A Long Journey Of Moral Quest

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is acclaimed as one of the most outstanding British writers of the twentieth century. Among all his works, Lord Jim has been regarded as a landmark and one of the world's literary masterpieces. Since its publication, the novel arouses the great interest of a lot of critics. Many scholars interpret the great novel from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, sociology, phenomenology, and post-colonialism etc. The research in and abroad has become an indispensable context for the following study on Lord Jim.Ethical critics claim that the interpretation of literary works should return to its moral and humanistic concerns to the society and human beings. It is the task of literature to explore the moral complexity in life and it is the task of criticism to find out the sense of morals in literature. Ethical criticism offers a good perspective for Conradian study in our country. Lord Jim is a work of extraordinary modernity with rich moral significance. By depicting the process of moral quest of the characters, Conrad displays the moral quest dilemma, moral crisis and moral quest of modern people. This thesis explores the theme of moral quest in the light of ethical criticism and reveals Conrad's moral concerns to modern people.Conrad holds the belief that moral discovery should be the object of every tale. This thesis firstly introduces the moral background and Conrad ethical thoughts, and then analyzes the active process from moral crisis to moral quest of characters. At last, the thesis points out Lord Jim is a perfect combination of form and meaning by analyzing the moral theme embodied in Conrad's impressionistic writing. From Jim's fate and the main narrator, Marlow's quest, the reader can not only achieve some moral enlightenment, but also feel Conrad's deep moral concerns to the moral situations of modern people. Between the two important elements– duty and imagination, Jim walks up to an extreme, and this causes his death. But Marlow's life offers a choice to the reader that the best life is somewhere in an active middle ground between these two elements.In short, Conrad depicts a long journey of moral quest in the novel. He exposes the moral situations in a unique way, which arouses people's contemplation upon the morality and life in modern society.