Abstract

Dealing with the intrusion and interference of European imperialism in the Pacific, in the East India, in South America and in Africa, many of Joseph Conrad’s tales and novels gradually reveal the physical, psychological, social, economic, cultural or moral effects of colonialism upon both the natives and the colonizers. This paper will analyse the variety of narrative techniques used by Conrad to highlight the problematics of marginalization. For example, the poetic and allegorical discourse in The Nigger of the Narcissus (1987) allows Conrad to record individual and collective instances of racial discrimination whereas the parodical and satirical voice in An Outpost of Progress (1989) undermines the colonizers’ false pretenses to bring progress and civilization to distant territories. In addition, this paper is meant to show that darkness as a recurrent motif in Conrad’s work is in fact the result of marginalization visible in short stories such as The Lagoon (1898), novellas such as Heart of Darkness (1899), Youth (1902), The End of the Tether (1902) or Typhoon (1903) as well as in novels such as the Malaysian trilogy, Lord Jim (1900), Chance (1913) or Victory (1915).