40-41). In the remainder of this essay, we will examine the relationship between the characters of the story and the narrative technique that Conrad employs in telling it.
First of all there is Marlow, the principal narrator. He is most familiar to readers, perhaps, for his appearance in "Heart of Darkness." In "Youth," he makes his first appearance in Conrad's work.
In all the stories in which he appears, Marlow must be
taken as a choral character in the fullest sense--for
all practical purposes the voice of Conrad himself; and Marlow's meditative history--not the train of physical events reflected in that history--must be taken as the reader's primary object of interest. (Palmer 2)
Yet Marlow is not, strictly speaking, the actual narrator of the story. That person is unnamed; formally at least he must be the authorial "I," Conrad himself (that is, Marlow's alter ego). This framing narrator appears only at the very beginning and end of the story, and he cannot really be called a character in it, since we learn nothing of him but his opening and closing observations.
Yet this nameless frame narrator is not wholly without significance, for he does not serve entirely as a passive pair of bookends, but as a true frame, putting the people and events of the story in context. We begin with a group of men, presumably middle-aged, sitting around a table. They are "a director of companies, an acountant, Marlow, and myself" (Conrad 179)--the embodiment, that is, of the British Establishment. Yet what gives them weight is not their standing in society ashore, but their common heritage in the sea; even the lawyer, the "fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honor--had been chief officer in the P. & O. service in the good old days when mailboats were square-rigged at least on two masts" (Conrad 179).
From this unnamed narrator and his companions we focus on one o...