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Brendan Reardon
English 700
Dr. Maxwell
12/4/2014
Masks, Veils, and Concealment:
A Study of Identity in the Caribbean Response
In his historiographical analysis of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Abdulla Al-Dabbagh
details the processes of identity formation within the colonial discourse. Dabbagh suggests that
Conrad was able to surrender his “ethnic identity” and therefore exist in a “unified duality” that
represents Conrad’s personal experiences in the colonizer/colonized dichotomy (75-76). AlDabbagh posits:
Conrad alone was both a “native” and a “colonist” at the same time, and this is
precisely what made him a more adept practitioner of colonialist discourse . . .
(Conrad) abolished the distinction between “us” and “them” on an individual,
fictionalized, and romanticized scale. (73, 82)
Al-Dabbagh suggests that Conrad’s history allowed him a certain amount of versatility and
mobility as an author. Implicit in this segment is the notion that Conrad’s background enabled
for him to de-stratify the previously entrenched distinction between the colonizer and the
colonized.
While Dabbagh’s theory is viable in the way that it attempts to detail the contextual
influences of Heart of Darkness, he fails to address Conrad’s use of identity assemblage that
subliminally aligns Conrad with the colonial identity. I argue that Conrad’s literary artistry
signifies a Deleuzian articulation, in which the colonial identity becomes systematically
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reinforced as the story progresses. Through an inversion of the same process, the native identity
becomes progressively marginalized as Conrad details the colonizer’s journey into the interior.
I further argue that Wilson Harris, in his novel Palace of the Peacock, appropriates
Conrad’s use of a Deleuzian assemblage by relying on landscape in order to reconstruct the
native identity. Harris also adopts Conrad’s use of masks, or veils, in order to provide insight
into the identity formation that occurs within the colonizer/colonized dichotomy. Through this
process, the very sense of identity on either side of this polarity is deconstructed, as identity is
established through a series of masks that represent the temporary identity of the mask’s wearer.
It is also important to note that while Donne is typically read as a Kurtz archetype, I will explore
the correlations between Donne, Marlowe, Kurtz, and Conrad in order to properly contour the
parallels that Harris has created through his text.
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad uses masks in order to cater to a Deleuzian approach.
Therefore, the colonial identity becomes a unified abstraction that is assembled as Conrad
transitions between characters/narrators. This technique reinforces the colonizer/colonized binary
– a dichotomy that dominates the social dynamics of his work. Similarly, Conrad inadvertently
deconstructs the native identity by conflating the native with the foreign landscape. In doing this,
the depiction of landscape dehumanizes the native by stripping the native of any sense of
individuality or spiritual capacity.
In order to conduct a study Conrad’s text, it is important to gain an understanding of the
Deleuzian critical approach. French philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggests that the process of
identity formation occurs through the progressive assemblage of fragmented subunits that
inevitably form the unified “self.” The “Concept of articulation is the idea that different elements
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can be connected (articulated) or disconnected in order to create unities or identities” (Stivale
97). By applying Deleuzes’s theory to Conrad and Harris, one can see that both authors operate
under Deleuzes’s concept of articulation. First, Conrad uses Deleuze in order to construct the
identity of the colonizer, while systematically diminishing the native identity by collapsing it
with the landscape. Harris then reverses this method by using landscape to systematically
deconstruct the colonizer’s identity through the perspective of the native.
In both texts, the use of masks, or veils, operates in concordance with the theory of
Deleuzian articulation. Therefore, in order to properly understand how Harris’s reverses
Conrad’s assemblage the colonial identity, it is imperative to first analyze how Conrad uses
masks, or veils, to position the narrator, Marlow, and Kurtz within the colonizer/colonized
dichotomy. Throughout Heart of Darkness, the description of landscape projects a stereotypical
image onto the native identity. Before addressing Conrad’s construction of the colonial identity,
one must confront Conrad’s perception of the native identity while he distributes his perspective
between separate characters, as the depiction of the native within these characters
consequentially formulates the colonial mentality.
Through the narrator’s observations, Conrad almost immediately dehumanizes the native
by collapsing the native identity with the foreign terrain. The narrators interpellation of the
native identity begins by examining “the foreign shores” and “the foreign faces” in sequence
upon his description of “the immutability of their surroundings” (Conrad 5-6). This passage is of
significant importance because it reveals the reactionary process of the colonizer. Unbeknownst
to Conrad and the narrator, they have taken the initial step, or donned the first mask, in the
construction of the colonial identity. The narrator’s reflex to describe the native faces as
“foreign” immediately establishes the binary between the colonizer and the colonized.
