Conrad's Heart Of Darkness: The Deprived Discourse Of The Colonized

Joseph Conrad occupies an important position in the 20th-Century English literature for his outstanding artistic achievements as well as his profound artistic concepts. His novels have been enthusiastically received by both common readers and critics. Conrad's novels involve many different fields of human life, politics, life on the seaboard or in the jungle, social issues in the contemporary world, etc.; yet each one of them contains deep concerns of human nature in modern times. Literary critics have shown great interest in his works and Conrad has long been one of the hottest issues in contemporary literary criticism. On the basis of various literary critical theories, critics approach those novels from various perspectives, greatly illuminating their profound significances.Drawing on the theory of postcolonialism and Foucault's ideas of power, the present thesis tries to analyze the theme of the deprived discourse of the colonized in the novel Heart of Darkness. According to Foucault, power produces discourse. Heart of Darkness is a western colonizer Marlow's narration of the "dark" continent and of Kurtz's "horrible" degradation living among the savage inhabitants there. But there is a systematic omission of the discourse of the colonized. This thesis sets out to show how, under political oppression and economic exploitation, the power of the colonized to discourse and to narration of their own stories is deprived.