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Comparative Survey, Descriptive Research

  Comparative survey research is a type of descriptive survey where it aims to compare the status of two or more variable, institutions, strategies etc. This technique often uses multiple disciplines in one study.This does not only compare different groups but also same group over time.Few points are to be kept in mind before starting the comparative survey. ·        Comparison Points -The research should be very clear regarding the points to be compared. This can also be identified through review of literature and experience of experts. ·        Assumption of Similarities -  One has to be clear about the similarities the two variable hold. If the researcher do not find this there is no point of comparison. Criteria of Comparison - The researcher has to identify the criteria of comparison keeping in mind the fairness and objectivity. Appropriate tools has to be identified for measurement of criterion variables. Comparative survey research is carried on when the researcher cannot

Comment on the narrative mode in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Justification of title


Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), the greatest modern romantic novelist was born in Ukraine. He sought his subjects wherever he could expect to find adventure in an unusual or exotic setting. His own experiences of the sea and in particular of the Malayan waters was of immense value to him as a writer. Conrad’s first two works were based on the experiences of Malaya- Almayer’s Folly and An Outcast of the Islands. Then came, one of his best novels The Nigger of the Narcissus, a moving story of life, on board ship. Next came Typhoon and Other Stories, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo- A Tale of the Seaboard and many more.

       Heart of Darkness is the outcome of Conrad’s own experience of Congo. The novel is remarkable for an overwhelming sense of evil and corruption and for its excellent tropical background. Conrad’s meditation on fact and on questions around the knowing and telling of fact in the present novel offers us two different narratives of knowing.

       The first is the narrative in which the objects, the cannibals, the rivets, the book take under stage and the process of knowing involve a movement on journey within the consciousness of the individual. Such a journey is temporal in nature and is therefore narratable. Narrative itself functions as a means or form of knowing the reader. The second narrative of knowing the story of Marlow and his quest- the story of how we may know objects that fall outside the familiar representable world is a very different narrative.

       Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an example of a multi-level narrative structures that has a double framework and unidentified ‘I’. Narrator relates a boating trip during which another character Marlow tells in the first person the story that comprises the majority of the work. Even within this nested story we are told that another character Kurtz told Marlow a lengthy story. However, directly we are told nothing about this. Thus, we have an ‘I’ narrator introducing a story teller as ‘he’ (Marlow) who talks about himself as ‘I’ and introduces another story teller as ‘he’ (Kurtz) who in turn presumly told his story from the perspective of ‘I’.

       While the writer provides us in the present novel with a narrative of knowing the world in its knowability and representability, he also provides us with its opposite- with a narrative about the impossibility of knowing where the knowledge at stake involves experiences of historical catastrophe. And, he provides us with a modality of knowing- a ‘witnessed’ modality that comes into play exactly where words and stories fall apart, where events disengage themselves from a sense of the ‘real’. It is where traumatic fact cannot articulate itself credibly in words or story that narrative falls back on a witnessed mode of knowing. Kurtz likes the horror to which he is witness, is mostly absent from the novel, except for his final testimonial words.

       He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision- he cried out twice,
       a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror!

‘Horror” is the most significant word in this work and it is also the most sparingly used significant word. Except for Kurtz cry, it appears four or five times in a narrative of close to eighty pages. It appears for the first time in Marlow’s description of the

            gloomy circle of some Infermo

To which the sick and diseased blacks retreat to die. Marlow describes himself as ‘horrorstruck’ at the sight which is like

some picture of a massay or a pestilence.

Therefore, we can aptly justify that Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has a frame technique narrative mode. If we notice the first ‘I’ in the book then we analyse someone telling the story in the first person. The narrative then shifts to Marlow as he recounts his experiences. His way of telling the story is through a mix of emotions, events, thoughts and reactions. Then the narration shifts to Kurtz. Lastly, all the paragraphs of the story are in quotations, as if Marlow is speaking to the sailors who are listening to him.

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