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Franz Fanon sheds light on this development by introducing the innate dependency that
the colonizer has on the presence of the “other” in his theory of “The Negro and Recognition.”
Fanon argues that “It is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own
human worth and reality depend. It is that other being in whom the meaning of his life is
condensed (Fanon 169). The designation of “foreign” places the native in an adversarial position.
This mentality remains consistent with Fanon’s theory of recognition, in which “every position
of one’s own, every effort at security, is based on relations of dependence, with the diminution of
the other” (164). Conrad’s description serves as the first accumulation, or “becoming” that
begins to establish Conrad’s perspective as the colonizer, as the presence of the “Other” is given
acknowledgment only in its relation to the narrator’s perspective. The narrator has discovered the
native, and the native now “exists,” although its designation is predicated upon the limited
knowledge of the colonizer.
Conrad’s description of landscape presents another series of implications if one takes into
account the racial sciences that surfaced prior to the publication of his novel. In his theory
entitled “The African Character,” Hegel introduces a particularly archaic racial theory that can be
applied to Conrad’s text. According to Hegel, “For the soul of man, God must be more than a
thundered, whereas among the Negroes this is not the case” (209). Hegel literally dehumanizes
the native, while reinforcing the distinction between the colonizer and the colonized on an
theological scale. Hegel proceeds by saying, in regards to the native, “they are necessarily
conscious of dependence upon nature—for they need the beneficial influence of storm, rain,
cessation of the rainy period, and so on—yet this does not conduct them to the consciousness of
Higher Power” (209). Under Hegel’s assumption, the native’s capacity for spiritual
understanding is non-existent, as the role of a theological deity is supplanted by nature. In this
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sense, the native deity is nature, as nature—to the supposedly limited intellectual capacity of the
native—is the only force capable of destruction and benevolence. This places the native in a
spiritually and intellectually primitive position. Therefore, by depicting the native identity to be
an extension of landscape, the narrator unknowingly undergoes a “becoming,” in which he
reinforces the colonial identity in Conrad’s novel. Consequentially, Conrad has taken the initial
step in constructing the identity of the colonizer.
Conrad’s use of landscape also projects the colonized identity onto the indigenous
population and, in turn, establishes the narrator’s role as a colonizer. The narrator mentions that
the native shore was “veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for
there is nothing mysterious to a seamen unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his
existence as and as inscrutable as Destiny” (Conrad 6). Conrad reveals the use of the veil for the
first time, depicting it to be a refractory medium that represents “disdainful ignorance” within.
The narrator’s description of the sea then becomes a counteragent to this ignorance—a vassal
that allows for the penetration of the native “ignorance” by the “enlightened” colonizer.
Conrad’s commentary resurfaces through Marlow’s perspective when the crew is
ambushed by the natives later in the novel. Marlow explains: “I saw a face amongst the leaves on
the level with my own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil
had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms,
legs, glaring eyes— the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening of
bronze colour” (Conrad 73-74). As Marlow’s veil is lifted, his mask is assumed, and he reverts to
a description that is similar to the description previously provided by the narrator. Despite
Conrad’s shift in perspective from the narrator to Marlow, Conrad’s description of the landscape
remains one-dimensional. This marks the descriptive limitations that surfaced due to Conrad’s
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literary artistry as a modernist, in which, as Srila Nayak explains, “This projection of a
consciousness enfeebled by the colonial difference it encounters signals Conrad’s uncertainty
regarding the radical nature of modernist identity, its limitations and contradictions in the face of
cultural difference" (Nayak 33). Although this limitation initially emerges through the narrators’s
archaic description of the landscape, Conrad’s reductive depiction of landscape perseveres as
perspectives are interchanged. This jeopardizes Dabbagh’s suggestion of Conrad as a “unified
duality” (75). Nayak extends her argument in order to encompass landscape, as she explains:
Conrad’s deliberate exposure of the inconclusive nature of impressionism
ultimately results in an aborted modernism, as Marlow’s consciousness centers
radical perception upon a reiteration of conventional rationalizations about the
Other, and his desire to powerfully render the inarticulate chaos of an impression
becomes a symbol of the threat of an alien landscape and her people. (34)
By succumbing to the mythological construction of the “Other,” Conrad, through Marlow,
“unknowingly throws light upon the ideological underpinnings of Marlow’s putatively
fragmented consciousness” (Nayak 31). It is this fragmentation that Conrad will go on to
complete through Marlow’s systematic internalization of the colonizer’s identity. Both of these
instances involving landscape serve as “becomings” that gradually reinforce the colonizer and
colonized in their respective positions.
