Quotes

Quote 1: "The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth... Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!...The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires." Part 1, pg. 2

Quote 2: "'And this also,' said Marlow suddenly, 'has been one of the dark places of the earth.'" Part 1, pg. 3

Quote 3: "...In some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate." Part 1, pg. 4

Quote 4: "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." Part 1, pg. 4

Quote 5: "Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again--not half, by a long way." Part 1, pg. 8

Quote 6: "She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit." Part 1, pg. 9

Quote 7: "...Nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of native--he called them enemies!--hidden out of sight somewhere." Part 1, pg. 11

Quote 8: "In and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened with slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularlised impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder

grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares." Part 1, pg. 11

Quote 9: "'When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages--hate them to the death.'" Part 1, pg. 15

Quote 10: "I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming here at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you think?' he said scornfully." Part 1, pg. 16

Quote 11: "Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...no, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone..." Part 1, pg. 23

Quote 12: "'Is he alone there?' 'Yes,' answered the manager, 'he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms: 'Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don't bother sending me more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me.' That was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence?' 'Anything since then?' asked the other hoarsely. 'Ivory,' jerked the nephew, 'lots of it--prime sort--most annoying, from him.'" Part 2, pg. 27

Quote 13: "It was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home--perhaps; setting his face towards the depth of the wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station." Part 2, pg. 27

Quote 14: "The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness." Part 2, pg. 30

Quote 15: "Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible--not good for one either--trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land--I mean literally. You can't understand--how could you?" Part 2, pg. 43

Quote 16: "It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'" Part 2, pg. 44

Quote 17: "'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'" Part 2, pg. 48

Quote 18: "'He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased.'" Part 3, pg. 50

Quote 19: "...Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts [...] there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core..." Part 3, pg. 51

Quote 20: "I turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also was buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night..." Part 3, pg. 55

Quote 21: "I did not betray Mr. Kurtz--it was ordered I should never betray him--it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone--and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience." Part 3, pg. 57

Quote 22: "I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations." Part 3, pg. 59

Quote 23: "They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares." Part 3, pg. 59

Quote 24: "'The horror! The horror!'" Part 3, pg. 62

Quote 25: "Never see him! I saw him clearly then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her too, a tragic and familiar shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness." Part 3, pg. 68

Quote 26: "I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness." Part 3, pg. 69

HEART OF DARKNESS

Commentary

Heart of Darkness is best known as the story of Marlow’s journey to Africa, which, in part, it is. However, the novel is also the story of a man on board a London ship who listens to Marlow’s story as well. This “story-within-a-story” form is called a frame tale. (The significance of the framing device is discussed in the Critical Essays section.)

Exploring man’s inhumanity toward other men and raising some troubling questions about the impulse toward imperialism, Heart of Darkness is also an adventure story where (such as many others) the young hero embarks on a journey, and in the process, learns about himself. Marlow begins his narrative as a rough-and-ready young man searching for adventure. Unlike those of Europe, the maps of Africa still contained some “blank spaces” that Marlow yearned to explore; his likening the Congo River to a snake suggests the mesmeric powers of Africa. However, the serpent is also a well-known symbol of evil and temptation, harkening back to the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Thus, Conrad’s comparing the river to a snake also suggests the danger Marlow will find in Africa and the temptations to which Kurtz succumbs when he sets himself up as a god to the natives. Despite the uncertainty of what lay there, Marlow had to go.

However, before Marlow even sets foot on the African shore, Conrad begins to alert the reader to the terrible power of the African jungle. Marlow learns that a piloting position has become open because a chief’s son has killed one of the Company’s pilots over two black hens. Fresleven, the dead pilot, was thought by all to be “the kindliest, gentlest creature that ever walked on two legs,” but Conrad hints that something caused him to shed his self-control (as a snake sheds its skin) and attack the chief of a village. (This something, being the effects of “the jungle” on uninitiated Europeans, becomes more and more pronounced to Marlow and the reader as the novel progresses.) Marlow eventually sees Fresleven’s remains on the ground with grass growing up through the bones. The image suggests that Africa itself has won a battle against Fresleven and all he represents. The earth reclaimed him as its own, and Nature has triumphed over civilization. This is the first lesson Marlow learns about the futility of the Company’s agents’ attempts to remain “civilized” in the jungle, which releases instinctual and primitive drives within them that they did not ever think they possessed.

