Oh Lordy Jim..

"[T]he horror, the horror" - Heart of Darkness

Here are just some characteristics of modernism that I gleaned from the first 30 chapters:

1. There is an “emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing … an emphasis on how seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on what is being perceived” (Klages, 165)

This is evident in the way Marlow sees/reads Jim’s reactions and the focus on seeing and perceiving: “I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions” (Chap. 5), “He drew up his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say – no other expression can describe the steady deliberation of the act” (Chap. 13), “I strained my mental eyesight …” (Chap. 19)

2. There is a “blurring of distinctions between genres” (Klages, 165)

I found the first 30 chapters to be like an interview (?) and a captain or rather water clerk’s log all mixed in one. Does this count?

3. And obviously, there is “an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives”, which I suppose is the root of my confusion/frustration with the text.

The sudden bridge in chapter 4:
“And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly” – It moves from Jim at trial to how Marlow would remember him, to Marlow’s memory of setting his eyes on Jim for the first time at the inquiry and then back to the inquiry and so on and so forth.

In addition there seems to be reluctance on Jim’s part for his story to be told: “His voice ceased” (Chap. 13), he leaves a lot hanging – “It was as if I had jumped into a well – into an everlasting deep hole…” (Chap. 9)

(300!)

P.S.: I got the characteristics of modernism from Literary Theory: a guide for the perplexed. Klages, Mary.

P.P.S.: My version of the text is terrible compared to the “toilet paper” text, so only chapters provided, my apologies!

Lord Jim , the bane of my essaying life

In the midst of essay-writing time, Lord Jim comes trotting along. Things would be much easier if it was a short text or it was written in a more comprehensible style, but no, Conrad had to make my life even more miserable by frequently losing me in the course of the narrative. And so, I am thus compelled to write a post about this horribly confusing choice of multiple narratives that render readers like me confounded.

First, let me clarify what I mean by ‘multiple narratives’ in Lord Jim. Yes, the novel is written mostly from the point-of-view of Marlow, who interestingly functions as a third person narrator retelling the story of Jim to an audience – both the listeners and us readers. Yet, within this retelling, he refers to other characters that give their own perspectives of the events that occur or of Lord Jim himself. The result is we have differing readings of the character of Lord Jim, and we never really know (or at least, I don’t know, till the part I’ve read up to) who he is. Which reminds me of the issue of the real ‘India’ in A Passage to India: no one is able to give us a definitive representation of his character. In a way it kind of reflects real people: we have multiple sides to ourselves that no one reading by any person, including ourselves, will produce an apt presentation of who we are. Just like Lord Jim, our real selves will never be quite fully understood, nor aptly represented by others. In the process of telling Jim’s story, Marlow and others bring in their own ideas of who he is, and these are ultimately tainted by their own impressions of and interactions with him.

-Yuen Mei-

Achebe and His Image of Conrad

While talking to a fellow year 4 , Sonia about the Achebe article and how I felt about it, the similar topic of whether Kipling was a racist in his representation of the colonised in his novels came up as well. Sonia pointed out the Edward Said essay on Kim in her Penquin edition (which i don't have)and how he posited that Kipling should not be overtly ridiculed by today's post-colonial academia as a racist as he was writing (to paraphrase)"within the colonial sphere of his time". I had previously expressed my opinion to Sonia that Achebe was rather over-reacting towards Conrad's representation of the Other,

I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today.

pg 11 for example,

and had failed to recognise the context in which Conrad was writing, as a product of his time "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz [Conrad]" (71). Rather, I would posit the use of "reading against the grain" or deconstructive reading to "reclaim" the text in recognising the erroneous representation of the Other and “righting wrong”, but stopping short of criticising the author per say.

Another bone I have to pick was concerning Achebe's argument about Conrad's anxiety in the "lurking hint of kinship" in the novel. I would have to disagree. For brevity's sake, I will focus on the Congo/Thames representation. Rather than an antithesis, I felt that it was rather to draw a parallel of the Thames to the Congo, a reminder of Britain's past as the colonised rather than coloniser. A return to the "darkness" of its past, appealing to colonial anxiety rather than Conrad's.

(300 words excluding asides and citations)

The Novella: A Fitting Choice for Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

While there is much contestation over the definition of a novella, most agree that 1) it is a piece of prose fiction that is longer than a short story but shorter than a novel and 2) Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (HD) is one such text.

I would like to suggest that the significance of Conrad's choice of genre, the novella, goes beyond that of a lighter read for students such as ourselves. Given the subjects that Conrad tackles, the novella is an appropriate form for his text.

What exactly does Conrad tackle in HD? (Arguably), HD reflects upon the late 19th-early 20th century anxiety of the fragmentation and collapse of empire. This is best seen through the character of Kurtz, the face of colonialism gone 'mad', 'echo[ing] loudly within [itself] because [it is, in reality,] hollow at the core'. In addition, a sense of uncertainty pervades his text with words such as 'inscrutable', 'indefinable' occurring. This is compounded with a smattering of ellipses that ultimately deny 'comprehension'. This emphasizes the text's modernist aesthetic, with an acute sense of awareness that one is never able to know something fully, and cannot claim to.

Going back to Conrad's choice of genre, the novella is a departure from the conventional triple-decker Victorian novel that tries to enclose the world within its covers. It is instead a more modest piece of work that reflects skeptically on the tradition of assuming the 'representability' or 'wholeness' or of an entity, be it a person, a place, a story, a history, etc. The novella, with its absence of 200 more pages, is therefore an appropriate form within which Conrad can place his tale, because the 'meaning of an episode [lies not] inside like a kernel but outside', always elusive, just 'as a glow brings out a haze'.

(300 words)

- Kelly Tay