Shona Jackson further comments on the demeaning use of landscape in imperialist
literature by providing a contemporary emendation of Hegel’s outdated theory. Jackson explains
that the unevenly “subjugated bodies of the land and the people . . . have always retained
recalcitrant elements that constitute a historical resistance to domination” (Jackson 86). By
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continually describing the landscape in correspondence with the native, the Conrad succumbs to
what Jackson frequently references as the El Dorado myth, in which “the myth itself codes
colonial exploitation of the lands as postcolonial development and facilitates Amerindian
subjection as a people who are both literally and figuratively ‘bound’ to the hinterland. (85). In
Conrad’s novel, land and people become an inundated whole that represents and obstacle rather
than an identity. Unfortunately, prior to Harris’s novel, the myth is explored only from an
external perspective, and is neither validated nor rebuked.
Through Conrad, we can see how landscape is used as a medium that distorts the native
identity while establishing the role of the colonizer. This is a template that I will circle back to in
my analysis of Harris’s employment of landscape. However, a proper understanding of Harris’s
use of identity formation in Palace of the Peacock is incomplete without first gaining an
understanding of the dynamic that is created between Marlow and Kurtz, as Donne represents
and archetype that encompasses qualities from both characters. It is important to extend the
Deleuzian approach order to accommodate for Kurtz’s transformation in Heart of Darkness, as
Kurtz’s capacity for cultural mobility represents the obvious literary influence for Donne in
Harris’s Palace of the Peacock.
Marlow describes Kurtz’s process of reverting back to the colonizer’s identity—a
process that once again incorporates the lifting of a veil and, in turn, signifies the use of a mask.
Marlow explains, in regards to Kurtz’s ability to revert back to the colonial identity, “Anything
approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to
see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on
that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense
and hopeless despair” (Conrad 116). Kurtz’s mask serves as evidence towards the notion that
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masks actually reveal identity, rather than distract from it. This provides the reader with insight
into identity through the use of masks.
Jesse Oak Taylor shed’s more light on this scenario by focusing on the
masking/unmasking processes found in Heart of Darkness that subliminally establish the
colonizer’s identity. In his article, Taylor argues that “What is perhaps more troubling (both
intellectually and ethically) is the persistent power of that mask even after it has been revealed as
such. Unmasking accentuates the performative power of the mask rather than collapsing it”
(191). Kurtz’s transition reveals the importance of masks, and how masks represent the physical
representation of one’s identity. Taylor goes on to explain that “Performance is often
misleadingly understood to be about the disguising of reality, rather than the reality of the
disguise” (191). Taylor reveals that masks in Heart of Darkness provide the reader with a visual
confirmation of the colonial identity through the process of transition. Taylor is able to apply this
study by creating a parallel between Marlow and Kurtz, stating that “Even for this person who
nominally knows Kurtz as an individual, he and Marlow have become essentially
interchangeable, subsumed within the mask of the white man” (205). Taylor’s expansion of
Fanon’s theory speaks to the symptomatic nature of the colonizer’s “white mask,” and how
Kurtz’s transition and recognition reaffirms the colonial identity through Marlow and himself.
Up to this point, the reader has followed the narrator and Marlow as they venture further
towards the centre in a journey that potentially parallels Kurtz’s previous expedition. Thus, one
could argue that by revealing the masking power of both Kurt’s and Marlow’s masks, and
rendering them to be interchangeable as white men, Taylor allows for this climactic exchange to
serve as the final “becoming” in a linkage that speaks to Conrad’s construction of the colonial
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identity as a whole. “In offering his narrative and its culmination in the encounter with the
Intended, Marlow essentially shows his audience the mask of imperial manhood, removes the
mask to reveal the reality of the ‘horror’ behind it, and then replaces the mask to show the ways
in which it obscures that horror in favor of the ‘idea at the back of it” (Taylor 205-206). This
idea, according to Taylor, presents an assumed degree of suzerainty, it is “something to “bow
down before and offer a sacrifice to” (206). Marlow therefore recognizes the transition to the
colonizer as return to consciousness, and thus only the colonizer is provided with an identity.
