A Study on Free Will: Who Sees What in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes?

The aim of this paper is to explore the art of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) as an impressionist writer by focusing on one of his novels, Under Western Eyes (1911) as a psychological novel. In order to understand Conrad's motives and style to write this novel one should start with a sound beginning by looking at his concept of narrative fiction and recurring themes in the novel. The points that are highlighted in the paper are the concept of betrayal and its reasons and results for the characters, and the absence of a father as a driving force. Also, such philosophical issues and questions as 'who sees what?', seeing versus understanding and the impossibility of free will be explored in this article. This study argues that Joseph Conrad as a novelist uses impressionism as a tool to capture and convey the psychological principles concerning human consciousness in the aforementioned novel; in this sense, this article is also an attempt to contribute to the scholarship on Conrad's narrative fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]