TONY TANNER
105
Marlow is why they didn 't eat the white men . And Marlow then
embarks on the long passage pondering the mysteries of " res traint";
the mys tery of wha t res trains man , and wha t ensues when normal
res traints fail are central subj ects in Conrad . In this story the man
without res traint of course is Kurtz.
It
is worth noting in passing tha t
the savage who is kill ed because he open s the ship 's shutters too wide
is, ra ther oddl y, compared to Kurtz. " Poor fool!
If
he had onl y left tha t
shutter alo ne. He had no res traint, no res traint-just like Kurtz."
T he point is tha t Conrad goes to considerable lengths to make us
see Kurtz as a much more horrifying cannibal than the literal cannibal
who mayor may no t feel like ea ting everybody (and for the most part
canniba li sm is not indiscrimina te and is usuall y hi ghl y ritua lized
except in cases of extreme "meat hun ger"), but who reveals seeming ly
inexhaustibl e reserves of self-res traint. Kurtz wants to eat everything.
This is a study o f a certain kind of white imperial conscio usness which ,
as it were, wants to engorge the world and tran sform it into self.
Conrad was drama ti zing in the fi gure o f Kurtz th a t terrifying dri ve to
annihil a te difference, which is too often to be found a t the heart of any
so-call ed civili zing, imperi al drive, o r indeed a t the heart o f society
itself (see the trea tment meted out to Yanko Goora ll in "Amy Fos ter"
where the community torment and persecute him on account of his
"d ifference"). This appropri a ti on or nihil a ti on o f the other brings us
back to cannibalism, but a cannibalism of consciou sness whi ch if not
res trained will a ttempt to devour otherness altoge ther.
One of the processes whi ch binds men together, as opposed to
breaking them down, is na rrati on , the es tablishing of a circuit o f
di scourse in a parti cul ar way. Conrad 's narra ti ve technique in
Falk
is
famili ar from the Marl ow sto ries. He starts in the first person plural–
"we, " "us ," "our ta lk. " T hi s stra tegy has three important, and illusory,
effects.
It
conceals the solitude of writing behind the communa lity o f
conversing; it seems to transform the author into an auditor of a ta le
not of his making; and it ma kes the written text appear as a vehicle for
speech . Then o ne of " us" begins to tell a story, in thi s case not Marl ow
but an unnamed narra tor.
T he narra tor has no name (like the niece in his story). Thi s odd
withholdin g of informa tion in Conrad is a ma tter for separa te study; it
goes along with hi s refusa l to name Bangkok, a taking away of an
already given name, and is part of the strategy o f despecifi ca tion
practi sed so subtl y by Conrad.
It
is also practised by his narra tor. I
think the mo ti ve is
to
undermine the illusory fin ality and exactitude of
the written text,
to
unsta bili ze it s silent impersonal unquesti onable
