Silver Streams Issue 1 | Page 26

moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible” (Conrad 70). Thus Marlow concludes that his experience in the Congo was almost a frozen moment in time in which one can step over what is morally acceptable. His conclusion suggests that his epistemological quest was neither an outright failure nor a fruitful success (Ciocia 35). A traditional epistemological quest in Victorian texts usually results in an achievement of certain knowledge or truth and was followed through in a chronological order (Allen Boone 144). However, Marlow’s quest has only resulted in the recognition of probabilities rather than certainties, which are suspended only in a single dream-like moment of acknowledging imperceptibility.

In summation, modernist artists believed Victorian realism was as an inadequate means of reflecting the complexity of the world and the fragmented, chaotic nature of the self (Avery, Bratlinger 252). Therefore, modernist’s writers experimented with both formal and stylistic techniques to reflect the self’s inner most desires and drives as is evident in Joseph

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Allen Boone 144).

Works cited:

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Allen Boone, Joseph. Libidinal Currents: Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Print.

Avery, Todd and Patrick Bratlinger. ““Reading: ‘Mind Hungers’ Common andUncommon”.” A Concise Companion to Modernism. Ed. David Bradshaw. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 243-261. Print.

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. New York: Dover, 2001. Print.

Childs, Peter. Modernist Literature: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2011. Print.

Ciocia, Stefania. Vietnam and Beyond: Tim O'Brien and the Power of Storytelling. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2012. Print.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.

DeKoven, Marianne. Rich and Strange: Gender, History, Modernism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991. Print.

Goonetilleke, D.C.R.A. Introduction. Heart of Darkness. By Joseph Conrad. Ontario: Broadview, 2003. 9-50. Print.

Hawthorn, Jeremy. “The Women of Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New York: Norton, 2006. 405-415. Print.

Stanford Friedman, Susan. Psyche Reborn: The Emergence of H.D. Vol. 4. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987. Print.

Sullivan, Sharon. “The Unconscious Life of Race: Freudian Resources for Critical Race Theory.” Ed. Jon Mills. Rereading Freud: Psychoanalysis Through Philosophy. New York: State of University New York, 2004. 195–219. Print.

Watts, Cedric. Introduction. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. By Joseph Conrad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. xi-xxviii. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.