Page 112 - Knighted_Issue2.0

isolation and inclusion. However, at the end of both frames, the ships abandon their treks and
turn back to civilization and the darkness that jump-started both stories.

Beyond the relationship between the frame and the framed, Conrad fairly explicitly
borrows his story formula from Shelley; the plot structure in Heart of Darkness is almost an
exact copy of Frankenstein, and it starts with the nature of the narration. Both authors used a
hidden effaced narrator, employing a third-person narrator disguised in a first-person cloak. In
Frankenstein, the real narrator is Walton, who is relating in letters to his sister everything Doctor
Frankenstein and the Monster said. He occasionally even uses a thrice-packaged story when the
doctor recounts the monster’s personal narrative, also telling this section with deceptive first-
person characteristics. The real narrator in Heart of Darkness is more cleverly disguised than
Walton, and the readers never even know his name. He only speaks a few lines to introduce
Marlow’s story at the beginning, allows interjections in the middle, and shows Marlow’s
conclusion at the very end. In both texts this shows how ultimately unimportant the true speaker
is: Walton could have been anyone with an inappropriate hunger for discovery, and Marlow’s
introducer is clearly inconsequential outside the frame. Thus, the meanings of both texts are
designed to be translated universally. The invisible speakers are the ones in whose shoes the
readers should imagine themselves standing, listening to the speaker illustrate the outside world
with his personal anecdote.

In addition to their parallel “true” narrators, the main speaker in both Shelley’s and
Conrad’s texts could be simply deceiving their listeners. In Shelley’s text, Dr. Frankenstein could
have made up his fantastic tale, and the creature that appears before Walton could be an illusion
created by his unstable, starving mind (270). The same goes for Marlow. He could be making up
his trials in the Congo, creating another one of his “inconclusive experiences” (70). Believing