In a well-known passage from his preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” Conrad writes, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel – it is, before all, to make you see. That – and no more, and it is everything” (NN xiv; emphasis is Conrad's). Watt suggests that the connotations of the word see “obviously include the perception not only of visual impressions, but of ideas.” Most readers agree and interpret the word see figuratively in this instance. Nevertheless, Conrad also wants to make his readers see literally. In a letter to Blackwood, he is even more emphatic about his intent to represent literal seeing: “I aim at stimulating vision in the reader. If after reading Part 1st you don't see my man [Lingard] then I've absolutely failed.” In fact, literal and figurative “seeing” are inextricably linked in Conrad's works, and his “seeing” is far reaching; it concerns perception of events and physical objects and their relationship to knowledge, as well as its relationship to questions about the nature of human existence and the nature of western civilization.

In order to make the reader “see,” Conrad employs impressionist techniques to represent his characters' perception of objects and events and to demonstrate that each perceptual experience is unique.