Essay on Language in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness -- Heart Darkne

Use of Language in Heart of Darkness      Ã‚  Ã‚   Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad is a story that connects the audience to the narrator’s senses.   We come to understand the environment, the setting, the other charters, and Kurtz strictly from the narrator’s point-of-view, as he experiences things. We are locked out of Conrad’s (the narrator in this case) world, allowed to feel only what he let’s us, see the savages as he does, through his eyes, feel with his body.   We are not able to see how the world views him.   Is he seen as superior, a drone, a sailor?   His dreamlike consciousness navigates us, the readers, down the river as if we are a part of the flow of things, ripples in the water, patches of the darkness. Conrad uses language to paint images in our minds.   He poignantly uses metaphors like, â€Å"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood† (57) to animate those images, allow them to breath a bit. His choice of words and word combinations, his poetic tone,   and suave style and smooth transitions craft a sensual experience.   He is on the surface talking about the exploration of man in Africa with all of its physical and moral dilemma, and yet the underbelly is the interior of man, an endeavor to touch the reader at his core.   â€Å"Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.† (104)   When Conrad says that the â€Å"germs of empires† floated into man’s head , ebbing down the river into the mystery of an unknown earth, his metaphors appeal emotionally to something serious, a commentary on the heart of man. (67) Our senses are serenely assaulted with tastes and surfaces, sounds and images.   The â€Å"tremo... ...their hands, like alot of   faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence.   The   word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was   whispered, was sighed.   You would think they were praying to it.   A taint of imbecile   rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.  Ã‚   By Jove!   I’ve never seen   anything so unreal in my life.   And outside the silent wilderness surrounding this clear   speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting   patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion. Works Cited and Consulted Conrad, Joseph.   Heart of Darkness.   New York:   Bantam Books, 1981. Ross, Mark.   â€Å"The Roots of Darkness.†Ã‚   1997.  http://members.aol.com/mark13/html>   (9 February 1998) Ross, Mark.   â€Å"The Roots of   Racism.†Ã‚   1997.    (9 February 1998)