Modernism in Tolstoy and Conrad : Comparison of “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Heart of Darkness”

 

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Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Historical Summary of "Outpost of Progress" by Joseph Conrad  •   Comparison of The Metamorphosis, Gulliver’s Travels and The Death of Ivan Ilych  

 

In the novel and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, by contrast, is a novel that is thoroughly modernist. There are obvious divisions that demarcate the relationships between the white explorers and colonizers and the native population that they encounter. Further, among the white explorers there are even more divisions. Marlow is separated from the other characters because he is skeptical of imperialism; Kurtz is separated from the other characters because he has violated the rigid boundaries that are intended to divide the colonizer from the colonized. While the characters in and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad are in constant contact with one another, the quality of their relationships and their connections is limited because they lack shared values, a trait of modernism in other works by Joseph Conrad as well. The entire novel "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conad, which explores the dynamics of the colonial and imperialist enterprises, seems to be its own strange world in which there is no logic, reason, or sense of positive purpose.

 

 The narrator in the modernist novel “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, however, avoids editorializing about the situation of the characters and their respective depravities and deficiencies. He allows the novel to rest on its ambiguous last note; the reader is left to devise his or her own interpretation and meaning, or to accept that there may be no meaning at all, which is not uncommon among modernists. The sense of alienation, fragmentation, and lack of resolution that the characters feel is provoked in the reader as well. Some of the last words uttered in, and, for that matter, among some of the most important quotes from “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad is Kurtz’s “The horror! The horror!” (Conrad 95). This exclamation reflects the modernists’ preoccupation with the chaotic nature of the world, which they do not seek to fix or give order to, but to simply document and describe.

 

“The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Tolstoy and and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad could both claim a rightful place in the modernist literary canon, but it is the latter that is more exemplary of the genre. and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad incorporates almost all of the characteristics that define modernism. Its characters are separated by gulfs of difference that can never be crossed and their differences compel them to act in ways that represent just how disordered the world can be. The modernist narrator avoids making a commentary to persuade the reader to take a particular view of the events; rather, the reader must negotiate the ambiguities of the text independently. For these reasons, and “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad is a more modernist text than “The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Tolstoy.

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Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Green Integer, 2003.

Tolstoy, Leo. Death of Ivan Ilych. West Valley City, UT: Waking Lion Press, 2006.

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