Q.2.

) In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad employs two different first-person points of

view: On one level, the narration made by a traveller, who listens to Marlow’s story and on
the next level Marlow’s narration of the main plot. Does this narrative technique affect and
alter the reader’s interpretation of the story? Substantiate your answer with reference to the
dialogue of Marlow in Chapter I of the text Heart of Darkness-“No, it is impossible; it is
impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence-that which
makes its truth, its meaning-its subtle and penetrating essence” (1000 words).

Introduction

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience.

Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice,
developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about
the plot (the series of events). Narration is a required element of all written stories
(novels, short stories, poems, memoirs, etc.), with the function of conveying the story in its
entirety. However, narration is merely optional in most other storytelling formats, such as
films, plays, television shows, and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through
other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

The narrative mode encompasses the set of choices through which the creator of the story
develops their narrator and narration:

 Narrative point of view, perspective, or voice: the choice of grammatical person used by

the narrator to establish whether or not the narrator and the audience are participants in
the story; also, this includes the scope of the information or knowledge that the narrator
presents
 Narrative tense: the choice of either the past or present grammatical tense to establish
either the prior completion or current immediacy of the plot
 Narrative technique: any of the various other methods chosen to help narrate a story,
such as establishing the story's setting (location in time and space), developing characters,
exploring themes (main ideas or topics), structuring the plot, intentionally expressing
certain details but not others, following or subverting genre norms, and using various
other storytelling devices and linguistic styles.
 HEART OF DARKNESS
...............by Joseph Conrad

Introduction of the Novel:

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the

sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for
a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique
of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and
morality. Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised
people" and "savages." Heart of Darkness implicitly comments on imperialism and racism.
 The novella's setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his fascination for the
[1]

prolific ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad draws parallels between London ("the greatest town on

earth") and Africa as places of darkness.[2]

Heart of Darkness, novella by Joseph Conrad that was first published in 1899

in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and then in Conrad’s Youth: and Two Other
Stories (1902). Heart of Darkness examines the horrors of Western colonialism, depicting it
as a phenomenon that tarnishes not only the lands and peoples it exploits but also those in the
West who advance it. Although garnering an initially lacklustre reception, Conrad’s
semiautobiographical tale has gone on to become one of the most widely analyzed works
of English literature. Critics have not always treated Heart of Darkness favourably, rebuking
its dehumanizing representation of colonized peoples and its dismissive treatment of women.
Nonetheless, Heart of Darkness has endured, and today it stands as a Modernist masterpiece
directly engaged with postcolonial realities.

Heart of Darkness is structured as a frame tale, not a first-person narrative. Marlow's story is
told by the anonymous narrator who listens to Marlow on the deck of the Nellie. Conrad's
frame narrator, like the reader, learns that his ideas about European imperialism are founded
on a number of lies that he wholeheartedly believed. By the end of the novella, Marlow's tale
significantly changes the narrator's attitude toward the ships and men of the past. Only the
narrator — and the reader — understand Marlow's initial point: "Civilized" Europe was once
a "dark place," and it has only become more morally dark through the activities of institutions
like the Company.
Heart of Darkness at a Glance

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness retells the story of Marlow's job as an ivory transporter

down the Congo. Through his journey, Marlow develops an intense interest in
investigating Kurtz, an ivory-procurement agent, and Marlow is shocked upon seeing what
the European traders have done to the natives. Joseph Conrad's exploration of the darkness
potentially inherent in all human hearts inspired the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, although the
setting was moved to Vietnam.

Written by: Joseph Conrad

Type of Work: novella

Genres: colonial literature; frame story

First Published: serially in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899; again 1902, as the third work in
the anthology, Youth, by Joseph Conrad

Setting: on the deck of the Nellie; the Congo River

Main Characters: Marlow; Mr. Kurtz; The Manager; The Accountant; The Harlequin; The

Intended; Kurtz's Native Mistress

Major Thematic Topics: colonialism; racism; savagery versus civilization

Motifs: journey; darkness of civilization

Major Symbols: Kurtz; the Congo River; ivory; England

The story (Summary): Heart of Darkness begins on the deck of the Nellie, a British ship
anchored on the coast of the Thames. The anonymous narrator, the Director of Companies,
the Accountant, and Marlow sit in silence. Marlow begins telling the three men about a time
he journeyed in a steamboat up the Congo River. For the rest of the novel (with only minor
interruptions), Marlow narrates his tale. As a young man, Marlow desires to visit Africa and
pilot a steamboat on the Congo River. After learning of the Company — a large ivory-trading
firm working out of the Congo — Marlow applies for and receives a post. He leaves Europe
in a French steamer.
Heart of Darkness tells a story within a story. The novella begins with a group of passengers
aboard a boat floating on the River Thames. One of them, Charlie Marlow, relates to his
fellow seafarers an experience of his that took place on another river altogether—the Congo
River in Africa. Marlow’s story begins in what he calls the “sepulchral city,” somewhere in
Europe. There “the Company”—an unnamed organization running a colonial enterprise in
the Belgian Congo—appoints him captain of a river steamer. He sets out for
Africa optimistic of what he will find.

