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Difficulty: MediumNarrative Pacing and Temporal Shifts in Long Fiction

Read the following passage from Joseph Conrad’s *Heart of Darkness* (1899) carefully before choosing the best answer.

“‘I was thinking of very old times,’ said Marlow suddenly. ‘When the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day. Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d’ye call ‘em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to build, to sail, to fight, to march, to keep together. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, and nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore.’”

In the passage, Marlow’s sudden shift from the present moment on the Thames to the Roman past ('nineteen hundred years ago') and his subsequent deceleration of the narrative to detail the Roman commander’s experience primarily serve to do which of the following?

  1. A
    represent the author's direct intervention to lecture the reader on Roman military history
  2. B
    provide a chronological summary of British history to explain the physical geography of the Thames
  3. juxtapose the modern British Empire with its ancient counterpart to challenge the crew's assumptions of permanent civilizational progressAnswer
  4. D
    illustrate a moment of psychological fragmentation in Marlow, suggesting the temporal shift is an uncontrolled hallucination
  5. E
    confirm the literal collapse of contemporary London back into primitive wilderness

Answer

The correct option is the one stating that the temporal shift serves to juxtapose the modern British Empire with its ancient counterpart to challenge the crew's assumptions of permanent civilizational progress.
The correct answer is correct because Marlow uses the temporal shift to the Roman past to contrast the current power of the British Empire with its historically submissive status, thereby questioning the permanency of modern imperial progress.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the temporal shift and pacing change in the passage.
Marlow suddenly transitions from the modern Thames to 1,900 years ago, slowing down the narrative pacing by detailing the physical struggles of an imagined Roman commander.
Understanding the structural shift from the present frame narrative to a hypothetical historical past is essential for analyzing pacing.
2
Analyze the thematic function of the juxtaposition.
By comparing the ancient Roman conquest of Britain to modern British imperialism, Marlow challenges the absolute distinction between 'civilized' and 'savage' societies.
This links the narrative pacing shift directly to the deeper thematic concerns of the novel.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the one that accurately describes this structural and thematic function.
The choice describing the juxtaposition of the modern British Empire with its ancient counterpart is selected as the correct answer.
This option accurately captures Marlow's rhetorical strategy without falling into literal summary or narrator-author confusion.

Key Concept

Narrative Pacing and Temporal Shifts in Long Fiction
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Narrative Pacing and Temporal Shifts in Long Fiction

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