Heart of Darkness: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis on Several Scales

Abstract

Heart of Darkness is a novella that is roughly 38,000 words long and divided into three sections. The longest paragraph in the text, the nexus, is in the second half of the second of the three sections. It is structurally central to the text, making it a tale3 (the nexus) within a tale2 (Marlow’s tale) within a tale1 (the unnamed narrator’s tale). Within the nexus we find a phrase, a so-called Latour Litany, that spans the ontological dimensions of the story. This paper concludes with an annotated copy of the nexus paragraph.