight of social mobility and his inner reality which is dark and full of ignorance. Heyst portraying himself as idealist who knows everything but in reality he cannot distinguish his enemy, therefore, politics of irony functions as a means of discursive strategy that comprises the social and political scenario that excavate the tension between idealism and practicalism. Axel Heyst lives many years in London with his father who convinced him that the world is full of disappointment and unhappiness and suggested his son that the ideal life is one of isolation. After his father’s death Heyst pursues his father’s suggestions, wandering around the islands, but he cannot follow his father’s ideas. He called himself as idealist and isolated but he can’t avoid the social circumstances that influenced him. Moreover, an ideal love that cannot be expressed in reality is part of the wider tension between ideals and reality. Heyst and Lena seems happy but unable to communicate because they cannot express their feelings. Thus, the use and interpretation of irony always takes place in a certain discursive community.