When Marlow visits Brussels to get his appointment, he describes the city as a “whited sepulcher”—a Biblical phrase referring to a hypocrite or person who employs a façade of goodness to mask his or her true malignancy. The Company, like its headquarters, is a similar “whited sepulcher,” proclaiming its duty to bring “civilization” and “light” to Africa in the name of Christian charity, but really raping the land and its people in the name of profit and the lust for power. Marlow’s aunt, who talks to him about “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” serves as an example of how deeply the Company’s propaganda has been ingrained into the minds of Europeans. Uncomfortable with his aunt’s ideas, Marlow suggests that the Company is simply “run for profit”; before he sees how these profits are acquired, he is blissfully unaware of the Company’s depravity. Marlow dwells in the realm of wishful thinking, wanting to believe that the Company has no imperialistic impulses and is simply an economic enterprise, much like the ones to which he is accustomed as a European.

The first glimpse Marlow and the reader have of the Company’s headquarters hints at the organization’s sinister, evil, and conspiratorial atmosphere. First, Marlow “slipped through one of the cracks” to enter the building, implying that the Company is figuratively “closed” in terms of what it allows the public to learn about its operations.

Second, the two women knitting black wool suggest the Fates of Greek mythology; like these goddesses, the Company is “knitting” the destiny of the Africans, represented by the black wool. The Company, therefore, plays God with the lives of the Africans, deciding who in the Congo will live or die.

Third, Marlow is led into a dimly lit office—the lighting reflects the “shady” and ambiguous morals of the Company. He only speaks with the Company’s President for forty-five seconds, suggesting that the Company views Marlow—and people like him—as expendable.

Fourth, Marlow is asked to sign “some document” that ostensibly contracts him to not reveal “any trade secrets,” but figuratively suggests the selling of his soul to the Devil. (As the Manager of the Central Station will later remark about Africa, “Men who come out here should have no entrails.”) As the Devil seeks human souls to overthrow God in Heaven eventually, the Company is metaphorically seeking to acquire the souls of as many Europeans as possible to make greater profits.

Fifth, when Marlow is examined by the Company’s Doctor, he learns that many Europeans who venture to Africa become mad: When the Doctor begins measuring Marlow’s skull, the reader infers Conrad’s point that European “science” and “technology” (even with a science as ludicrous as phrenology) are no match for the power if the jungle. When “civilized” Europeans go to Africa, the restraints placed upon them by European society begin to vanish, resulting in the kind of behavior previously seen in Fresleven. Later in the novel, when his anger begins to grow after finding all of his gear damaged by the porters, Marlow ironically remarks, “I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.”

Also worth noting is the abundance of white and dark images in these opening pages of Marlow’s narrative. The Congo is described as a “white patch” on a map, Fresleven was killed in a scuffle over two black hens, Brussels is a “whited sepulcher,” the two women knit black wool and the old one wears a “starched white affair,” the President’s secretary has white hair, and the Doctor has black ink-stains on his sleeves. Many critics have commented (sometimes inconclusively) on Conrad’s use of white and black imagery; generally, one should note how the combination of white and black images suggests several of the novel’s ideas:

The Company claims to be a means by which (as Marlow’s aunt calls them), “emissaries of light” can bring civilization to the “darkness” of Africa, which is done by denoting Brussels as white and the Congo as white.

The White men in the novel (particularly Marlow and Kurtz) will be greatly influenced by their experiences with the Africans.

Although the Company professes to be a force of “White” moral righteousness, it is actually “spotted” with “black” spots of sin and inhumanity, and the corpses of the black natives that are found throughout the Congo.

