Narratives of Deception: Confronting Disorder in Heart of Darkness Público

Abstract

Abstract
Narratives of Deception: Confronting Disorder in Heart of Darkness
By Geoff Gilbert

The layered narrative structure of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness cannot be overlooked, as it often is, when attempting to make any consummate judgment regarding the work's worth or meaning. Acknowledgment of Marlow's exposition within a story being told by an omniscient narrator reveals Marlow as a man suffering primarily from a fractured identity who wants to condemn his society, but is tragically unwilling to do so, for recognition of the duplicity of the imperial endeavors that his society implicitly supports would undermine his own identity as a civilized and virtuous man and expose him to a condition that is to be feared far more than hypocrisy or injustice: disorder. The rationalizations that Marlow must entertain in order to maintain this civilized conception of himself exposes his society's primary function as an established structure through which its citizens can ascribe meaning to an inherently formless world, and depicts identity, which is often derived from civilization's ideology, as nothing more than a personally constructed narrative that we tell ourselves.

Understanding Heart of Darkness through this context spares the work the relegation to the enigmatic status of an immanent contradiction afforded to it by countless Conradian exegetes, and focuses Conrad's boldest assertions toward the impact ideology has on the individual's perception of his surroundings and the process by which he defines himself. Though Conrad's pessimistic vision is often interpreted as nihilistic, I believe it can be more aptly described as frustration regarding the self-sustaining nature of ideology. That is to say, the fundamental assumptions of human social orders are precluded from examination, even when the application of their core ideals produces evident brutality and hypocrisy, as they are necessary for people to assign meaning to an inherently formless world. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad does not seek to undermine any political or ideological field, he aspires to explore the fundamental human conditions that support the creation and continued human reliance upon such fields.

Table of Contents

Introduction… 1

I. An Ominous Preamble… 12

II. Divergent Reactions to Hypocrisy… 16

--The Congo … 17

--The Unnamed European City … 23

III. Blind Attempts at Coping With Disorder … 27

--The Chief Accountant … 28

--Clerk Looking After Upkeep of Road … 30

--The Central Station … 32

--The Russian Trader: "Kurtz's Last Disciple" … 35

IV. An Arbitrary Notion of Human Civilization … 37

--A Menacing, Denuding Force … 38

--Work as a Comforting Certitude … 43

V. Imagining Kurtz … 46

--Kurtz as Projected by Marlow … 47

--Incongruent Realities … 52

--A Tragic Misunderstanding of ‘The Horror' … 59

VI. Kurtz's Eternal Disciple … 66

--A Dishonest Lie … 67

--Conrad's Critique of Marlow … 74

VII. ‘Savage' Impositions of Order … 77

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	English
Degree	BA
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, General Literature, English Literature, Modern
Palabra Clave	Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Rosinberg, Erwin , Emory University
Committee Members	Higgins, Geraldine, Emory University McCauley, Robert, Emory University

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