조셉 콘라드의 소설속에서 말로우의 발전과정

Abstract

This paper is to examine Charlie Marlow's developing process in Conrad's four novels, Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Chance. The main character is a narrator, Marlow, through the four novels. Accordingly we need to trace Marlow's roles and thoughts and narrator's technical merits and limits in his novels.Marlow, however, believes too that there is another huge illusion, the material quest, in our evanescent life. He thinks it satisfies us in that it makes our living easy and somewhat complacent by its material and physical power. Accordingly it is natural there are two types of men in Conradian world. One of them wants the inner growth and the self-perfection, while another seeks the value of life from wealth and power. For these characters of the material illusions, such as the manager of the central station in Heart of Darkness, Chester and Brown in Lord Jim, money is the measure of virtue, of expediency, of wisdom, and of everything.To Marlow these two kinds of illusion seemed to be the great motive and thrust of life. In fact, Marlow has not any antagonism to these illusions, romantic and material. However, he calls our attention to the moral degradation and ethical guilts everyone commits in seeking the material dream. And he exhibits deep personal sympathy with the victims of the romantic dream and with criminal failures of good intention in most of his Marlowian tales. In this sense, he is not an ethical nihilist, although he is finding only a pervasive darkness behind illusive appearances.Marlow has performed the perfect function of an analyser and commentator. He is indeed the pure ego of Joseph Conrad. He reflects the author's feeling and ideals important enough to be held in the course of living.