Therefore, “Marlow’s consciousness proves unequal to the task of grasping reality or truth that
transcends the bounds of the European mind” (Nayak 32). Conrad concludes the relationship
between Marlow and Kurtz by reflecting the ethnocentric gaze between one another, establishing
the colonial identity while failing to give the native proper identification.
Through the application of a Deleuzian approach to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, one can
see how the colonial identity is shaped by an assemblage of “becomings.” This process is aided
through the depiction and use of landscape and masks, which reinforces the identity of the
colonizer as a unified entity, while dehumanizing the native identity. By shifting our perspective
to Harris’s Palace of the Peacock, one can see how Harris uses a similar approach in order to
cater to a Deluzian deconstruction of the colonial identity. Similarly, Harris uses landscape not as
a refractory medium that distances the individual from a tangible identity. Rather, landscape is
used as a literary device through which identity is reclaimed.
In order to first analyze the separate processes of identity formation in Palace of the
Peacock, it is essential to address the ways in which the colonial identity is deconstructed
through the native’s correlation with the landscape. Harris initially begins where Conrad left the
audience, only Harris uses a descriptive technique in order to humanize the native through
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landscape, instead constructing it as a refractory medium that conceals identity. Harris
anthropomorphizes the landscape in order to create a sense of transparency in which the reader is
given visual confirmation of the native identity as it is potentially reclaimed. Meanwhile, Harris
employs a direct reversal of Conrad’s depiction of the veil, in which the prospective colonizers
are stripped of their identities, while the native identity is eventually afforded the possibility of
re-articulation.
Harris begins his novel by detailing the way in which identity is initially established
among the crew. Certain characters are designated with qualities that place them on either side of
the colonizer/colonized spectrum. In order to signify which characters are closer to their native
identity, Harris uses landscape in order to provide insight into character construction. Gregory
Shaw reveals how landscape is used as a medium through which transparency is made possible.
Shaw argues that “The trees of the forest, like the rocks in the stream, become extensions of that
absolute self which is extended both in space and time, so that trees are transformed into
archetypal presences, ancestral maps” (Shaw 160). Therefore, characters that are closer in
relation to the native identity, such as Jennings and Shomburgh, are described in conjunction
with the spirituality of the landscape (i.e. wooden faced, soulful face). The use of these masks are
also applicable to the crew as a whole, as Shaw comments that “Ribaldry, mockery, or
buffoonery is of course an uneasy mask for the crew’s sense of weirdness, and a cover-up for the
subtle transformations within themselves” (Shaw168). Here the native identity is initially
concealed by the mask of the colonizer, creating a distraction from the inevitable resurfacing of
the native identity. By examining the racial designations of the crew members early in the novel,
Harris prepares the reader for the idea that some crew members’s assemblages will be more
notable than others. Through this process, Harris refutes Conrad’s generalization in which “The
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land and the people are collapsed and naturalized through spatial othering” (Jackson 91). For the
purposes of this argument, Donne will be the primary focus of this study.
Donne represents the Kurtz/Marlow/Conrad archetype that progressively sheds his
identity as a colonizer through a series of “becomings.” A study of the context during which
Palace of the Peacock was published reveals the necessity for a critical study of Donne’s
character. According to Nouri Gana, Donne represents the central fears that emanated in Guyana
prior to the publication of Harris’s novel. These anxieties undoubtedly served as a factor in
Harris’s work. Gana states that “The most abhorrent scenario for Harris is that the colonized may
throw off the colonizer only to take his place” (Gana155). Harris constructs this inner dilemma
through Donne, as he is ruled by the “oldest uncertainty and desire in the world, the desire to
govern or be governed, rule or be ruled forever” (Harris 139). Donne is initially described as
someone “whom belong[s] to a short-lived family and people” and resembled the native
“Wishrop . . . when they stood side by side” (Harris 188, 217). Despite Donne’s assumed native
lineage, it becomes clear that he is depicted as having the mask of the colonizer—an identity that
renders him unrecognizable to the narrator. “It suddenly seemed to me I had never known Donne
in the past—his face was a dead blank. I saw him now for the first faceless time as the captain
and unnatural soul of heaven’s desire” (Harris 226). Donne’s identity as the colonizer is
solidified in the nascent stages of the novel, as Harris constructs Donne to represent the
apotheosis of his largest fears—a character that has become detached from the native identity,
yet represents a possible outcome of the recently fragmented cultural identity.
