매장된 인간과 박제된 나비:콘래드의 『로드 짐』에 나타난 서술전략과 제국주의

Abstract

Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim is a complex work that intricately weaves together a series of contrasts ranging from reason and action, morality and art to imperialist attitudes and their critiques into an uneven fabric of tensions and antimonies. This essay aims to explore how such complexity inherent in the work gives rise to the distinctive qualities of Marlow’s storytelling. Marlow’s narration displays unique expressive and figural characteristics shaped in response to a number of important episodes and situations. These features, obtained from meticulous observations and memorable dialogues—style and tone, metaphor and symbolism—extends beyond each given context and spreads throughout the work through repetition and variation, constructing a spectrum of multiple meanings. This spectrum of meanings and suggestions, which appears to form a coexistence of different ideas, does not portray the narrator’s stance as neutral, aiming for equal weight among different positions. Instead, Marlow’s narration amounts to an active interpretation, which carefully considers the conflicts and tensions between these viewpoints in terms of his own perspective: It is a self-reflexive consciousness engaged in shaping his narrative identity though constant negotiations with these conflicting positions and cultural settings. Thus, the spectrum of meanings traversing unique situations and conflicts reflects the interpretive authority of the narrator, whereby the shifts and conflicts in different contexts and their implications are all integrated into a cohesive range of stylistic and figural variations and adjustments.This essay seeks to explore the narrator’s stylistic and figural maneuverings and strategies, and reveal how they are informed by an overarching ideological frame of representation that can be characterized as imperialist.