Constructing a narrative to impose order on an unknown idea or place is a natural human impulse. Designed to transform raw realities...from floating objects into units of knowledge (Said 67), stories about the strange, the unreal, and the newly discovered inevitably arise. It is equally inevitable that these narrative theories, novels, descriptions, or whatever form they take, are nested in a historical, political, and social discourse that their texts cannot transcend. An important question in engaging with a narrative is therefore not only what the text intends to say, but also how that intention is expressed. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novel particularly suited to undergoing this type of questioning. Conrad's classic novel is often hailed as a text that runs counter to the imperialist notions that were prevalent at the time of its writing. Reading more closely, however, one can see that the way the text formulates its ideas relies less on anti-imperialist sentiment than on Edward Said's notion of a binary system between us and them; from the West and the East. Indeed, as Conrad constructs his narrative, he also constructs an inevitably Western vision, pitting the known against the unknown, the impenetrable against the real, and ultimately creating a binary positioning between the African natives and the Europeans who inhabit their country. . plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Conrad's novel does not rely on any third-person narration. On the contrary, almost the entire story is framed by a character, Marlow, who constructs a story himself. Thus, as soon as the sailor begins to recount his journey to the heart of Africa, the reader can expect to hear about his experience through the prism of displacement: Marlow's story is not only constructed to give a meaning to his journey, but also to situate himself (Saïd 20), ideologically, in relation to the Africa he is crossing. In other words, by virtue of the nature of the narrator, the kind of fundamental distinction between East and West (Said 2) manifests itself not only in the physical experience of Marlow's journey, but also in the style of thought (Saïd 2) in and through which the journey is told. The incident in the novel that most clearly conflates these physical and ideological viewpoints occurs early in Marlow's adventures, when he enters the office building of his future employers. On the plan of the waiting room, he told us, there was an immense amount of red, good to see at any time, because we know that real work is being done there... a purple stain, to show where the happy pioneers of progress are. drink the happy lager... I was going into the yellow. Death at the center (Conrad 74). Much of this description on Marlow's part is clearly ironic; the joyful pioneers of progress fall victim to the sailors' skepticism regarding the motivations of their fellow adventurers and imperialism in general. Nevertheless, beneath Marlow's comments lie allusions to what Said calls imaginative geography, an accepted grid for filtering Africa, the strange or unfamiliar space, into the consciousness of the Europeans who travel there. Although we do not know exactly what the colored borders represent, we do know that the distinctions are given based on Europeans and their occupation of the continent: the red and purple territories appear to be controlled either by a European nation or by the Marlow society in particular. This type of positional superiority may at first glance seem undermined by the fact that Marlow is heading to a placedeath at the center (Conrad 74), a place physically and ideologically reserved for the West (Anderson 173-5). However, as we continue reading, we see that the center to which Marlow moves does not resemble the center-periphery structure usually used: the yellow region is fascinating and deadly like a snake (Conrad 74). It is clearly not a European center, but one which, for Marlow, contains all the attraction of the Orient that Said describes: exotic, dangerous and perhaps above all, unknown. To know this sometimes dangerous unknown, in fact, having more than its inhabitants is necessary to construct a European vision of domination (Said 32). Knowledge and power are therefore irrevocably linked: to know a place is to know exactly what is good for it and its population, to be more civilized, to be superior. Conversely, the indigenous population of such a place can only be backward, inferior, ignorant. Traces of this can be felt in Marlow's journey along the serpent-like river, as he describes the smell of mud, primeval mud...the great stillness of the primeval forest (Conrad 96 ). The river and the forest themselves are located in the dawn of time; by deduction, the inhabitants are not more advanced. In fact, this attitude can be seen even more explicitly in Marlow's description of the cannibal group he commands: I don't think any of them have a clear idea of ​​time, as we have at the end of countless eras. They still belonged to the beginning of time and had no heritage to teach them so to speak (Conrad 115). Just as the office map placed the African peoples spatially in relation to the European imperialists, here Marlow places them temporally, again with the Europeans in an obviously dominant position. Also note that Marlow does not use any proper names, such as Europeans or Africans, to describe this temporal