But his expectations are quickly soured. From the moment he arrives, he is exposed to the
evil of imperialism, witnessing the violence it inflicts upon the African people it exploits. As
he proceeds, he begins to hear tell of a man named Kurtz—a colonial agent who is
supposedly unmatched in his ability to procure ivory from the continent’s interior. According
to rumour Kurtz has fallen ill (and perhaps mad as well), thereby jeopardizing the Company’s
entire venture in the Congo.

Marlow is given command of his steamer and a crew of Europeans and Africans to man it,
the latter of whom Conrad shamelessly stereotypes as “cannibals.” As he penetrates deeper
into the jungle, it becomes clear that his surroundings are impacting him psychologically: his
journey is not only into a geographical “heart of darkness” but into his own psychic interior
—and perhaps into the darkened psychic interior of Western civilization as well.

After encountering many obstacles along the way, Marlow’s steamer finally makes it to
Kurtz. Kurtz has taken command over a tribe of natives who he now employs to conduct
raids on the surrounding regions. The man is clearly ill, physically and psychologically.
Marlow has to threaten him to go along with them, so intent is Kurtz on executing his
“immense plans.” As the steamer turns back the way it came, Marlow’s crew fires upon the
group of indigenous people previously under Kurtz’s sway, which includes a queen-figure
described by Conrad with much eroticism and as exoticism.

Kurtz dies on the journey back up the river but not before revealing to Marlow the terrifying
glimpse of human evil he’d been exposed to. “The horror! The horror!” he tells Marlow
before dying. Marlow almost dies as well, but he makes it back to the sepulchral city to
recuperate. He is disdainful of the petty tribulations of Western civilization that seem to
occupy everyone around him. As he heals, he is visited by various characters from Kurtz’s
former life—the life he led before finding the dark interior of himself in Africa.
A year after his return to Europe, Marlow pays Kurtz’s partner a visit. She is represented—as
several of Heart of Darkness’s female characters are—as naively sheltered from the
awfulness of the world, a state that Marlow hopes to preserve. When she asks about Kurtz’s
final words, Marlow lies: “your name,” he tells her. Marlow’s story ends there. Heart of
Darkness itself ends as the narrator, one of Marlow’s audience, sees a mass
of brooding clouds gathering on the horizon—what seems to him to be “heart of an immense
darkness.”

Narrative Technique

Conrad uses a variety of techniques to advance his narrative and to imbue it, like a parable,
with a quality of universality derived from specific experience. The technique of the narrative
frame, while pervasive in the medieval tale-telling of such poets as Geoffrey Chaucer and
Giovanni Boccaccio, became in Conrad's hands a newly fashioned instrument that allowed
the narrator to be a distant observer of events he had witnessed. As is the case in many of
Conrad's works of fiction, Heart of Darkness is related by an anonymous narrator who
identifies so strongly with Marlow that the two characters' identities merge. The anonymous
narrator describes events of Marlow's recent past, but Marlow must speak for himself as he
relates his distant past a complex psychological matrix of which the anonymous narrator has
no knowledge.

The interplay between the narrator's perception of Marlow's journey and Marlow's own
account establishes irony in both point of view and narrative voice. Conrad's highly charged
and sometimes poetic language, combined with his use of light and darkness, highlights the
author's powers of observation and evokes a range of emotion transferred from narrator to
reader. Conrad's language, moreover, not only gives a clear sense of physical place but also
hints at the effect of exterior setting upon the interior landscape of the soul."

"There are two narrators: an anonymous passenger on a pleasure ship, who listens to
Marlow’s story, and Marlow himself, a middle-aged ship’s captain. The first narrator speaks
in the first-person plural, on behalf of four other passengers who listen to Marlow’s tale.
Marlow narrates his story in the first person, describing only what he witnessed and
experienced, and providing his own commentary on the story."

****