Conrad's use of irony here serves to deflate the murder into a farce, at least in light of Mr Verloc, and yet paradoxically makes the scene more vivid in it's presentation of a emotional contrast to the preceding violent description of the murder. In this case Conrad's irony serves to "make very large the distance between the way things appear to the persons in the story and the way they appear to the reader" (Tillyard: p103), and thus creates an aesthetic standpoint from which to view the action of the text. However, Conrad's use of irony is flexible, as it also allows him to draw the reader closer to the characters. A good example of this is the description Conrad gives of Stevie's reaction to an injured animal:.
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"The dramas of fallen horses, whose pathos and violence induced him sometimes to shriek piercingly in a crowd, which disliked to be disturbed by sounds of distress in its quiet enjoyment of a national spectacle" (Conrad: p49).
In this case it is obvious that Conrad's irony, although appearing to mock Stevie, is instead turned against the crowd, thus revealing to us a degree of fellow feeling in Stevie and our own natures. Berthoud sums this idea up by saying " Here Conrad's irony serves a richer realism, in which the recognition of weakness and absurdity does not rule out the acknowledgement of genuine feeling". (Berthoud: p 6) Thus Conrad's use of irony both detaches and relates the reader to his characters, aiding us in an understanding of the moral vision of the text.
In light of an understanding of Conrad's use of irony we can began to look for a vision of Conrad's morality. However, for a novel that contains so many humanitarians there seems to be very few examples of what we would call moral behaviour. The only character that seems to offer truly moral behaviour is Stevie, as he frequently displays a sense of compassion and social injustice. Upon hearing of the tearing off of an officer's ear via a revolutionary newspaper Stevie is sent into a frenzy of righteous anger, leaving him pacing up and down, ominously and ironically holding the carving knife that will later be used to kill his murderer.
