Intertwined traumas: narrative and testimony in Joseph Conrad’s heart of darkness

Abstract

That Heart of Darkness continues to generate multiple critical responses owes to a large extent to the text's endemic ambivalence. Conrad's tendency to remain inconclusive, what Harold Bloom calls his ‘unique propensity for ambiguity'1, has received a great deal of critical attention, and its ideological and moral foundations have been thoroughly analysed. However, the possibility that the text's indeterminacies may have their origins in the psychological conflicts of its central narrator has not been sufficiently addressed.