Analysis of Heart of Darkness: Characters, Symbols, and Themes, Study notes of Information Literacy

Download Analysis of Heart of Darkness: Characters, Symbols, and Themes and more Study notes Information Literacy in PDF only on Docsity! Dr Souad Baghli Berbar Literary Analysis of Heart of Darkness 1 Teacher’s name: Dr Souad Baghli Berbar Level: L3 Module: Study of Literary Texts Course Number: TD 2 Course Title: Literary Analysis of Heart of Darkness Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Setting The complexities of the setting are part of the innovations introduced by Conrad within Modernist experimentation. Time: All the events happened at dusk, half-way between day and night, a middle-way between light and darkness. The frame story starts at dusk and ends late at night but Marlow’s trip took many months. Time is no longer linear but the narrative jumps to and fro with the use of flash-backs. Place: The novella also takes us back forth from one place to the other even if the frame story takes place on the Nellie on the Thames River. Point of view Conrad asserted that Heart of Darkness is “experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case.” It draws heavily on autobiographical and historical elements and there are many correspondences between places, events and even persons as seen in Conrad’s biography. Matadi, Kinshasa and Stanley Falls correspond to the Outer, Central and Inner stations respectively. However, many changes were introduced, especially the unnamed narrator, to provide the necessary distance between Marlow’s fictitious experiences and the author’s real ones and to ensure detachment which is an essential characteristic of Modernist literature. As Joyce is reputed to have said “the author should be like in the universe, present everywhere but visible nowhere”. Heart of Darkness is given the quality of a tale of hearsay told to us by us by a first, anonymous narrator as it was told to him by Marlow, enabling Conrad to play with multiple points of view. In addition, the dream quality of the story adds another dimension; that of someone telling us someone else’s dream. Characterization Only Kurtz, Marlow and his predecessor Fresleven are given names. They can be said to be reverberations of the same person: Marlow replaces Fresleven (walks into his shoes) and Kurtz is Marlow’s alter ego (double) and his choice of nightmares. He identifies with Kurtz as they are both similarly described as “emissaries” of civilization and Marlow is Kurtz’s privileged witness until his death. The other characters are not given names but called after their functions. They are types rather than individual figures, symbolic representatives of Conrad’s themes. Marlow is the second narrator and the main protagonist. He is not simply a mouthpiece for Conrad who took pains to ensure detachment when dealing with autobiographical material. Dr Souad Baghli Berbar Literary Analysis of Heart of Darkness 2 - he is at the same time involved in the story (inside): the main subject of which is his progress in understanding both the reality of colonialism and the reality of human nature - and a commentator (from outside) giving hints to the reader and through the skill of Conrad enables him to see more than he himself sees: “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.” Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus. (recall physical description of the first episode) Marlow is a credible character, a fallible human being with normal capacity for good and evil and subject to change through understanding. the meaning of the novel grows out of his expedition and his return as a changed man to tell the story. He is an exceptional seaman with an active imaginary mind and sees more than ordinary people. He has a capacity for moral discrimination: he sees at first the true nature of the faithless pilgrims, the accountant, Kurtz etc.. He obtains his post through recommendation like the ancient Roman colonist “had friends in Rome” and like Kurtz and the manager. Like Kurtz he is represented as “an exceptional and gifted creature”, “an emissary of light” but he is aware that this makes him “an impostor”, suggesting that one cannot serve colonialism without being corrupted by it. There are contradictions in him. He “cannot bear a lie” yet, lies to the brick- maker, to Kurtz’s intended and tearing off the postscript from Kurtz’s report is also a kind of lie. Conrad creates a character with contradictions, not perfect or superior but sensitive and humane who rejects the whites’ exploitation of the natives and feels close to their “sheer primitiveness”. As a narrator he is a voice (when night falls on the Nellie the other characters just hear his voice without seeing him) but unlike Kurtz who is also a voice (eloquence) he makes us discriminate between a gift used to give pleasure and edify (entertain and teach) and one used to exalt and deceive. Kurtz represents the best and the worst of which the white man is capable. He is a special being, “an emissary of pity, science and progress”. Marlow admired his humanitarianism and idealism and was eager to meet him. Every one thought high of him (admiration of the Harlequin, envy of the pilgrims and adoration of the natives) but when Marlow saw the “dried human heads” on the poles surrounding his house, the image is destroyed: an absolute idealist turned into an utter savage, a universal genius, a civilizer transformed into a wild beast, more savage than the so-called savages themselves. He symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of western civilization which is just a glittering varnish behind which lurks a barbarian savage, the embodiment of greed (ready to kill his saviour for a little ivory) the personification of evil, the epitome of egoism “My intended, my ivory, my station, my river”.. This transformation of virtue into vice is due to his lack of “restraint”, “there was something wanting in him – some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence”, hollow inside. There are contradictions in him as well. His report full of “burning noble words” and “every altruistic sentiment” concludes with “Exterminate all the brutes!” He ordered the attack on the boat but is taken on board without difficulty; he leaves for the ceremony in the jungle but comes back with Marlow without a shout to call his tribesmen.