The thesis conducts a thoroughgoing analysis of Conrad's Heart of Darkness by using Bakhtin's theories of the novel. The characteristics of the "form-shaping idea" and its transformation throughout the novella are discussed. The narrator voice is described as "cleft," in that Marlow deploys e.g. "low" sailorly jargon together with "high" literary language. The use of the former is further discussed in connection with the novella's "problematic," i.e. allegedly racist passages. The thesis also discusses the heterogeneous generic tissue of the text, e.g. the autobiographical strands of the...