In short, the Company may appear to be “white” and pure, but it is actually quite the opposite, as denoted by the accountant and his white shirt.

Some critics have claimed that Conrad’s use of “darkness” to represent evil suggests the racist assumptions of the novel; others argue that the “white” characters in the book are actually more “black” than the natives they slaughter and that Conrad’s imagery stresses the hypocrisy of the Company and its “white” employees. Regardless of this critical dispute, a reader should note that Conrad toys with white and black imagery throughout the course of the novel, and of course, in its very title.

Marlow feels like “an imposter” when he leaves the Company’s headquarters, because he has joined the ranks of an outfit whose assumptions about Africa and European activity there sharply contrast with his own. Marlow has no imperialistic impulses and only seeks adventure—but he is beginning to see the Company for what it truly is. Thus, Marlow’s growing perception of the moral decay around him becomes one of the major issues of the novel.

Like the Company headquarters, Africa itself is initially portrayed as an enchanting and intriguing place. The continent is described as unfinished and “still in the making,” possessing an air that beguiles Europeans to “Come and find out” if they can survive there.

This portrayal of Africa as an untouched paradise, however, is quickly countered by Marlow’s description. He notices a French man-of-war firing its guns into the bush; the “pop” made by its guns highlights the Company’s ineffectual attempts to subdue the continent. Similarly, Marlow notices a boiler lying in the grass, an unused railway car resembling “the carcass of some animal,” a series of explosions that do nothing to change the rock they are attempting to remove, an “artificial hole” the purpose of which he cannot discern, and a ravine filled with broken drainage pipes. Stunned by these images of chaos, Marlow remarks, “The work was going on. The work!” Clearly, these signs of waste and ineptitude are not what Marlow expected to see upon his arrival; these discarded machines symbolize the complete disregard of the Company for making any real progress in the Congo, as well as the disorganization that marks its day-to-day operations.

Even more disturbing to Marlow is the “grove of death”: a shady spot where some of the natives—like the machinery mentioned previously—are dying without anyone seeming to notice or care. Calling them “nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation” and “bundles of acute angles,” Marlow attempts to show some charity by offering one of them a biscuit; the dying native, however, can only grasp it in his hand, too weak to even bring it to his mouth. Marlow notices that this man has “a bit of white worsted” tied around his neck and puzzles over its meaning, but the reader can see that the wool is symbolic of the Company’s “collaring” the natives and treating them like animals. Disturbed Marlow leaves the grove to soothe his shaken mind. Rather than confront the horror head-on, he retreats; later he will not have this luxury.

Marlow moves from the natives to a European: the Company’s chief accountant, who suggests the immense amount of money that the Company is making from its campaign of terror and whose dress is impeccable. Again the reader sees the Company’s attempts to array itself in colors and façades of purity. Marlow calls the Accountant a “miracle” because of his ability to keep up a dignified European appearance amidst the sweltering and muddy jungle. (He even has a penholder behind his ear.) Completely and willingly oblivious to the horrors around him, the Accountant cares only for figures and his own importance: When a sick agent is temporarily placed in his hut, the Accountant complains. He also tells Marlow, “When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages—hate them to the death.” To the Company, as embodied in the Accountant, profits take precedence over human life and the bottom line is more important than any higher law of humanity.

Marlow’s two hundred-mile hike to the Central Station reinforces the Company’s lack of organization and brutality. Passing through deserted and razed villages, his perception of the Company becomes sharper. His journey ends at the Central Station, where Marlow spends the remainder of Part 1. Like the Company’s European headquarters and the Outer Station, this place reeks of waste, inhumanity, and death. Earlier in the novel, Marlow states that he would, in time, “become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly”—now, at the Central Station, he remarks, “the first glance of the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show.” No longer the enthusiastic sailor, Marlow grows increasingly suspicious and judgmental of what he sees. The fact that he learns, upon his arrival, that his steamboat is at the bottom of the river only increases his ire and suspicion.

