Discuss the reliability or otherwise of specific narrators employed in the texts that you have studied on this module.
When discussing the reliability of specific narrators within a text there is a need to look at the consistency of the narrators and also their trustworthiness. It is also important to assess how the author has used the narrators within a novel and to what extent this use has on a readers view of reliability. The novels Heart of Darkness By Joseph Conrad and A Hero of Our Time By Mikhail Lermontov both contain more than one narrator. Heart of Darkness has two narrators, an anonymous passenger on a pleasure ship who listens to Marlow's story and Marlow himself. The first narrator speaks in the first person plural on behalf of four other passengers who are listening to Marlow's tale. Marlow also speaks in the first person. A Hero of Our Time has three narrators: the travelling officer who speaks in the first person and who is one of two narrators in `Bela', and the sole narrator in `Maxim Maximych'. The second narrator in `Bela' is Maxim Maximych and the final narrator is Pechorin.
In Heart of Darkness Conrad's use of Marlow as a literary device is quite important and in using Marlow to tell the story Conrad moves away from the typical nineteenth century novel's omniscient narrator. We do not have the impersonal narrator who tells us not only what happens to the characters but also what is going on in their minds. We are never allowed to know more than Marlow himself, and Marlow knows only what he perceives through his senses. Thus we are never directly told what motivated say the manager or Kurtz. Instead we get Marlow's speculations on what their motivations might have been and we can guess at a wider unders...
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...n Books, London. (1995) Pg 49
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Penguin Books, London. (1995) Pg 50
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Penguin Books, London. (1995) Pg 50
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Penguin Books, London. (1995) Pg 28
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Penguin Books, London. (1995) Pg 50
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. Penguin Books, London (1966) Pg 55
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. Penguin Books, London (1966) Pg 69
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. Penguin Books, London (1966) Pg 24
Bibliography
Barrett, A. A Wicked Irony: The Rhetoric of Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time." Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd Bristol Classical Press (1989)
Lothe, J. Conrad's Narrative Method. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1989)
The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway. Nick tells the story of the things he experienced when he moved to New York City to work in the bonds business. The reader is told the story, which includes Nick’s perception and opinion in certain events. The reader wants to believe that Nick is a reliable narrator and he seems to be one, in the beginning. Nick describes himself as “one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (Fitzgerald, 59). Although, Nick thinks this of himself, there are many things in the story that hint otherwise. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick is not a reliable narrator. This is seen through his negative judgments of others, his friendship with Gatsby, and because he does not know everything about Daisy and Gatsby.
1.Who is the narrator of the story? How is he or she connected to the story ( main character, observer, minor character)?
“The effect of the narrator's telling of this story upon the reader, as well as of the mariner's telling of his tale upon the wedding-guest, make narration itself fundamental (as it is in Frankenstein)” (Dr. Michael Rossington) Therefore, this essay will talk about the different narrators found in both literary works and its narrative structure.
What cannot be ignored about the ending of his story, however, is what Marlow ended up doing. When it came down to Marlow telling Kurtz’s Intended about her deceased husband, he continued on to let her believe he lived and died a moral, good-natured man. What strikes deepest is when she asked for his last words, Marlow lied completely and said, “The last word he pronounced was- your name”. He went on to justify himself because it would have been “... too dark altogether” to tell her the truth. Not only did Conrad intend Marlow’s quest for his own self-knowledge, but for that of the reader as well, leaving them to see how in order to keep society functioning, it will never be aware of its true darkness at
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
In Heart of Darkness, all of Joseph Conrad’s characters seem to have morally ambiguous tendencies. The most prominently morally ambiguous character is Kurtz, whose distance from society changes his principles, and leads him to lose all sense of decorum. Conrad takes a cynical tone when describing Marlow's journey. Marlow's voyage through the Congo gives him insight to the horrific, dehumanizing acts that his company and Kurtz conduct. Conrad creates a parallel with the tone of his writing and the misanthropic feelings that the main character experiences. Furthermore, Conrad creates a frame story between Kurtz and Marlow, adding to the symbolism and contrast between contextual themes of light and dark, moral and immoral, and civilization and wilderness. After being sent on a horrific journey into the Congo of Africa, as an agent for the Company to collect ivory, Marlow finds the infamous and mysterious Kurtz. Kurtz, who has totally withdrawn from society, and has withdrawn
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
...o, while the novella’s archetypal structure glorifies Marlow’s domination of Kurtz. These two analyses taken together provide a much fuller and more comprehensive interpretation of the work. Conrad presents the idea that there is some darkness within each person. The darkness is is inherited and instinctual, but because it is natural does not make it right. He celebrates – and thereby almost advises – the turn from instinct. By telling Marlow’s tale, Joseph Conrad stresses to his audience the importance of self-knowledge and the unnecessity of instinct in civilization.
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's tale of one man's journey, both mental and physical, into the depths of the wild African jungle and the human soul. The seaman, Marlow, tells his crew a startling tale of a man named Kurtz and his expedition that culminates in his encounter with the "voice" of Kurtz and ultimately, Kurtz's demise. The passage from Part I of the novel consists of Marlow's initial encounter with the natives of this place of immense darkness, directly relating to Conrad's use of imagery and metaphor to illustrate to the reader the contrast between light and dark. The passage, although occurring earlier on in the novel, is interspersed with Marlow's two opposing points of view: one of naïveté, which comes before Marlow's eventual epiphany after having met Kurtz, and the matured perspective he takes on after all of the events leading up to his and Kurtz's encounter.
The epiphany of Marlow in "The Heart of Darkness" has significance in the overall story. The theme of the story is how every man has inside himself a heart of darkness and that a person, being alienated like Kurtz, will become more savage. Marlow, in his epiphany, realizes the savagery of man and how being alienated from modern civilization causes one to be savage and raw. This savagery is shown especially in the death of the helmsman, which is where Marlow's epiphany takes place, but the savagery is also show in Kurtz. The link that Kurtz has to the natives and the death of the helmsman is that the natives work for Kurtz.
Baker, Joseph E. “Irony in Fiction: ‘All the King’s Men.’” College English. Vol. 9. JSTOR.
In Joseph Conrad’s short story, “Heart of Darkness,” the narrator, Marlow language, and point of view to convey the conflicting emotions he has about Kurtz due to the image he fabricated Kurtz to be, and the reality of Kurtz. Marlow’s language throughout the piece reveals to the reader how he feels about Kurtz and how he perceives Kurtz’s actions. Marlow’s point of view also allows him to support both of his perceptions of Kurtz because he doesn’t see only bad or only good in
The novel, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is literally about Marlow’s journey into the Belgian Congo, but symbolically about the discovery of his heart and soul during his journey, only to find that it is consumed by darkness. He realizes that the man he admired and respected most, is really demonic and that he may be just like him. He is able to come to this realization however, before it takes the best of him.
Now, one might argue that because the narrator thinks this story “is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men”, then he is biased: ergo, he’s an unreliable narrator (1940). However, being biased in and of itself is not the sole criterion for a narrator be...
Heart of Darkness is a story full of irony and deception. At one point, Conrad made a very interesting point. He suggested that the light is used to indicate deceit in Heart of Darkness. Conrad uses the character of Marlow to make use of his own thoughts and views about the people in the Congo. He feels pity for them as he sees them falling down carrying heavy packages and Kurtz commanding them like a battalion of troops.