difference. Instead, he uses the vaguer terms, them and us. Despite the use of less specific pronouns, the reader knows exactly who he is talking about and for whom: by using we, he represents the West, and they, the other, the indigenous population in general. In Said's description of the Orient, knowledge implies not only power, but also possession (Said 34-5). Through the sailor, who has no thirst for power, we see this in an opposite way: the African jungle is constantly characterized as impenetrable and therefore unreal (Conrad 93). Marlow struggles with this concept of the impenetrable throughout his travels: even his stay in the least remote station before heading into the jungle provokes an exclamation: "I have never seen anything so unreal my life” (Conrad 91). The only things that seem real and reliable are those that can only be identified as Western to Marlow. When the sailor finds a nautical instruction manual written by an Englishman, he is therefore excited: The simple old sailor, with his words of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle... in a delicious sensation of 'having stumbled upon something unmistakably real (Conrad 111). On the other hand, Kurtz, the agent Marlow seeks, desires this knowledge and power which does not affect Marlow. Just as Said shows that the British officials controlling the Egyptian government believed they had created Egypt (35), Kurtz, in a sense, made the environment in which he lives indigenous rituals, and the natives who surround his camp l 'worship, believing him to be a god (Conrad 118). Kurtz undeniably knows the African tribe in the area and has power over them. So, at least in his mind, he is in possession of the place to the extent that he can create the place himself. Kurtz effectively transforms everything thatsurrounds him in possession: as Marlow describes it, you should have heard...my ivory, my station, my river...all belonged to him (Conrad 126). And, just as all of Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz (Conrad 127), all of Europe that underlies Heart of Darkness seems to contribute to the making, to the representation of Africa. Such a representation must necessarily include a description. of the African people. According to Said's study of Orientalism, what arises from the Western spatial and temporal distribution of its colonies (as shown in the map and Marlow's comments above) is a hierarchical system of representative figures, or tropes. In other words, what we readers can expect is a typical and general indigenous representation (Said 6), which polarizes the distinction (Said 46) between the West and the rest. This overall and global representation is in fact the one found in Conrad's novel. Indeed, there is another binary positioning here: the reader gets almost no precise description of the Africans, while the white characters are often described in detail. The company's chief accountant, according to Marlow, is something of a vision with white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snow pants, a clean tie and patent leather boots. He was amazing and had a penholder behind his ear (Conrad 84). Less than two paragraphs later, we get our first description of the African natives: lines of dusty, splay-footed Negroes arrived and departed (Conrad 85). Most descriptions of the Africans are in the plural: streams of naked human beings, spears in their hands...with wild looks and wild movements, poured into the clearing (Conrad 140). And, although Marlow acknowledges that these natives were not inhuman (Conrad 108), he nevertheless shudders at the thought of their humanity like yours. A notable departure from the pluralization of African natives occurs in the descriptions of two of Marlow's workers: one who steers the ship and one who operates the boiler. As Said asserts, for the imperial West, the eastern colonies are only useful in the modern world because powerful, modern empires brought them…out of decline. Such a principle can be applied to the apparent distinction between these two African men: both are described because, according to Marlow, they are useful. Marlow, paying particular attention to the death of his African helmsman, begins with a warning: Perhaps you will find this regret strange for a savage who was worth no more than a grain of sand in a black Sahara (Conrad 128 ). Despite this, Marlow missed him because he had done something... for months I had him behind me, a helper and an instrument. For the ship's boilermaker, this point of utility is even more explicit. He is the first African man described individually, but his description is only linked to his use: he was an improved specimen... He was useful because he had been educated (Conrad 109-10). Third deviation from the generalization. of a black Sahara appears clearly in the representation of the African woman linked to Kurtz. She is described in great detail: draped in striped and fringed fabrics, proudly treading the earth... She was wild and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent (Conrad 142). This portrayal differs strikingly from Marlow's portrayal of the white women he meets, who are all delicate and fair, and live in a world of their own... It's too beautiful overall (Conrad 77). Beyond the sailor's attitude towards women, the striking difference between these two portraits lies in the pure and simple sensuality, 1978.