Crossing the Frontier: A Function for Narrative Framing

Crossing the Frontier: A Function for Narrative Framing

In the article, Narratorial Border Crossing in Major Early-Twentieth-Century English Novels* by H.M. Daleski, he discusses Gerard Genette’s analytical approach to describing narrative techniques. Specifically Genette’s explanation of the division between “the world in which one tells” and “the world of which one tells.” Daleski goes on to apply this idea of the “frontier” in narration in the context of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and his choice (and the choice every author makes) to write his narrator either inside or outside the fictional world of his novel.

The internal, first person narrator is only able to speak on what they directly see/hear/experience or reflect on the way that some event is reported to them. In this way, according to Genette, Conrad’s narrator “crosses the frontier” and thus experiences the story through the retelling of the focalizing character’s experience. In Heart of Darkness the narrative is told through a series of voices (narrators) each interpreting and filtering their own version of the events, thus there is a reoccurrence of the idea of “whispering voices” that shape the story without necessarily being attached to a character who is telling them. On page 27 Conrad writes, “this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river” (Conrad 27). And again on page 57, “But the wilderness had found him out early, had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude-and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core” (Conrad 57-58). These “voices” contribute to the formation of the narrative and are subject to interpretation and reflection by the narrators of the story. Further the whispering voices and the framing of the narrative create a distance between the narrator and the story. That distance then creates a question of the accuracy of the information conveyed by the narrator.  

* [Link to article by H.M. Daleski]

Gérard Genette

Joseph Conrad