Harris uses Donne as a scapegoat by representing him to be the embodiment of the
transformation. As Jackson explains: “Harris recovers the founding myth of the region, the myth
of El Dorado, from Western imperial and colonial narratives of exploration and belonging to
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challenge prevailing ideas about Guyana’s interior landscape . . . and his concern, unlike that of
previous narratives, (is) not with the life of the myth but with its subjects” (91). Harris completes
Conrad’s dichotomy by endowing the native with a culturally authentic identity. Only instead of
conveying his message through the internal perspective of the native, Harris adopts Conrad’s
template of the external colonizer in order to draw attention to the transformation of identities.
This is a technique of retelling that doesn’t simply provide an alternate perspective, but it
completes the narrative by systematically deconstructing the original myth from the interior.
Despite his initial designation, we are given insight into the steps that Donne takes
through the narrator’s perspective—a spectator who knows Donne intimately and possibly
represents his abstracted, indigenous personality. Donne has become unrecognizable under the
mask of the colonizer, despite the fact that the narrator has known Donne for a long time, as “his
wild exploits had governed (the narrator’s) imagination from childhood” (Harris 139). However,
this construction merely serves as a temporary foundation upon which Harris can progressively
deconstruct the colonizer’s identity through a Deleuzian approach. As Gana explains: “Donne is
transformed and undone by his journey” through a “mimesis, or a frame against which takes
place a deeper journey into the interior self” (Gana 156). Gana’s argument caters to the
Deleuzian approach, in that Donne’s spatial relations provide for a tangible marker that
designates his spiritual and systematic return to the center. According to this theory, Donne’s
deaths that result from his journey inward systematically strips him of the identity of the
colonizer.
Donne’s first death is constructed be the result of a retaliatory attacked perpetrated by the
ambiguous native identity, Mariella. Mariella is never given a concrete form, and represents, to
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Donne, the possibility of chattel slavery that he so desperately seeks to obtain. Mariella reveals
that “she had been whipped” as she “lifted her dress still higher” (Harris 155). Harris
incorporates a typical form of extralegal persecution through whipping, while including the
corruption of innocence through the use of dress imagery. The narrator then reveals that
“Mariella had killed (Donne)” after which Donne was “only to awake” (Harris 166). The narrator
is unable to differentiate between his own sense of fatalism and Donne’s dream-like death, as he
represents the duality within the colonizer. “He was myself standing outside of me while I stood
inside him” (Harris 228). Harris comments on the confirmation of Donne’s deaths, despite the
uncertainty of the narrator,
Donne dies many deaths in Palace of the Peacock. He relives the terminal
moment of history in the uncertainty of his own demise as portrayed and reenacted by his nameless twin brother who dreams him back to life, life becomes a
relived, terminal, but paradoxically regained threshold into rhythmic space or
nuclear turning point between times past, present, and future. (65)
Despite the narrators perception of Donne, it is confirmed that Donne continues to exist on a
plain that allows for Harris to further explore the psychosis of the colonizer. This enables for
Harris to operate on multiple levels of understanding by penetrating and exposing the historical,
spiritual, mythological, and metaphysical ideologies surrounding colonization.
Harris cycles back to the use of landscape in order to confirm identity through Donne’s
separate deaths, as well as the deaths endured by other crew members. Hena Maes-Jelenik
reveals that “Donne, too, is a divided being. This duality is but one expression of the
fundamental opposites that manifest themselves not only in man alone but in every form of life –
in the landscape, for instance, which reflects man’s dual nature and helps him to define himself”
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(Maes-Jelenik 33). Donne’s duality previously surfaced through the existence of the narrator, and
Maes-Jelenik points to the notion that the merging of identities in Palace of the Peacock can
create consternation. However, it is through landscape that identities are truly revealed.
