Paradoxical Narrative and Cultural Critique: A Study of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes

Abstract

This study adopts the method of close textual analysis to systematically examine the intricate paradoxical narratives in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes. The research reveals how the novel consistently creates paradoxes across its narrative structure, character development, and narrative perspective in order to create a polysemic and ambiguous aesthetic tension. Narratively the dual narrative voices and meta-fictional framework perpetual constantly suspend any definitive "truth," foregrounding Conrad's profound skepticism toward linguistic reliability and fiction's function to reflect reality. In characterization, the diverse revolutionaries—alienated and trapped in contradictions between identity and action—expose through their hypocrisy, chaos, and disorder Conrad's thorough negation of the Russian Revolution. Culturally, the conflicted identity of the narrator, the "English teacher," simultaneously demonstrates the limit of Western-centric perspectives and manifests the author’s critical doubt and a reflection of colonial discourse and Western hegemony. Thus, paradox emerges not merely as Conrad's crucial narrative strategy but as his distinctive mode of critical engagement with history, politics, and culture. This research ultimately demonstrates how Under Western Eyes achieves a synthesis of literary aesthetics and cultural critique through paradoxical narration, offering new perspectives for reassessing Conrad's literary project.