Joseph Conrad’s

Contribution to The
Modernist Novel
• Introduction
• The Frame Narrative
• The impressions tic style and delayed
decoding
• The mythic aspect
 Introduction
• Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness had its genesis in his personal
experience working on a Congo River steamer in 1890. With the help of a
relative in Brussels he got the position as captain of a steamer for a
Belgian trading company. He had to leave early for the job, the previous
captain was killed in a trivial quarrel, Although it did not begin as a
political statement, Heart of Darkness was seen as an attack on
colonialism and a criticism of racial exploitation.

• Besides the Hypocrisy of imperialism, Many different interpretations have

been put on this book .Some see Kurtz as the embodiment of all the evil
and horror of the capitalist western society. Others view it as a portrayal of
one man’s journey into the primitive unconscious and reality versus
unreality
THE FRAME
NARRATIVE
 Modernist Features of HOD
• Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) is an early and important example of modernist
experimentation in English fiction Heart of Darkness was published in the Late Victorian-
Early Modern Era but exhibits mostly modern traits:

• a disbelief of generalizations as a way of defining truth

• an interest in an exploration of the psychological
• a belief in art as a separate and somewhat privileged kind of human experience
• a desire for transcendence mingled with a feeling that transcendence cannot be achieved
• an awareness of primitiveness and savagery as the condition upon which civilization is built,
and therefore an interest in the experience and expressions of non-European peoples
• a skepticism that emerges from the notion that human ideas about the world seldom fit the
complexity of the world itself, and thus a sense that multiplicity, ambiguity, and irony--in life
and in art--are the necessary responses of the intelligent mind to the human condition.
 The Two Narrators
• Heart of Darkness is a frame story (a story within a story). The first narrator sets the scene,
describes the boat and the Thames, and introduces Marlow, “sitting cross legged on the deck like a
European Buddha”

• The narrator finds glory and pride in his nation's past, assured in his knowledge that "knight-errants"
of the sea have brought "sparks from the sacred fire" of civilization to the most remote corners of
the earth. The narrator knows the men and their ships and speaks of them in a reverential tone.
Europe's past is the history of brave adventurers conquering the unknown, and, in the process,
transforming "the dreams of men" into "the seeds of commonwealths" and "the germs of empires.“

• Clearly, this vision of Europe as a civilizing and "torch-bearing" force does not accord with Marlow's
portrayal of it in his narrative. as Marlow learns that the narrator's version of imperialism is a lie. The
Europeans he meets are not "knight-errants" but "faithless pilgrims"; the Company does not bring a
"spark from that sacred fire," but death, and instead of a bright "jewel," flashing "in the night of
time," the Company is a "rapacious" and "weak-eyed devil." Marlow's story thus challenges the
reader — who may hold some of the same opinions as the narrator — to view the men of the
Company not as men engaged in a great mission, but instead as men engaged in "a weary pilgrimage
amongst hints for nightmares."
 Openness to Interpretation
Marrlow: a reliable narrator!
• The use of a frame narrative triggered its openness to interpretation. “The yarns of seamen
have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut… [But
to Marlow,] the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the
tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze.” Heart of Darkness does not reveal
clearly its meaning . its meanings evade the interpreter; they are larger than the story itself. The
narrator.

• Marlowe, the narrator, describes how difficult conveying a story is: "Do you see the story? Do
you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt,
because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity,
surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by
the incredible, which is the very essence of dream . . .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. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone . . .“

