Narration

Narration is the most obvious technique that Conrad uses in Lord Jim. In the first line of the first chapter, the reader is introduced to the title character in the following way: "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he. . . made you think of a charging bull." For the first four chapters, narration continues in this way, in the third person, with an unseen, omniscient narrator, who introduces Jim and gives details about his background. Then, starting in the fifth chapter, Conrad introduces a first-person narrator, Marlow—a character from some of Conrad's earlier stories—who continues to tell Jim's story to the reader: "And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim." Marlow talks of Jim for the remainder of the book, sometimes giving his own view of experiences he had with Jim. The first of these recollections describes how...