What Makes Heart Of Darkness So Successful?

Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, written in 1897, is one of the most renowned texts in the English canon of literature. With over a century’s worth of criticism, the novel is still praised in today’s society through its ability to capture and engage the reader’s minds and emotions. Many believe that what makes the novel so successful, and indeed where one should begin to attempt to understand Conrad’s novel, is the way it is written and the narrative itself. Through the rather modern technique of the frame narrator, the character of Charlie Marlow, and the impressionistic style of ambiguity in the novel, Conrad attempts to convey his experience of the colonisation of the Congo in a way that will most relate to, and most shock, his audience.

However, there are more subtle reminders such as the style of language used by Conrad to suggest Marlow’s skill in rhetorical persuasion. Instances of sibilance such as ‘the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily […] swaying her thin masts’ and ‘on silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side’ alongside the use of emphatic repetition illustrated by ‘trees, trees, millions of trees’ serve to create a prose with a certain poetic and lyrical quality to it. Another way Conrad replicates the effect of traditional storytelling, is through the use of ‘delayed decoding’, a phrase coined by Ian Watt. He explains that it is ‘to present a sense impression and to withhold naming it or explaining its meaning until later […] This takes us directly into the observer’s consciousness at the very moment of the perception, before it has been translated into its cause.’ This technique is exemplified when the steamboat is attacked on its way to the Inner station. At first, all Marlow can see is ‘sticks, little sticks […] flying about’ , and then he says ‘arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at!’ Similarly, when Marlow first sees the Inner station he notes ‘slim posts […] ornamented with round carved balls’ , but then later when looking more closely he