Narrative Technique/Frame Narrator in Heart of Darkness
Narrative Technique/Frame Narrator in Heart of Darkness
Narrative Technique/Frame Narrator in Heart of Darkness
becomes hazy and fails to illuminate the very subjects that his language is
presumably trying to clarify.
Before Marlow speaks, however, Conrad allows the reader to glimpse
the narrators values and assumptions. He first speaks of the Thames as
a venerable stream that exists to perform unceasing service to those
who have tamed it: The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at
the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its
banks. To the narrator, nature exists to serve mankind, especially mankinds
commerce
and
trade.
This
idea
of
mankinds
dominance over the earth is questioned by Marlow later in the novel,
as he looks out at the jungle and asks, What were we that had strayed
in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt
how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldnt talk, and
perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? Conrads reason for framing
Marlows narrative thus begins to become apparent: The narrators
values and assumptions are challengedalthough indirectlyby Marlows
story, and the reader is meant to perceive these two points-of-view
as two different understandings of mans relationship to the natural
world and the people in it. Although the narrator states that the Thames
leads to the uttermost ends of the earth, he never imagines that his
civilized London could ever have been (as Marlow calls it), one of the
dark
places
of
the
earth.
Such a contrast between the narrator and Marlows attitudes is more
readily seen in the way the narrator speaks of what he sees as Englands
glorious past. According to him, the Thames is a river that has served
the nation in efforts of both trade and exploration. The narrator finds
glory and pride in his nations 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. While these
knights may have resorted to the sword, they have also passed the
torch, and, in doing so, made the world a more prosperous and civilized place.
(Recall the painting by Kurtz that Marlow sees at the Central Station.) The
narrator
knows
the
men
and
their
ships
and
speaks
of them in a reverential tone. Europes 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.