by Joseph Conrad heart of darkness is a novel concerned with the concept of ’empire’. It also has a rather problematic relationship with the realistic aesthetic that was the predominant literary mode of the 19th century. This article aims to situate Conrad’s novel within an imperialist context, assessing some of the underlying fears, such as the hidden facets of the individual psyche that, to varying degrees, seem to have informed his narrative. The article also considers issues of genre and narrative structure, revealing some of the literary influences and stylistic techniques that characterize the novel.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes in late 19th century fiction was the rise of narrative ambiguity. This is evident in heart of darkness with the result of Kurtz’s Marlow search being anticlimactic and ambiguous.
In terms of genre, Conrad’s novel could be considered to adopt certain Gothic techniques. Perhaps most notable of these are the exotic settings: the Congo and the African jungle. Whereas by the end of the 18th century southern Europe was regarded by most English readers as a strange and exotic region, by the following century the nation’s literary gaze had shifted to Africa, the “dark continent”.
A cursory reading of the novel might see it as part of the popular boy’s own adventures and imperialist tales with the author’s maritime experiences providing authentic narrative detail. heart of darkness It could also be thought that it has a more distant literary antecedent in that of the medieval quest romance. The figure of Marlow traveling up the river in search of Kurtz echoes the stories of the knights and their chivalrous adventures. However, where the heroes of adventure romance and adventure fiction return from their journeys essentially unchanged, but having rescued and changed other people, in heart of darkness this pattern is reversed, indicating a much deeper psychological narrative.
The theme of transgression is evident in heart of darkness, especially if we examine Conrad’s text in relation to the Faust legend. Kurtz would seem to have traded his “moral sanity” for power; however, his renunciation of civilized codes of conduct has subsequently led him to commit unspeakable atrocities.
An omnipresent romantic theme in the novel is that of the double or doppelganger. While many late 19th century novels used fantasy in their depiction of characters with dual personalities, such as Stevenson’s. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Conrad’s geographically remote setting enabled him to portray a character with antithetical tendencies but in an outwardly realistic narrative. Kurtz’s behavior is obviously incompatible with the restrictions of European life, but faced with the prospect of an imperial adventure, he is able to discard his official identity and indulge his rebellious side. For European colonialism, transformation and transgression were easily accommodated in the wilds of the “dark continent” during the 19th century. However, it is essential to realize that Conrad does not endorse this view, as his novel actually subverts the imperialist discourse of much of the adventure fiction of the time.
Kurtz could be considered a degenerate individual, since although he is not clinically insane, he would appear to be “morally insane”; evicted by Marlow’s gruesome encounter with the severed heads of the man’s victims, and the reflection “They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked control in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something missing, some trifling matter.” that, when the pressing need arose, he could not be found under his magnificent eloquence” (III, p.164). When Marlow follows Kurtz ashore to prevent the latter’s return to ‘his’ tribe, he realizes that the object of his quest has succeeded in creating a moral vacuum more terrible than any manifestation of evil, a vacuum where there can be no comparisons. where nothing matters: “It resonated strongly inside him because it was hollow in the center” (III, p.164-165). Kurtz’s dying phrase from “The horror. The horror” (III, p.178) is one of the great ambiguities of the novel, since the reader is not sure what the man is really referring to.
One of heart of darknessThe most crucial elements of is a tension between Marlow’s colonial experiences and the linguistic and narrative forms in which they can be represented. The tale itself is framed as if it were being told, rather than written, to a group of listeners within an outer frame, one of whom functions as a sort of secondary narrator. One important effect of this is to provide distance between Marlow and Conrad himself. Being an unusually short narrative, heart of darkness it also has something of the intensity and unity of effect associated with a short story. The nature of the tale is deeply complex, the prolonged overlap between the external and internal narrator distinguishing the narrative from more generic adventure tales, for example, there are no clear cues as to where the frame ends and Marlow’s story actually begins. The reader must pay as much attention to the way of “narrating” as to the story itself.
heart of darkness employs a richly orchestrated visual structure. Even the forest that borders the Congo is not mere vegetation: it is given a face, lungs and thoughts: “vegetation rioted over the land and the great trees were kings” (II, p.136), and the river itself resembles to a snake that can ‘fascinate’ and ‘charm’ in a truly exotic way. This subtle anthropomorphism is also evident in the scenes with Kurtz, where the natives are described as “disappearing without any perceptible sign of movement or retreat, as if the forest that had driven these beings out so suddenly had drawn them in again when breath is taken.” “. in a long breath” (III, p.167).
There are two sets of horrors that Marlow faces, the first is his access to the greed of company, the second is his access to the incomprehensible power of the wild, a power to which Kurtz has already succumbed. One of the many ways that Conrad integrates these horrors is through recurring images of dark and light, black and white. The blank space on the map that so fascinated the boy Marlow has been transformed into a ‘place of darkness’, and it is this ‘darkness’ that now descends on the adult Marlow and his audience at the end of the novel: a black bank of clouds, and the calm waterway that led to the ends of the earth flowed gloomily under an overcast sky, seemed to lead into the heart of immense darkness” (III, p.187).
The formal structure and narrative content of heart of darkness ultimately, it distances itself from the realist aesthetic of much of the literature of the 19th century. However, it is important to recognize that the novel is still based on longstanding literary conventions and myths. Through the characters of Kurtz and Marlow, heart of darkness he is constantly concerned with notions of the effect of strange and exotic environments on European explorers.