The aim of this paper is to analyze the nature of main characters' vision in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes and to examine how vulnerable they are to narcissistic, or self-centered, imagining. Consistent with the title of the novel, the text is full of references to the "eyes" and the vision of almost every character. Razumov, the protagonist of the novel, experiences illusions and hallucinations as a result of betraying his alter ego. At the same time that he feels guilty about the crime he has committed, Razumov lives in fear of being kept under constant surveillance. Razumov gives himself up to a "morbidly vivid vision" by projecting his own fear and guilt onto the world around him. As he imagines the moral consequences of his crime in everything he sees, Razumov's visual perception becomes distorted. Much like the protagonist, the narrator of the novel shows an equally limited vision. His short-sighted approach to people and events causes him to miss the point of Razumov's confession scene. Owing to his romantic illusion, the narrator sees the confession scene as a love scene, failing to achieve any sympathetic, imaginative, or intuitive understanding of the most critical event in the narrative. Of special importance is the fact that the problem of illusion is not restricted to the novel's protagonist and narrator alone; it is also true of the novel's other main characters. For them, the world is like "a blank page" on which they project their own ideas, hopes, prejudices, and desires. Locked in his subjective and narcissistic perception, each character creates for himself a vision of the world in his own image, shaping it into the mould his distinctive imagination invents. The question of illusion proves to be ubiquitous and inevitable, exemplifying "the invincible nature of human error." One of the implications of the Conradian characters' limited and distorted views of the world is modernist fiction's interest in perspectivism. Conrad's condemnation of their very one-sided perceptions of reality is indicative of perspectivism, which is the widely used modernist technique of portraying characters, objects, and events from different perspectives or points of view. Modernist writers' concern with perspectivism reflects their aesthetic view that they can create a more authentic or original representation of reality, if they develop their sense of perspectivism further.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the nature of main characters' vision in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes and to examine how vulnerable they are to narcissistic, or self-centered, imagining. Consistent with the title of the novel, the text is full of references to the "eyes" and the vision of almost every character. Razumov, the protagonist of the novel, experiences illusions and hallucinations as a result of betraying his alter ego. At the same time that he feels guilty about the crime he has committed, Razumov lives in fear of being kept under constant surveillance. Razumov gives himself up to a "morbidly vivid vision" by projecting his own fear and guilt onto the world around him. As he imagines the moral consequences of his crime in everything he sees, Razumov's visual perception becomes distorted. Much like the protagonist, the narrator of the novel shows an equally limited vision. His short-sighted approach to people and events causes him to miss the point of Razumov's confession scene. Owing to his romantic illusion, the narrator sees the confession scene as a love scene, failing to achieve any sympathetic, imaginative, or intuitive understanding of the most critical event in the narrative. Of special importance is the fact that the problem of illusion is not restricted to the novel's protagonist and narrator alone; it is also true of the novel's other main characters. For them, the world is like "a blank page" on which they project their own ideas, hopes, prejudices, and desires. Locked in his subjective and narcissistic perception, each character creates for himself a vision of the world in his own image, shaping it into the mould his distinctive imagination invents. The question of illusion proves to be ubiquitous and inevitable, exemplifying "the invincible nature of human error." One of the implications of the Conradian characters' limited and distorted views of the world is modernist fiction's interest in perspectivism. Conrad's condemnation of their very one-sided perceptions of reality is indicative of perspectivism, which is the widely used modernist technique of portraying characters, objects, and events from different perspectives or points of view. Modernist writers' concern with perspectivism reflects their aesthetic view that they can create a more authentic or original representation of reality, if they develop their sense of perspectivism further.