A Study Of Heart Of Darkness From The Perspective Of Archetypal Criticism

Joseph Conrad is a Polish-born English writer who has written numerousinfluential literary works during his years. Due to his special experiences of growingup, Conrad has formed his own distinctive writing style. Conrad has been good atcreating a kind of frame narrating style, during which a story was depicted withinanother story, and there was also a narrator—most of the time was a man calledMarlow, in charge of telling the whole story to the audience. In this way, Conrad’sstory was often quite incomprehensible to most of the readers. However, just becauseof this style, Conrad has won most literary critics’ appreciation. And that is alsoConrad’s special point.Besides, due to Conrad’s exceptional growing background—his motherland,Poland, has been intruded several times by Russia and other countries, and hispatriotism, his works was undoubtedly covered by a kind of colonialist color. Heart ofDarkness was such an example. And Frye’s theory of archetypal criticism providespeople a new way to explore a kind of deep meaning of this novella. This thesis ismeant to explore the archetypes of different events, characters and images, and furtherillustrate Conrad’s deep meaning of writing this novella—to disclose the imperialists’greedy looks.This thesis is composed of four parts. The first chapter provides thefundamental Joseph Conrad’s living background and his writing style. Besides, thedevelopment of archetypal criticism and Northrop Frye’s theory of archetypal criticism are also introduced in this part.Chapter two presents people the archetypes of characters, events and images inthis novella, which is also the most important chapter in this thesis. Through thesearchetypes, readers can find out the imperialists’ evil goals of intruding Congo.Besides, people can also perceive the similarity of the Congo people and JosephConrad, for to some extent, they were both the victims of colonialism. And throughthe archetypal analysis, people can sense the catastrophic destiny of the Congopeople.Chapter three analyzes several motives in this novella: the motives ofdegeneration and redemption, greed, irrationality and initiation. This part is also thesublimation of last part. Through analyzing this part, people can further perceive theevilness of the colonizers. And also, people can find Conrad’s contemplation onhuman nature.Chapter four of conclusion has summarized the former analysis of this thesis.Through the archetypal analysis, people can get a further comprehension of thisnovella and Conrad’s writing style.