Marlowe's Function as a Narrator in 'Heart of Darkness'

Marlowe is the main and the most important character of Joseph Conrad?s novel ?Heart of Darkness?. Marlowe?s importance increases with the fact that he is the narrator of the story of the journey in to the heart of darkness. Marlowe is the person who navigates the ship of plot from the beginning, slowly and gradually and steers it to its final culminating point. Joseph Conrad also wrote a novel about Marlowe called ?Youth?, a narrative before beginning ?Heart of Darkness? in 1898. He wrote most of his other major works- including ?Lord Jim? which also features Marlowe. So, Marlowe is an important character which is the integral part of some of Conrad?s novels, as Willson Follett says: ?Half the discussion of Mr. Conrad?s way of getting his stories told in talk is necessarily the discussion of Marlowe, known to us in ?Youth?, though unnamed in ?Folk?, ?Lord Jim? and ?Chance?. Another critic Guerard says about Marlowe?s role in ?Heart of Darkness?: ?Substantially and in its central emphasis ?Heart of Darkness? concerns Marlowe???..and his journey towards and through certain facets or potentialities of self.?
Marlowe is much like Conrad. For him too the journey begins in a sinister office in Brussels, that ?white sepulcher? of a city. He too, like Marlowe walked two miles through the jungle to Kinshasa before reaching his ship. And he too went up the river to an inner station toiling? along slowly on the edge of black and incomprehensible frenzy.? Conrad also says himself in this regard: ?Youth? is a feat of memory?.a record of experience???.?Heart of Darkness? is experience too; but it is experience pushed a little (only a little) beyond the actual facts of the case.?

Marlowe?s function as a narrator is many faceted. In a sense he is a kind of helper to Conrad. Marlowe gives space to Conrad. It becomes very easy for Conrad to express his views and observations through Marlowe because Marlowe renders the work of Conrad as impartial. Conrad was a polish by birth, so, it is very easy to charge him of the favour of the natives of Congo and of a personal bias with Englishmen. But Conrad tells the tale of atrocities and the cruelties of British people from the mouth of Marlowe. He tells that the true motives of the British people are:
?To tear treasures out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.? The complete inefficiency of the officers at the outer station is also told to us by Marlowe: ?Everything else in the station was in a muddle-heads, things, and buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness.? So, Marlowe as a narrator makes the whole story of imperialism a dreamlike tale which seems unreal to its list ness. When Marlowe tells another story to Kurtz?s intended from the real one, it seems more unreal.

Marlowe is also a tool in Conrad?s hands with which he easily avoids the charge of subjectivity. Marlowe is a technique which renders Conrad?s work an objectivity and universality.
Marlowe as a narrator also gives the coherent meaning to the whole narration without him the whole plot would be fragmented, loose and rambled. Marlowe is the joining factor of the all events and incidents.
Marlowe as a narrator helps Conrad to analyses the characters of the novel more scrutinizing and deeply, as Willson Follett says: ?Marlowe, is of course, a subdivision of Conrad?s personality, objectified for the added sensibility of enabling the author to converse with himself, walking audibly round his subject and examining it from both sides atonce?.It is through the eyes of Marlowe that we get closer to the character like the Manager and Kurtz. Marlowe describes the Manager in such words: ?He was obeyed, yet inspired neither love, nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness.? We watch through his eyes, not for various thrills and adventures, but for the generally relevant psychological truths to be revealed. To get at the full significance of Kurtz, Conrad moves warily and musingly around his accumulated material, listening to many voices, soliciting different opinions and comparing many peripheral experience .And to achieve these effects Conrad had to abandon his omniscient view point of things and exploit the strategy of the involved narrator (Marlowe). I t is the final analysis of Marlowe about Kurtz with which we begin to see Kurtz in a new light .Kurtz no more remains a cruel and savage character but a human being like us who has been tempted by the evil and power, and became the man-God.

Though Marlowe successfully fulfills the purposes of Conrad but it is important not to view him as merely a surrogate for the author. He is not a puppet in the hands of Conrad. He has his own life, his own character, his own view and his own conflicts. He is a character of flesh and blood. We first see him as a meditative soul with: ?sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped.? Marlowe?s inner conflict, when he has to choose from the nightmares and when he has to lie to Kurtz intended proves him a life like and three dimensional character.

Marlowe is a complicated man who anticipates the figures of high modernism while also reflecting his Victorian predecessors. Marlowe is in many ways a traditional hero, tough, honest, an independent thinker, a capable man. Yet he is also ?broken? or ?damaged?, like T.S Eliot?s ?J. Alfred Prufrock? or William Faulkner?s ?Quentin Compson?. The world has defeated him in some fundamental ways, and he is weary skeptical, and cynical. In his attitude towards evil he is no less than Oedipus, he gauges his eyes out, inflicting the lie upon himself and then crawling back for shelter to the ?beautiful world?.

Marlowe is a choral voice or choral or choral in the voice of man as John A. Palmer observes: ?Marlowe must be taken as a choral character in the fullest sense.? Marlowe provides with the details which can not be provided normally and he also tells about the feelings of audience.
Marlowe also philosophizes as he speculates: ?The mind of man is capable of anything ?because everything is in it, all the past as well as well as the future.? Marlowe puts forth philosophical ideas; he comments, suggests ways to redeem and also moralizes as Edward Crankshaw says; ?The most obvious thing that Marlowe does is to moralize.? So, Marlowe is a complete chorus in himself as Eloise Knapp Hay comments:? Sophocles might have done the same with the members of his chorus of citizens?.
Marlowe mediates between the figure of the intellectual and that of the working tough. While he is clearly intelligent, eloquent and a natural philosopher, he is not saddled with the angst of century?s worth of Western thought. At the same time, while he is highly skilled at what he does, he repairs and then ably pilots his own ship. He is no mere labourer. Work for him is a distraction, a concrete alternative to the pasturing and excuse making of those around him.
Marlowe can also be read as an intermediary between the two extreme of Kurtz and the company. He is moderate enough to allow the reader to identify with him, yet open minded enough to identify at least partially with either extremes. Thus, he acts as guide for the reader. Marlowe? intermediary position can be seen in his eventual illness and recovery. Unlike those who truly confront and at least acknowledge Africa and the company men, who focus only on money and advancement, Marlowe suffers horribly. He is thus ?contaminated? by his experiences and memories, and like Coleridge?s ?Ancient Mariner?, destined, as purgation or penance, to repeat his story to all who will listen.
Marlowe is like Conrad who constantly identifies himself with the savages and the natives of Congo. Through-out the novel, Marlowe pronounces the kinship between the howling screaming Congolese and the rest of humanity as he says: ?They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-like yours-the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.? The identification climaxed by the look given to him by the dying Negro helmsman, a look creating a ?subtle bond? between them. ?And the inanimate profundity of the look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.?

So, we can conclude a thesis that Marlowe is a multidimensional character who very skillfully proves himself as a competent narrator and as an individual character in the novel. He helps Conrad in many ways and works in the novel as chorus and mediatory factor. So, his usefulness in ?Heart of Darkness? can not be denied.