The 20th century stands out not only as an age of growth or improvement, but also as an age of absolutely transcendent recreation. This new era, presenting the world with radical new ideas and inventions, has ushered in shocking changes and never-before-seen notions and theories about man's views. This new phase of humanity led to the conception and birth of Modernism. Joseph Conrad, in particular, rushed to close a door on the Victorian age and end the century of optimism, rebuking the human race's ideologies of virtue and purity with the more skeptical realities of the desolation of true human nature and power of unfortunate circumstances. Conrad's novel Lord Jim fit into the supporting pillars raised by earlier Victorian valor and laid the foundation for his notions of high modernism; his characters and their reactions to unresolved situations, and even the situations themselves, present the absence of the divine and the holy to take a skeptical stance that men, imperfect as they are, face an existential existence. Through his work Conrad brazenly declares that human nature, in accordance with Robert Stevenson's concept for The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is composed of a dual nature. Instead of focusing on such grandiose descriptions of good and evil, Conrad tackles a more subtle and basic exploration of the human spirit. Jim as a prime example, Conrad demonstrates that humanity “is an enigmatic paradox of strength and weakness” (Wester 3314). In the case of Jim, whose struggle is not so much the duality of good and evil as a question of the integrity of his character, a much more complicated war is fought in which he must face the dangers of human weakness and walk a long road. balanced line between "...... half of the sheet ...... tube who would like to visit it. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. Print.Guerard, Albert J. “Conrad: The Novelist.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Sharon Hall. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research Company. Print. Morf, Gustav. “The Polish Heritage of Twentieth-Century.” Ed. Laura De Mauro. Detroit: Gale Research Company. 1992. Print.Sadoff, Ira. "Sartre and Conrad: Lord Jim as an Existential Hero." Lord Jim." Main plots. Ed. Lorenzo Mazzeno. Fourth ed. vol. 6. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2011. Print.