Donne’s second death or “becoming” occurs as Wishrop “retired to the stern of the vessel
to relive Donne who looked the strangest shadow of himself, falling across the boat into the
water . . . the change in Donne I suddenly felt in the quickest flash in me” (312). By falling into
the river, Donne’s identity deconstruction is initiated through landscape. The narrator goes on to
observe that “it was as if the light of all past days and nights on earth had vanished. It was the
first breaking dawn of the light of our soul” (323). Physical sight is replaced by spiritual insight,
and the crew members now begin to recognize the decay in their own colonial identities. Harris
then adopts Conrad’s the use of the veil in order to create a direct link between the colonizer and
the colonized prior to this death. In a moment in which the perspectives of Donne and the
narrator coalesce, it is conveyed that: “The river (was) over as though a cruel ambush of soul had
partly lifted its veil and face to show that death was the shadow of a dream. In this remarkable
filtered light it was not men of vain flesh and blood I saw toiling laboriously and meaninglessly,
but active ghosts whose labour was indeed a flitting shadow over their shoulders as living men
would don raiment” (Harris 312). The narrator further comments on Donne’s second death: “the
using re-enactment and reconstruction of the death of Donne” is a scene that creates a “perfect
transparency “that “brought me face to face with my own enormous frailty” (421). Meanwhile,
Donne begins to represent the physical manifestation of his own psyche. “Donne was aging in
the most remarkable misty way,” while the narrator “Seems to have put on ten years overnight”
(Harris 486). The gradual realization of identities becomes clear through recognition. As the
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further the crew continues to infiltrate further into the interior, they become physically
deconstructed in order to set the stage for the possible reclamation of their native identities.
The power of the landscape is initially unrealized through the characters that now exist in
a state of identity crisis. For instance, the “reflection in the water serves as a “curious distraction
and musing reflection” (Harris 312). A mirrored surface that should serve as a marker of
verisimilitude does not reflect physical identity, but rather incites confusion. However, shortly
after Donne’s death, the link between spirituality and landscape is realized as it is mentioned
that, in regards to the crew, “They did not know how to trust their own emotion, almost on the
verge of doubting the very stream in their midst . . . Where there had been death was now the
reflection of life. The unexpected image of Donne awoke a quiver of sudden alarm and fright. A
heavy shadow fell upon all of us—upon the Mission, the trees, the wind, and the water” (346).
The landscape is now used as a medium of reflection through which the true spiritual identity of
the crew can be observed without subjectivity. In this case, the stream, and reflection of life,
incites trepidation.
This realization serves as the second “becoming” in the articulation of not only Donne,
but the crew as a whole. The deaths suffered by the crew have now begun to manifest within
Harris’s characters. Maes-Jelenik expands on this concept, arguing that “The landscape at times
takes on the features of a human body which can prove as treacherous as any ill-intentioned
adversary. It is sometimes a mirror for man’s inner states and often a catalyst that modifies
them” (34). The dualities within each character, specifically Donne, exist in an ambiguous state
that is only rectified through the landscape. It is through landscape that the reader is provided
with insight into identity after a death occurs within the crew.
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Donne’s next death, or “becoming,” is of significant importance because it happens
vicariously through Wishrop. It isn’t until afterwards that Harris retrospectively reveals that
“They were bound together in wishful substance and in the very enormity of a dreaming enmity
and opposition and self-destruction . . . Remove all this or weaken it’s appearance and it’s
cruelty and they were finished. So Donne had died in the death of Wishrop” (Harris 1098). This
marks yet another death that draws Donne closer to the moment in which he can begin to
reconstruct his identity. Wishrop’s death, and subsequent reincarnation, marks the spiritual
transcendence that enables for Wishrop to become reborn through his native identity in an
embrace with the “Other.”
After falling overboard and transcending into the spiritual realm through the natural
medium of the river, “Wishrop woke to find himself still alive; and crawling out of the fracas
into the bush he met the inevitably Arawak woman (this was the crew’s ancestral embroidery
and obsession) who nursed him back to life” (Harris 601). Wishrop takes on the form of a spider,
representing the clear embodiment of the native identity, in which “The curtain vanished upon
this last act of removing the web of death within himself” and “An eternity dawned” (Harris
611). Shaw indirectly draws on Maes-Jelenik’s concept of an inner duality when he explores the
implications that surface through Wishrop’s death. “Wishrop is a symbol of the personality
divided against itself or at war with itself . . . (He) becomes interconnected with all things after
death. Stripped down to skeletal existence” (164). Wishrop is literally stripped of the mask of the
flesh in order to reveal the true native “self.” The effects of Wishrop’s death begin to resonate
with Donne, as well as the rest of the crew, as recognition begins to formulate within their shared
mentality. “They had been shattered and were reflected again in each other” (878). The mask of
whiteness, or the colonizer, that existed among the crew is now fragmented. This serves as
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evidence of the artificial construction of the colonizer, and how this construction perpetuates the
myth of superiority that the crew found themselves operating other.
