Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fic - Joseph Conrad [15]
The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine (p. 40).
We are presented here with images that illustrate not only two different narrative methods but two distinct epistemologies. On the one hand, in the first sentence we have the typical seaman’s story depicted as presenting no, interpretive problems whatsoever: telling a tale is a straightforward process whose aim is to reveal an unambiguous and easily accessible kernel of truth for the listener’s edification. On the other hand, in the second, more elaborate sentence, Marlow’s stories are depicted (as the primary narrator will later term them) as utterly “inconclusive” (p. 42): telling a story in this manner is aimed not at providing definitive enlightenment, but rather, as Ian Watt puts it, to lead the listener to become aware of “a circumambient universe of meanings which are not normally visible, but which the story, the glow, dimly illuminates” (Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, p. 180). We are thus apprised from the outset that the tale we are about to hear will resist traditional interpretive techniques, will undermine our sense of how to read— indeed, will destabilize our very notion of “meaning” itself. This passage, in fact, is one of the classic statements of a modernist epistemology, and it thus serves as a useful primer for how to approach not only the story Marlow will proceed to tell but also Conrad’s text as a whole.
The aspects of Marlow’s storytelling method that impede our efforts to arrive at an unambiguous understanding of his tale’s meaning also hinder us from gaining a clear apprehension of the events themselves, something attested to by many first-time readers of the text who have difficulties following the plot. Such complications are in keeping with the modernist inclination for making narrative increasingly a function of individual subjectivity—a process that writers of the subsequent generation, such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, would take still further. With broad brush strokes, however, the plot of the story that Marlow dimly conveys through ruminations interspersed with bits and pieces of events runs as follows. Having secured a position with a Belgian ivory-trading company through the contacts of his Brussels-residing aunt, Marlow travels to Africa, where he is to captain a ship up the Congo River in order to recall a company agent named Kurtz who has cut himself off from all communications. Upon arriving in Africa, Marlow finds that the company conducts its business with terrible cruelty toward its Congolese employees. He also finds that the competition for power among the company agents is ruthless, and that Kurtz is widely resented by his colleagues for his alleged humanitarianism. When Marlow and his crew finally arrive at Kurtz’s compound several months later, however, they discover that the idealistic ivory trader has established himself as a virtual deity among the indigenous people, whom he has been ruling with bloodthirsty savagery. Mad and gravely ill, Kurtz is forcibly retrieved by Marlow and then dies on the return voyage. During their brief acquaintance Marlow finds himself drawn to Kurtz, despite his knowledge of the latter’s monstrous conduct, and Kurtz reciprocates by entrusting him with various personal effects. Soon after, a now ill and disoriented Marlow returns to Europe, where he recovers his physical health but remains profoundly disturbed by the memory of his experiences. Some months later, in an apparent effort to effect closure, he meets with Kurtz