Critics have debated over whether Victory is too schematized or allegorical in its conception. Although the story is credible as realism, if one accepts the reality of the villains, it has also been attacked as lacking sufficient realism.

Without reviewing the different arguments here, it may be noted that Conrad employs a narrative of surface realism which contains obviously symbolic overtones.

In its moderate realism, the novel is reminiscent of Conrad's earlier Malayan stories, but the use of names and situations that contain a literary resonance is obvious. Axel, for instance (according to Robert Hampson's "Introduction" to the Penguin edition), Heyst's first name, appears to have been taken from the hero of the fin de siecle symbolist drama Axel by Villiers de Isle Adam, a work of late French romantic aestheticism that Conrad was acquainted with. Other characters in the narrative have been given symbolic significance as well...