A noteworthy segment of Part 1 concerns Kurtz’s painting, which Marlow sees hanging in the Brickmaker’s room. The painting depicts a woman, blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. Clearly, this woman reminds one of the usual personification of justice, while the torch suggests the Company bringing the “light” of civilization into the “Dark Continent.” (Recall Marlow’s aunt and her hope that Marlow will help those “ignorant” savages become more civilized.) The woman in the painting also symbolizes the Company, which willingly blindfolds itself to the horrors it perpetuates in the name of profit; it also recalls the Company’s ineptitude and the ways in which it “blindly” stumbles through Africa.

This painting also symbolizes its creator. Like the blindfolded woman, Kurtz once yearned to bring the “light” of civilization and progress to the “dark” continent. (This explains the torch coming out of the darkness.) At the end of his life, however, Kurtz changes his position, most markedly apparent when Marlow reads a handwritten line in one of Kurtz’s reports urging, “Exterminate all the brutes!” Thus, according to the painting, Europe puts on a show of bringing “light”—but this light ultimately reveals a “sinister” appearance, which marks the woman’s face. Here, Conrad foreshadows what Kurtz will be like when Marlow meets him: a man who once held high ideals about bringing “justice” and “light” to the Congo, but who became “sinister” once he arrived there.

One of Conrad’s personifications of the “flabby” (because it has “devoured” Africa), “pretending” (because it masquerades its avarice in the name of enlightenment), and “weak-eyed” (because it refuses to “see” the effects of its work) Company is the Manager. He has no education, is a “common trader,” inspires “neither fear nor love,” creates “uneasiness” in all who meet him, and lacks any “genius for organizing.” All Marlow is able to conclude is that he “was never ill” and is able to keep the supply of ivory flowing to European ports. Marlow’s growing perceptions soon allow him to understand that the Company possesses “not an atom of foresight or of serious intention” and that “To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.”

At this point, Conrad increases the amount of rumors and half-truths that Marlow (and the reader) begins to hear about “the man who is so indissolubly connected” with Marlow’s journey: Kurtz. As Heart of Darkness progresses, Conrad’s emphasis shifts from Marlow’s desire to explore the “snake” of the Congo to his longing to meet this shadowy figure. Kurtz is first mentioned by the Accountant, who calls him “a first-class agent” and “a remarkable person” who “sends in as much ivory as the others put together.” The Manager, however, speaks of Kurtz in more ambiguous terms.

In spite of his claims of concern for Kurtz, the Manager is actually sabotaging Kurtz and doing everything in his power to ensure that he will die at the Inner Station. His motive? Professional jealousy. Marlow notices “an air of plotting” at the station and later overhears the Manager speaking to his uncle (the leader of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition), from which he learns the following things:

The Manager, against his will, was forced to send Kurtz to the interior of the jungle: “Am I the Manager—or am I not?” he asks.

Kurtz asked the administration to send him there with the idea of “showing what he could do.”

The Manager fears that Kurtz “has the council by the nose” and has requested a position in the interior because he wants the Manager’s job: “Conceive you—that ass! And he wants to be Manager!”

Thus, the Manager is nervous when talking to Marlow because he does not know who Marlow really is or if he has any powerful connections in Europe. When he replies, “That ought to do the affair,” he means that three months without any relief should be long enough to ensure Kurtz’s

death. “Trust to this,” his uncle says as he gestures to the jungle, and this is just what the Manager is doing: “Trusting” that (as his uncle also says) “the climate may do away with this difficulty” for him. Only later does Marlow realize that the Manager was responsible for his steamboat’s “accident”: He could not get any rivets because the Manager made sure that their delivery to Marlow was delayed as long as possible without arousing Marlow’s suspicions. (When Marlow’s steamboat gets close to Kurtz in Part 2, the Manager tells Marlow to wait until the next morning before pressing on, to delay their arrival even more than he already has.) Even as Marlow felt he was being entered into a giant conspiracy upon accepting his post in Europe, he has unwittingly stumbled upon one in the Congo.

