As I read through Heart of Darkness, I was amazed at the tone of the narrator. He speaks in language that seems to me to reveal the situation in the Congo at the time. The writing is many times written awkwardly, or at least it seems that way to me. It is often unclear exactly what is happening, who is present, and why it is happening.An example of this is in the second section of the story when Marlow tells the story of what he overheard on the steamboat. As he is lying down, he hears the manager and one of his nephews talking and begins to listen in. He figures out that they are talking about Kurtz and then later about someone who supposedly was with Kurtz. He grasps on to their feelings about these two persons and he decides to keep his curiosity to himself.
I think this obscurity of language aids Conrad in portraying the darkness that is eluded to in the title. As a reader of Marlow's tales of his journey, I am brought into the situation with the infrequent dialogue and sometimes careful descriptions of the surroudings. I think it helps me take on the feelings of fear, mistrust, confusion, etc. that Marlow was feeling. And as much as I don't like this style of writing, I do think it is genius on Conrad's part for taking the reader into the story of such an awful time in the history of Africa.
2 comments:
I suppose I can agree that less character dialogue makes a story stronger and makes the reader do more thinking and analyzing.
Yes, Conrad is writing in a particularly late 1800s style that doesn't appeal to the modern reader that much. A little too stuffy for our tastes, perhaps.
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