This paper analyses the Dualistic Mode of the Divided Heroism in Heart Darkness and Season of Migration to the North. Heart of Darkness is a novel by the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story’s narrator Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England. And in Season of Migration to the North the unnamed narrator has returned to his native village in the Sudan after seven years in England furthering his education. On his arrival home, the Narrator encounters a new villager named Mustafa Sa’eed who exhibits none of the adulation for his achievements that most others do, and he displays an antagonistically aloof nature. Mustafa betrays his past one drunken evening by wistfully reciting poetry in fluent English, leaving the narrator resolute to discover the stranger’s identity. The story of Mustafa’s troubled past in Europe, and in particular his love affairs with British women, form the center of the novel. The narrator then discovers that the stranger, Mustafa Sa’eed, awakens in him great curiosity, despair and anger, as Mustafa emerges as his doppelganger. The novel has also been related in many senses to Heart of Darkness by the author Joseph Conrad. Both novels explore cultural hybridity, cross-colonial experiences, and orientalism. The paper tries to clarify the divided heroism in Heart of Darkness through Kurtz and Marlowe, while in Season of Migration to the North through the anonymous narrator and Mustafa Saeed.
Keywords: Characters, Cultural Identity, Dualism, Heroes