The brickmaker who tries to wrangle information out of Marlow about Kurtz adds to the conspiratorial air of the Central Station. From his conversation with Marlow, the reader learns that Kurtz has disrupted the brickmaker’s plans to become assistant-manager. The brickmaker also reflects the Company’s disorganization, for he makes no bricks at all; he also reflects the Company’s avarice, for he wants to advance in rank without completing any actual work.

While the plot concerning Marlow’s steamboat and rivets adds to Conrad’s overall air of conspiracy, it also metaphorically enriches the novel as a whole. Rivets hold things together, and Conrad uses the rivets as symbols of the ways in which the Company, the Manager, Marlow, Kurtz, and Kurtz’s fiancée (his Intended) attempt to “hold together” their beliefs and ideas. These ideological “rivets” are seen in numerous ways. For example, the Company wants to keep its operations running without criticism, inquiry or restraint; Marlow wants to believe his own naïve ideas about Africa; Kurtz wants to remain king of his private empire and disregard his “civilized” self; and the Intended wants to believe that Kurtz was a great man with a “generous mind” and “noble heart.” Each character has his or her own “rivet,” from the Company’s implied belief that it is “civilizing” the Africans to the Intended’s acceptance of Marlow’s lie about Kurtz. Heart of Darkness is an oftentimes disturbing book because Conrad’s suggestion that all of these “rivets” are simply lies—ideas, beliefs and assumptions used to excuse shameless profiteering (as with the Company) or sustain a false image of a loved one (as with the Intended). Only Marlow and Kurtz see that these metaphorical “rivets” are faulty: Marlow when he witnesses firsthand the atrocities perpetuated by the Company and Kurtz when he whispers, “The horror! The horror!” on his deathbed. Marlow’s naïve belief that the Company was run only for profit and Kurtz’s belief that he could escape his own “civilized” morality are both shown to be “rivets” that simply could not hold.

The final symbol found in Part 1 is the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, run by the Manager’s uncle. This fictional expedition is based on an actual one: The Katanga Expedition (1890–1892). The fact that the Manager’s uncle leads the expedition suggests that it is another example of White traders scrambling for riches in the Congo. Marlow dismisses them as “buccaneers” who do not even make a pretense of coming to Africa for anything other than treasure.

Commentary

Part 2 of Heart of Darkness offers the reader some of Conrad’s most dense passages. Sentences such as “It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention” may seem confusing, but the difficulty here instead is Marlow’s, because much of Heart of Darkness concerns how its protagonist struggles to articulate what traveling through the jungle is like. Marlow explains to his companions on the Nellie that they cannot fully grasp the whole truth of what he saw, because they live in the modern, “civilized” world with “a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal.” Marlow’s point here is that language sometimes fails to wholly convey the wonders and horrors of his experience; his remark, “This is the worst of trying to tell,” suggests his difficulty in relating to his companions the full emotional, spiritual, and political impact that his journey had on him. His companions will not

be able to fully understand him because they live with the “solid pavement” of Europe under their feet. This idea that Marlow’s telling of the story is a major part of the story itself is suggested by the anonymous narrator who, at the beginning of the novel, explains that, for Marlow, “the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze.” In other words, Heart of Darkness is as much the story of a man coming face-to-face with a number of political, moral, and spiritual horrors as much as it is one of that same man’s search for language adequate enough to convey them. Hence, the novel is by turns both striking and obtuse, both concrete and abstract, both detailed and ambiguous.

Note that Marlow pauses at one point in Part 2 and the flow of his story is broken by the frame narrator’s words. This reminds the reader of the fact that Marlow is telling his story instead of living through it—and that what he knows about the story’s issues as a whole will affect the ways he relates it to the men on the Nellie. There are essentially two Marlows: The one who lived through the experience and the one who looks back on it. Marlow’s digression about Kurtz, therefore, allows the reader to eventually meet Kurtz with Marlow’s opinions of him in mind.

