To go back to our humble origins and look at “Heart of Darkness” as its literary elements, it seems a story driven, not by plot or by character, but rather by setting. Marlowe, the narrator, functions much as the narrator does in Bartleby the Scrivener, as a lens (though a somewhat warped one) through which the reader sees the events of the story unfold. And Mr. Kurtz seemed more a plot point than an actual character; his reputation drove the tension in the story and gave the reader something to look forward to, but too much description was invested in the actual place itself (assumed to be the Congo River) that it seems that that is the focal point of the story.

Before leaving Fiedler and starting Orientalism, I wanted to point out a scene in the beginning of Chapter 3 when Marlowe tells his audience that they spoke of love, and our real narrator, who we only see briefly in the beginning and occasionally through the story responds, “much amused,” whereupon Marlowe quickly disclaims “It isn’t what you think…”