Donne’s final death—and penultimate “becoming” in his Deleuzian assemblage—is
revealed through his own perspective. The narrator notes that Donne is “constantly rub(ing) his
eyes,” a symbolic gesture that marks Donne’s realization of his own identity through perception
(917). Prior to reaching the Realm of the Sacred, Donne’s realization is confirmed, as “An
abstraction grew around him—nothing else—the ruling abstraction of himself which he saw
reflected nowhere. He was a ruler of men and a ruler of nothing” (Harris1118). Maes-Jelenik
relates this back to landscape. It is revealed that, prior to Donne reaching the Realm of the
Sacred: “The escarpment of the waterfall seems to represent the great divide that tore apart the
West Indian soul (particularly its Amerindian element) in the wake of conquest” (Maes-Jelinek
41). This segues into Donne’s final death—an instance that is made possible through landscape.
“He slipped and gasped on the misty step and a noose fell around his neck from which he
dangled until—after an eternity—he had regained a breathless footing” (Harris 1138). The
effects of this death finalize the deconstruction of the colonizers identity, as “It flashed on him
looking down the steep spirit of the cliff that this dreaming return(ed) to a ruling function of
nothingness” (Harris 1149). Donne’s return to the center accommodates a return to the native
identity, allowing for a pivotal moment in which his reconstruction can begin.
After Donne’s colonial identity is completely deconstructed, Donne is given his last
mask, which differs in functionality, as it carved for him and relinquishes himself of his previous
masks. It is explained that “Donne felt himself sliced with this skeleton-saw by the craftsmen of
God in the windowpane of his eye” upon reaching the center (1160). Shaw provides an
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explanation for this climactic scene, revealing Harris’s intentions. Harris “transforms” the crew
“like a forest . . . wood and stone become masks for providing windows to the spirit” (160).
Therefore, the wood of the carpenter, and the window through which Donne is able to view only
the “ruling abstraction” of himself are transformed “into a mask worn by variable metaphysical
bodies that alter the content within the mask. The livingness of wood is the magic of carven
shapes that act in turn upon the perceiving eye and sculpt into a window of spirit” (Shaw 160).
Donne and the Crew now reach a ubiquitous state of anagnorisis in which their native identities
are realized. The crew “Who felt themselves driven to seek themselves—first, outcast and
miserable twins of fate—second, heroic and warlike brothers—third, conquerors and invaders of
all mankind” realize that “In reality the territory they overwhelmed and abandoned had always
been theirs to rule and take” (Harris 1319). The crew has now internalized the paradoxical nature
of their exploits, and exist in the void that resulted from Harris’s deconstruction of Conrad’s
colonizer identity.
In this sense, Harris doesn’t necessarily re-establish the native identity, but he evokes the
possibility of a restructuring process in which native culture can be redefined. As Maes-Jelenik
explains, “this very void is the starting-point of a reconstruction of the self” (42-43). Donne, as
well as the rest of the crew, are now given an advantage that Conrad never afforded the native
identity. By reaching the inner-confines of the native centre, they have retreated further into their
own identities, as there is a “spatial equivalence between the landscape and the Caribbean
psyche” (Maes-Jelenik 41). Donne “now becomes conscious of an ‘in-visible otherness’ around
him and of existences that ‘contrast’ with his domineering self” (Maes-Jelenik 41). Therefore,
Harris concludes novel by reversing Conrad’s initial use of Fanon’s theory of recognition, in that
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Donne’s true identity was previously falsified because his identity existed only in conjunction
with the “Other.”
While Conrad’s approach to his novel signifies an attempt to provide insight into the
native identity, he further entrenches the colonizer/colonized dichotomy. Conrad facilitates a
Deleuzian assemblage in order to further establish the role of the colonizer, while conversely
diminishing the native identity through landscape. Harris then inverts Conrad’s processes in
order to deconstruct the colonial identity. Harris uses landscape as a medium through which the
deconstruction of the colonial identity is made possible. The application of this study could be
used in slave narratives that emerged in Caribbean literature, as the literal reconstruction of the
beleaguered “Other” identity is often associated with the progressive assemblage, or
reassemblage, of the self.
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