Heart of Darkness Complete Analysis

Heart of Darkness contains two layers of narration. The outer narrator is a passenger on the pleasure ship The Nellie, who hears Marlow recount one of his “inconclusive experiences” (21) as a riverboat captain in Africa. This unnamed narrator speaks for not only himself, but also the four other men who listen to Marlow’s story. He breaks into Marlow’s narrative infrequently; mainly to remark on the audience’s reaction to what Marlow is saying. He is omniscient only with respect to himself, since he cannot tell what the others on the boat are thinking. The inner, and main narrator of Heart of Darkness is Marlow. He tells the other passengers of his story “into the heart of darkness” (62) in the first person singular, and the only thoughts the reader has access to are Marlow’s.
This novel has two separate settings. The frame narrative is set in London, England, aboard “The Nellie, a cruising yawl, [that had] swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, a...