Joseph Conrad's Narrative Methods

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)'s works has attracted great attention in the literary world. There are many critics who study his works .The Joseph Conrad Society were founded and it publishes twice a year a periodical which studies Joseph Conrad's works solely: The Conradian. Conrad's works mainly fall into three categories: sea fictions, jungle fictions and social political novels. His legendary life and his exotic root make him conservative and anxious, doubting everything, which in turn creates a special perspective of the world. Mixed with imagism and symbolism marks, his narration techniques show his desire of seeking new development in the tradition. Conrad is expert in exquisite, complicated multi-voice narration, separated and obsessed time sequence, complex images and symbols. This broken, multi-level, indirect narration, unlike the linear order, not only deepens the visionary impression but also strengthen the moral paradox.Conrad published The Secret Agent in 1907, which is regarded as his transitional work. The Secret Agent is a "simple tale" about a multifold-identity secret agent Verloc. Under great pressure from the foreign embassy, Verloc designed Greenwich Outrage, making use of his brother-in-law Stevie, who accidentally stumbled over the bomb and was blown up into pieces. The police found Verloc is the main suspect. After Verloc's wife Winnie knew the truth, she killed Verloc and later committed suicide. Many critics objects to its unpleasant political meaning and characters, considering Conrad to have created a world absolutely without any positive side, and some even blamed this novel to be too obscure and to be as still reading as a dissertation on metaphysics. Meanwhile, the mastery narrative techniques Conrad showed in this novel had also attracted critics' attention, especially his authorial narrative perspective variation and irony. However, most of the critics only focus on only one aspect of his narration and there is no complete work on the whole novel's narrative methods.There are three chapters in this thesis. The first chapter analyzes the dualist structure Conrad designed for The Secret Agent. Many critics have touched on theaspect of the overt and covert plot in the novel, while I hold that this dualism is not only on the level of the plot but also includes the arrangement of the characters on the sides of the law and the anarchist. Almost all the main characters in the novel have their counterpart in the rival side. Besides, the interviews and interchanges which serve as pushing up the development of plot are also balanced.The second chapter discusses Conrad's favourite authorial narrative, which contains authorial distance, authorial perspective and evaluation. As the plot develops, the authorial distance and perspective towards every character is changing. This flexible variation of authorial narration enables Conrad completely lead the reader's viewpoints and feeling. Thus, the reader is unconsciously invited by the author to understand the novel in the way he wanted.The third chapter deals with Conrad's application of irony, which are prevalent throughout the whole novel, even to the extent of "corrosive". Irony in this novel can be called "structural irony" for its use in narration. The irony in plot design, the way of telling the story and authorial attitudes helps a lot in realizing his theme in this novel that it is a world of "madness and despair".The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental exploration of the narrative methods used in The Secret Agent and its relation to the realization of the novel's theme.