Book #4 Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Critical and Contextual Discussion

I’m back writing after a hectic week where I reaped the fruits of my inability to plan my time well. This is probably the book that helped me begin to understand Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I remember when I first read Heart of Darkness, I was lost in the jungles of Africa for large swathes of the book. However, reading Cedric Watts’ book has helped to provide a framework by which to approach the novella.

          Watts’ discussion divides Conrad’s book into three sections: pre-departure, journeying into the Congo, and back to civilisation. In each section, he looks at some of the literary techniques Conrad employs and discusses how these create certain effects in the reader and how identifying them might elucidate the ‘meaning’ of the text. There are three techniques I would like to mention here: the oblique narrator, delayed decoding and the covert plot.

          The oblique narrator is the first-person narrator (hence the primary or ‘frame’ narrator) who narrates the first-person narration of another character in the book. This is probably the first time I have encountered this technique. What it does is give Conrad the flexibility to play with Marlow’s telling of his experience in the Congo. This means that Marlow does not need to tell a story in a straightforward manner, which he in fact does not do. We can then regard him as an unreliable narrator which makes us question the things he says, lending ambiguity and uncertainty – which is pretty much what Conrad’s book is about.

          Also, this means that Conrad is able to use ‘delayed decoding.’ How this works is that Marlow sees the effect that images, events, people have on him, and only later understands what these actually are or mean. This technique creates a sense of surprise because something seemingly unimportant or comic might be later disclosed as significant or even horrifying. Furthermore, it adds to the air of mystery and foreboding prevalent in the book, because revelation comes slowly and gradually as we travel, with Marlow deeper into the Congo. Also, there is a sense that we are sharing Marlow’s journey. I know certainly that in reading other books, we seem to be participating in the adventure. But this technique that Conrad uses ties in also with the bigger themes of the book, which is interesting if we actually spend time to study these books like literature students or critics.

          Finally, an interesting aspect of the book is the idea of the covert plot. This plot is definitely not the main plot, neither is it a subplot; it is rather a plot that we as readers will not be able to identify (even after multiple readings), however, not knowing it will not leave us completely in the dark. It is a plot that helps to make sense of the story, and might influence us to interpret the text differently. Watts suggests that not many authors do it (thankfully, otherwise I’ll be covert plot-hunting every time I read a book), but Conrad uses it very effectively. The covert plot in Heart of Darkness stated concisely is that the manager of the Central Station wishes Kurtz dead in order to earn promotion. Thus, it is possible to immediately condemn Kurtz as a man who succumbed to the darkness, but in light of this, we could see Kurtz as victim and that because help does not come earlier, he finally yields to the darkness.

          Conrad does not make this darkness clear. It could mean Africa; it could mean the darkness within each individual; it could mean the darkness of the civilised world. And that is what makes Heart of Darkness so thought-provoking. We just cannot be sure! It seems to me that Conrad wants us to think and not jump to conclusions. He wants us to ponder about the state of the human condition. And I think that he has managed to capture one sense of it: that our hearts are indeed dark, but often we cannot accept it, and so we hide behind a veneer of civility and illusory light. And that is why we deceive ourselves. We keep up this image because the truth is too horrifying to behold. So, the light is there, but instead, we often choose darkness – we think that is safer.