Speech, Affect, and Intervention in Chance

Abstract

CHANCE, THE LAST OF Conrad'S Marlow narratives, resembles Heart of Darkness in its concern with language, storytelling, and interpretation. Never for neat endings (ErdinastVulcan 1989: 52) and clear messages, Marlow produces in Chance an intricate web of diverse voices, piecing together bits of disconnected statements (222). Nonetheless, way in which Chance approaches language differs from Conrad's earlier explorations of threatening failure of representation and communication in Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness exhibits struggle involved in communicating experience with Marlow mourning lack of unmediated access to lived experience and the truth of things (54). Chance, on contrary, scrutinizes power of language to affect and intervene without lamenting loss of certitudes. Its primary focus is not on absence of an original referent beneath language and but on how language affects us and what possibilities it offers. scene of Flora's trauma plays a key role in demonstrating potency of language to affect people. In end, however, emphasis is not on word's ability to wound. As novel progresses it emerges that potency of words to move people to action offers possibilities for intervention that can empower subject. Not accidentally, Chance even offers a fairly neat ending.From Representation to Power of SpeechFamously, Marlow calls elopement of Flora and Captain Anthony affair of purloined brother (148), speaking from standpoint of Captain Anthony's sister, Mrs Fyne. This allusion to Poe's detective story The Purloined Letter (1844) is suggestive. Captain Anthony has not only disappeared, quite as letter M. Dupin is asked to find in original Poe story, but, just as letter's contents remain unknown, original Captain Anthony is, in a sense, a blank, being character with whom Marlow never speaks. Instead, he is entirely pieced together from comments of others, an extreme case of a general phenomenon in Marlow stories. In Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Chance events are first transmitted by an anonymous first-person narrator and then by Marlow. Furthermore, in latter three narratives, important parts of stories are told by other characters. In Chance, as in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Marlow relies heavily on other people's accounts for creation of his own, and reader is confronted with multiple perspectives.Conrad's allusion to Poe's detective story also operates on a more literal level, for a letter lies at heart of Flora's and Anthony's love complications. As in Poe, this is one of blank spots, of absences in narrative (Hampson 1980: 11), with Mrs Fyne alone familiar with its contents. In The Purloined Letter, author of letter, a member of royal household, is in power of Minister D., who has stolen compromising letter and could, at any moment, make it public. Flora, too, has delivered herself into power of Mrs Fyne by detailing in writing her motivation for running off with Captain Anthony. In contrast to minister in Poe's story, Mrs Fyne actually communicates letter's contents to Captain Anthony via her husband. disclosure does not prevent Anthony from marrying Flora, but it leads to his resolve to renounce all desire for her. This resolve works infernal mischief' (328) on marriage, foreclosing possibility of intimacy. Ultimately, it seems, novel's plotting revolves around letter and verbal excess that fills blank: it moves Mrs and Mr Fyne to action and provokes Anthony's fateful resolution.Conrad's allusion to Poe draws attention to blank spots at heart of as well as to acts of interpretation and communication, which they necessitate. doubtful status of referent emerges quite clearly here as in other Marlow narratives. …