• The idea of the unreliable narrator is introduced by this quote, it laso hold the resonance of
freudian theory
 The Frame Narrative
• With one narrator opening the story and describing Marlow telling a story, we
have a series of voices in play, each functioning as interpreters of facts and events.
Each voice filters the "truth" in its own way, choosing the details to be included
and excluded from the narrative.
• The Narrator and Marlow do not share the same vision concerning the colonial
experience. Which introduced the multiplicity of point of view in the narrative.
• The story within a story technique also distances Conrad as the author. Readers
are unsure whether they are reading the tale at second- or third-hand. It becomes
difficult to distinguish whether the opinions expressed are Conrad's own or the
narrator's.
• the novel became open to interpretation as the omniscient narrator is replaced by
the Unreliable narator Which raises the question of Truth and reality.
• These perspectives are often conflicting and are always open to a variety of
interpretations. Whose point of view is to be trusted? Which narrator and which
character is reliable?
THE MYTHICAL
STRUCTURE
 The Frame Narrative
• The use of a frame narrative which was common in the
medieval tale-telling. Oral storytelling brings with it
associations of fables, legends, and epic journeys.
• As Readers settle down with the sailors on the boat to listen to
Marlow's narrative. Readers are introduced to the idea that
the tale Marlow tells is a somehow a mythical quest.
•  

• , 
• This rationale certainly seems to apply to
Conrad's work as the novel presents an image of
the products of European culture run rampant in
Africa on ivory expeditions. Kurtz is aligned with
Europe and can be seen as a symbol of the
continent's ambitions, hubris, and genius. 
Heart of Darkness as the Archetypal Quest
• Heart of Darkness can be seen as a modern myth
• The book is divided into three chapters that indicate changes in Marlow's
attitude towards Kurtz or the idea of Kurtz.
– In Chapter One, Marlow begins to build a picture of Kurtz from other people's
descriptions of him. Chapter Two sees Marlow's growing obsession with meeting and
talking with Kurtz. In Chapter Three, Marlow and Kurtz actually meet.
• In a quest, the story develops as a central character, the hero, meets and
overcomes a series of obstacles on the way to accomplishing a task.
• But is there a conventional hero? It is unclear whether the hero is Marlow or
Kurtz.
– Marlow is a flawed hero - for most of the book he lacks insight and is
uncertain of the nature of his own quest, nor is it clear why he is
obsessed by Kurtz.
– Kurtz himself remains an enigma. This quest yields an empty prize: the
mystery, the task, remains incomplete, "unsolved."
• As a literary type, folklore uses representative figures to tell stories that
work like allegory - expressing ideas that are meant to communicate social
truths, human truths, and ideas that extend beyond the actual narrative.

• It also gives the quality of universality derived from specific experience. Not
only does folklore entertain, but it passes on the culture and behavior
models of a people, which psychologist Carl Jung called “the collective
unconscious.”

• The important point here is to acknowledge that the book attempts to

communicate something universal; ideas that go beyond the narrative and
which thereby use the narrative as a vehicle of folklore or myth, laden with
cultural, social and/or human truths.
• What these truths are, exactly, is open to interpretation.
IMPRESSIONIM
AND DELAYED
DECODING
meaning of the story, represented by the shell of a nut or the haze around the glow, is
larger than its narrative vehicle, the kernel or the glow; but the sensory quality of the
metaphor, the mist and haze, is essentially impressionist.”[2] Most of the story is told
from the perspective of Marlow, and much of the time he seems unsure what is
happening to him. Through the narrative device that Watt has defined as “delayed
decoding,” Conrad records first the impressions that an event makes on Marlow and
only later Marlow’s arrival at an explanation of the event. Thus, when his boat is
suddenly attacked by natives loyal to Kurtz, Marlow is unable to explain why his
helmsman suddenly falls down: 
“…the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little
camp-stool…. my feet felt so warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had
rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both very still gleaming dark-red under
the wheel.”
The reader realizes only gradually what has happened and thus shares in the
experience of Marlow’s perplexity. A similar structure dominates the narrative on a
larger scale, as Marlow continually jumps around in the telling of his story, layering
impressions from various times in his attempt to make sense of his experience.
This resulted in breaking up the temporal continuity associated with the nineteenth-
century novel. His use of multiple narrators undermines the nineteenth-century
convention of narrative omniscience. This technique for forcing the reader to share the
impressions of the characters became central to modernist fiction