The Function of Time in Marlow's Narrative

"The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea'' with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea."

                                                                                                                                        (Conrad 3)

One representational strategy used by Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness (1899) is the 'denial of coevalness' - the principle, coined by Johannes Fabian, that the colonizer and the colonized do not occupy the same moment in time in Western discourse. As Fabian explains in his essay Time and the Other, "Time was thought, but more often celebrated, as a sequence of special events that befall a chosen people" (Fabian 2). Fabian understands time to be not a neutral measurement, but rather an "instrument of power," wielded by the West in order to justify certain Western institutions (144).  

Applying this definition, the above passage, taken from the beginning of Marlow's narrative, exemplifies Conrad's treatment of time in Heart of Darkness. In it, Marlow's drippy and sentimental description of the River Thames, the site of the beginning of his journey, indicates his perspective that the River, and England as a whole, is the seat of history. Phrases like "old river," "after ages," and "ends of the earth," all emphasize the antiquity and history of the Thames, an association that for Marlow is an essential part of the River's identity. 

The imagery of phrases like "the august light of abiding memories," and, "crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home," call attention to the River's past as the center of the British Empire, and the seat of Imperialism. Marlow's fixation with the "great spirit of the past" at the beginning of his journey, before he travels to Africa, is Conrad's suggestion that as Marlow ventures outward from the River Thames, the European center, he simultaneously ventures into the past.

Understanding time as a system of controlling the Other implicates Marlow's romantic description in this passage as much more damaging than it first appears. The irony of Marlow's obsession with the Thames' past is that, even though he believes there is honor and nobility in having "followed the sea," in reality he has simply followed the legacy of violence established by other Englishmen centuries earlier. The phrase "followed the sea" in this passage reminded me of the "Follow your leader" inscription on the ghost ship in Benito Cereno. Both ironically point to the past as evidence of current recklessness and wrongdoing. 

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Fabian, Johannes. "Time and the Other." Youblisher. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.