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
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It is the reader who has to decide on many occasions whether Marlow's opinions are close to the truth or way off.
The reader may find it easy to trust Marlow's opinions and also what he says because of how the story is told to them. Heart of Darkness is framed by the narration of another nameless observer (which could quite easily be them). As a result, Marlow's whole story appears enclosed in quotation marks. One reason for this may be that the reader feels as if he/she is hearing the tale as well. Having Marlow in front of us on the Nellie, we feel the immediacy of his speaking voice and the actual sensation of a sailor spinning a yarn before us. If Conrad had written the whole novel in the first person, getting rid of the primary narrator, he would have needed to leave out Marlow's hesitations and digressions, which are important to the style of the novel. We would also miss the feeling that Marlow was working out the meaning of his tale as he went along and that he trusts us to be a part of that process. A writer, unlike a speaker usually has things worked out in their head before hand. This working out of things alongside the reader could be seen as a sign of reliability because it could be said that Marlow is trying hard to be truthful so he can work out a correct meaning. He would come to false conclusions if he did not use the truth to get there.
Conrad lets us experience Marlow's sensations along with
The reliability of the Narrators can have a huge impact
In Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness the environment is often symbolic as well as literal. The novel contains both the "frame" narrator, an anonymous member of the "Nellie", representing the dominant society, and more importantly the primary narrator, Marlow, who too, is a product of the dominant society. For the novel's narrator, Marlow, the journey up the Congo River to the 'heart of darkness' is reminiscent of Guido's journey into hell in Dante's Inferno, with these literary allusion always present, through forms of intense imagery. The landscape takes on a hellish nature and the wilderness is personified. Death is omnipresent and this is reflected in the death imagery used
In literature, there are many things that create a story, or novel. One of, if not the most important one, is a point of view/narration. Sometimes in literature, a narrator can be unreliable. To clarify, the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts defines an unreliable narrator as “a narrator that is not trustworthy, whose rendition of events must be taken with a grain of salt.” In The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe, the reader learns that the narrator is unreliable through a change in tone from innocent to a dark but ironic tone and contradictory word choice.
Directions: Answer the following questions and/or provide the passage from the story the question refers to. Some information has been filled in for you. Please fill in your information in blue. This assignment will be placed in Turnitin.com. All of your answers should be your own. THIS IS TO PREPARE YOU FOR A TEST THAT IS SIMILAR.
Both Kingsolver and Conrad use similar story construction and point of view in these texts. The truly pivotal characters in each text, rather than the narrators, are the mostly unspoken antagonists of the story. In Heart of Darkness, the story is centered on Kurtz and his actions involving the Congo. The true focus of the novella lies not with Marlow, but rather Conrad uses Marlow as a medium in order to examine Kurtz. In the novella, Marlow is an outside observer. The story follows Marlow’s ever-changing perception of Kurtz in order to characterize the unseen character. When Marlow first learns of Kurtz, he is told that he is “a remarkable person…a prodigy” (Conrad 69), but as the story progresses, both Marlow and the reader delve into Kurtz’s true character and discover a tyrant of imperialism.
Wayne C.Booth is the first introducer of the term ‘unreliable narrator’ back in 1962. In his perspective, a narrator is “reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, unreliable when he does not” (1983: 158–59). In a nutshell, an unreliable narrator gives the readers either incomplete or inaccurate information. In the literary context, authors use this type of technique to add a twist to the plot or the ending of the story for it creates mystery.
7. Who is the narrator of the novel? Through what point of view is the plot told?
I think that reporters should just observe news events as they happen, and they should interfere in any way. Reporters should be able to interfere because they have a right called "Freedom of Speech". If someone was talking about them in a good or bad way, I think that person has the right to interfere. If it was a life or death situation, they should definitely interfere. Journalists, along with everyone else, have the right to know what is going on in this world. If reporters did not interfere at all, they might regret that moment for the rest of their lives. If journalists have a say in something, they should be able to say what they want to say. If reporters disagree on something, they have the right to speak about that specific thing.
In Heart of Darkness, Charlie Marlow’s melancholy tone sets the mood for severity of the abhorrent occurrences he witnessed while in the interior of the Congo Free State, and as the intermediate narrator, is able to re-explore this dreadful experience during his narration, that allows him to represent his thoughts and gives reader’s direct access to his conscious. As the central consciousness of the novella, Marlow is first presented directly by our anonymous first person narrator (a passenger on the ship), but because of the story’s interweaving plot structure, a flashback occurs and Marlow steps in as the narrator, and it becomes our job as readers to understand Marlow through his actions as he himself analyzes his inner-self. Conrad follows
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a story about a man named Marlow and his Journey into the African Congo. By reading the novel and understanding all the imagery Conrad has inserted, we can get a better understanding of the
involved with the main protagonist of the story. This story is a good example of reliable
“No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he’s not the same man” -Heraclitus. This quote accurately depicts the protagonist, Charles Marlow in the novella Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness is read from the narration of Marlow, an ivory transporter who travels down the Congo. Throughout his journey, Marlow develops an intense interest in the famous ivory trader Kurtz, who is portrayed as a powerful, sage, and evil man. The story is based on Marlows experiences with the encounters he's faced with and his ability to be fickle based in these encounterments. In Heart of Darkness, we see Conrad use the river to symbolize movement throughout the novella.
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a frame narrative which creates a clear and organized structure. This structure helps emphasize upon the hypocrisy of imperialism in the novel and Marlow’s journey to discovering his true identity. The orderly and systematic nature of the structure corresponds with the Company in the novel and how it seems so structured on the outside while their mission is actually extremely chaotic underneath as displayed by Kurtz. The cyclical structure of the novel outlines Marlow’s journey in finding himself and his true identity. As the chaos of the journey is uncovered, Marlow delves deeper and deeper into uncertainty regarding the things going on around him in his life.
Conrad opens Heart of Darkness showing the narrator listening to Marlow as they wait for the tide to come back up on the Thames as the sun sets on the clear sky. By the time Marlow finishes his story, there are black clouds as the tide rises, suggesting rain to soon fall on the crewmates, representing how Marlow’s story shows how Marlow himself has changed in his story about living on the water. In the beginning of his story, Marlow was completely against lying, but after his time on the Congo River, Marlow eventually lies to Kurtz’s Intended in the end because the Intended represents civilization, and while it may seem as if Marlow is lying to spare her feelings, he actually lies because he cannot deal with the idea that civilization will fall even if it is based on evil
The Heart of Darkness employs, broadly, a three framed narrative style. Conrad, the author, places an unnamed narrator aboard the Nellie with Marlow, who is the third narrator/frame. The unnamed narrator functions as both a teller of Marlow’s tale to us and a listener to Marlow. The significance of these frames can be analysed by looking at three effects which this arrangement produces.