A Comparison of Conrad's and James's openings of their novels and the effectiveness of these choices in establishing contact with the reader Anonymous 12th Grade

The openings of Heart of Darkness and The Turn of the Screw establish the style and atmosphere to come, without addressing any of the content. As the opening scenes are completely isolated, they bring in alternative perspectives on how to approach a reading of the stories to come.

Both begin in media res, in parallel situations to the main content of the respective tale. Heart of Darkness describes a boat on the Thames, focusing on the physical setting before introducing the people three paragraphs later, with little indication of the story to be told. The telling of the story is coincidental, for it is only because they must wait for "the turn of the tide" that Marlow begins to pass the time by speaking. This implicitly foreshadows the importance of the setting and the relative unimportance of people in the story. The description of the setting comprises of imprecise imagery, focusing on light and dark, like "luminous" and "vanishing", which matches Marlow's storytelling, hazy descriptions which notice what is and isn't there, like light and dark patches of his experience. Rather than anything being, Conrad uses"seemed" to create an impressionist landscape where everything is a blur and up to interpretation. "Seem" is used...