Heart of Darkness & Youth

" The real Palestine already had a Biblical name, but it was Conrad's choice to invest " younker" with allusions to Ecclesiastes and Job (Purdy 34-35; 40-41). In the remainder of this essay, we will examine the blood between the characters of the trading floor and the narrative technique that Conrad employs in state it.

First of all there is Marlow, the principal narrator. He is close familiar to readers, perhaps, for his appearance in "Heart of Darkness." In "Youth," he makes his first appearance in Conrad's work.

In all the stories in which he appears, Marlow must be

interpreted as a choral character in the fullest sense--for

all practical purposes the example of Conrad himself; and Marlow's meditative history--not the train of physical events reflected in that history--must be taken as the reader's primary object of interest. (Palmer 2)

Yet Marlow is not, strictly speaking, the material narrator of the story. That person is unnamed; formally at to the lowest degree(prenominal) he must be the authorial "I," Conrad himself (that is, Marlow's alter ego). This frame narrator appears only at the very beginning and turn back of the story, and he cannot really be called a character in it,

From this unnamed narrator and his companions we focalisation on one of them, Marlow, who relates an episode from his youth (actually, as we contain seen, from Conrad's own youth). As he launches into his account, we experience the voyage of the Judea at first-hand, through his eyes, and he is not a mere passive voice observer of events, but a direct and important classifyicipant. His part in the voyage is important to ship and crew, but around of all it is important to himself. For there is a second floor of formal distancing between the reader and the tale; "Youth" is the story of a young man's experience, as t darkened to us by a middle-aged man who had once been that young man.

Yet this unknown frame narrator is not wholly without significance, for he does not serve entirely as a passive twin of bookends, but as a true frame, putting the slew and events of the story in context. We begin with a group of men, presumably middle-aged, sitting around a table. They are "a manager of companies, an acountant, Marlow, and myself" (Conrad 179)--the embodiment, that is, of the British Establishment. Yet what gives them weight is not their standing in society ashore, but their common heritage in the ocean; even the lawyer, the "fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honor--had been chief officer in the P. & O. service in the good old days when mailboats were square-rigged at least on two masts" (Conrad 179).

Jenny is no such triumphant creature. She insists upon mending Marlow's clothes for him; she has already taken care of her husband's, and we gathering that she would regard it as a waste of her potential not to provide the same service for her husband's second mate, if he stands in need of it.

seamanship, and made a point of showing it in a

Allen, Jerry. The Sea Years of Joseph Conrad. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.

man. If you see John--Captain Beard--without his

She move the window to say, 'You are a good young

He
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