HEART OF DARKNESS - Narrative Technique

The novel Heart of darkness adopts stream of consciousness narration because it does not fallow the unity of time it goes on according to the consciousness of the narrator. It has the First person (Peripheral Narrator), First Person (Central Narrator).

 From Chapter one we can see that consciousness play a major role in the way of narrating the story starting from the description of the Thames river, the description of the Roman invasion, the description of Marlow’s interest in sailing the Congo river. The narrator narrates according to the way of his consciousness. He gives a deep description on the things and the people he met during the journey at the Congo River.

The Flash back technique is used in narrating the story. There are two narrators the peripheral narrator tells the present stage of Marlow. And the central narrator is Marlow himself who tells the story to his fellow friends at Thames River aboard the Nellie. 

First, our unnamed narrator introduces the frame for the story (the evening spent aboard the Nellie). Why do we start out like this? Well, because we have another narrator, we can stop Marlow's story and hear commentary on the Thames River and its surroundings. We also get some great little lines about Marlow's voice, with the implicit parallel to Kurtz. In short, the nameless narrator is an opportunity for more commentary, more connections, and more flexing of Conrad's literary muscles. And then there's this little tidbit about Marlow 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 those misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine. If the meaning of this story is similarly on the outside, then we need to be outside this story (i.e., on the Thames) to understand Conrad's parallels between the Thames and Congo Rivers, Europe and Africa, white Europeans and black Africans, etc. Pretty neat. Listen Up Obviously, the frame is crucial to Conrad's whole literary agenda. But once Marlow starts yapping away, most of the novel is told from his point of view. We have to ask: just how accurate is his portrayal of Kurtz as a madman? Just how frightening is the interior?

CREDIT GOES TO Mr.JESSIE NIRMAL, Bharathiar university