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Saturday, December 28, 2019
The Limits of Language in Heart of Darkness Essay
The Limits of Language in Heart of Darkness From the very beginning of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad traps us in a complex play of language, where eloquence is little more than a tool to obscure horrific moral shortcomings. Hazy, absurd descriptions, frame narratives, and a surreal sense of Saussurean structural linguistics create distance from an ever-elusive center, to show that language is incapable of adequately or directly revealing truth. Understanding instead occurs in the margins and along the edges of the narrative; the meaning of a story â€Å"is not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze†(105). The title of the novel is itself misleading, because Conrad†¦show more content†¦No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light†(107). Because Conrad finds it impossible to truly reach the interior of an idea or person, notions of â€Å"light†and â€Å"progressâ⠂¬ quickly become absurd; he inverts the traditional hierarchy of meaning. Where in King Leopolds Ghost, Stanley and Leopold speak of progress as though it is a precise point on a map, in Heart of Darkness, the journey is much hazier and fraught with gaping holes  in watering pails and broken-down steamers alike. This is a world where captains â€Å"engaged in the noble cause†die in bloody disagreements over a pair of hens, and the Company compensates cannibals for their boating services with nine-inch pieces of brass wire (109). The Companys chief accountant keeps up the carefully coiffed appearances of a â€Å"hairdressers dummy†even in the midst of the jungle and â€Å"the great demoralisation of the land†(119). Marlows convoluted journey to find Kurtz coils around the center in an absurd, almost Kafka-esque fashion as each station gives way to yet another, always claiming to be the most â€Å"central†or â€Å"inner,†much like Rus sian nesting dolls. Marlow confronts a series of surfaces, exteriors like the edges of the forest or â€Å"a whirl of black limbs,†but never the interior kernel of truth (139). Even when Marlow locates Kurtz at last, at the both the dramatic and physical center of the story, his true essence still escapes him; he is only a â€Å"shadow†â€Å"unsteady, long, pale, indistinct,Show MoreRelated Degeneration of Kurtz, Colonialism, and Imperialism in Heart of Darkness1025 Words  | 5 Pagesand Colonialism in Heart of Darkness   Kurtz was a personal embodiment, a dramatization, of all that Conrad felt of futility, degradation, and horror in what the Europeans in the Congo called progress, which meant the exploitation of the natives by every variety of cruelty and treachery known to greedy man. Kurtz was to Marlow, penetrating this country, a name, constantly recurring in peoples talk, for cleverness and enterprise. Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness is a portrait of theRead MoreAnalysis Of Conrad s Heart Of Darkness1729 Words  | 7 PagesIn Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad limits the amount and activity of his female characters, especially through the protagonist Marlow. 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