In Part 1, Marlow calls the forest “primeval” and jokes that he expected to see an “ichthyosaurus” while voyaging through it. Throughout Part 2, Marlow’s description of the jungle is marked by an increased emphasis on what he sees as its prehistoric nature. “Going back to that jungle was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world,” he states, and subsequent passages reinforce this impression. For example, he calls himself and his crew “wanderers on a prehistoric earth” and the natives examples of “prehistoric man.” Marlow also stresses the unreality of the jungle that can make one “bewitched” and cut off from everything one had ever known. The tiny steamboat, “clinging to the skirts of the unknown,” causes Marlow to feel small and lost.

This attitude may seem patronizing—as if Marlow implies that Africa is unfinished and is ages behind Europe in terms of civilization. However, much of Conrad’s novel is a critique of civilization and those who want (like Kurtz) to bring its “light” into the heart of “darkness.” Similarly, modern readers may regard where Marlow discusses his connections to the natives as Eurocentric or even racist.

To a European in 1899, the thought of one’s kinship with “savages” may, indeed, seem “ugly”—but Marlow’s point here is that only someone with the necessary courage could see that the differences between “enlightened” Europe and the “prehistoric” Congo are superficial ones. This is one of the things that Marlow learns from Kurtz and that is stressed when, during the attack on the steamboat, Marlow sees “a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me very fierce and steady.” The Company may bring no real “light” to Africa, but Marlow is increasingly “enlightened” about his own humanity.

Still, Marlow is not yet the Buddha preaching in European clothes he will become on board the Nellie. Instead, he concentrates on steering the steamboat and avoiding snags to save his mind from considering all of these philosophical and political implications. Focusing on “work” instead of deeper moral concerns is what saves Marlow’s sanity—and by extension, allows the Company to ravage the Congo without a moment’s pause. Piloting is the “rivet” that holds together Marlow as he comes closer to Kurtz, who will upset all of Marlow’s “surface-truths” (as he calls them) and force him to consider all the ugliness of which Marlow has been a part.

Marlow does speak well of the cannibals on board his steamboat, for they possess a quality that Marlow sees less and less during his time in Company-controlled Africa: restraint. Although these men “still belonged to the beginnings of time,” they never attack their White superiors—which would have been an easy feat for them. Marlow argues that “the devilry of lingering starvation” is the most impossible force to defeat, because it outweighs any “superstitions, beliefs, and what you may call principles.” Unlike the Company (and its greatest prodigy, Kurtz), the “savage” Africans show a humane and honorable restraint that their “superiors” obviously lack, as seen in their insatiable hunger for ivory and the brutal means by which they acquire it.

As the jungle grows more frightening and mysterious, Marlow struggles to keep himself calm and “European.” His joy in finding the Harlequin’s book reflects his longing for a sign of his previous world as he trudges through this new one. Despite the fact that the book itself (An Inquiry into Some Points of Seamanship) looks “dreary reading enough,” Marlow is excited by its very existence as “something unmistakably real.” The book’s subject matter and author (a “Master in His Majesty’s Navy”), while dry, are evidence of “science” and “an honest concern for the right way of going to work.” When he is summoned to the steamboat, Marlow confesses that putting down the book is like “tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship”; the “friendship” of which Marlow speaks is his long one with Europe, which has always kept him “sheltered” from the truth of his kinship with “savagery.”

The death of the helmsman is another scene where Marlow attempts to make the reality of his situation “fade.” After finding that the helmsman has been killed in the attack, Marlow is “morbidly anxious” to change his shoes and socks.

In addition to intensifying the reader’s understanding of Marlow’s impending epiphany, Part 2 contains a digression where he abandons his narrative and speaks of Kurtz in a general sense. Unlike the cannibals, Kurtz possessed a ravenous hunger: “You should have heard him say . . . ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—’ everything.” His bald head suggested the ivory that he had spent so much effort in securing. His “nerves went wrong” and he participated in “unspeakable rites.” He “had taken a high seat among the devils of the land” and Marlow found it impossible to know “how many powers of darkness had claimed him for their own.” However, what is more striking than these elusive hints at barbarity is Marlow’s short yet important defense of Kurtz: “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.” Literally, Marlow is speaking of Kurtz’s ancestry—but metaphorically, Marlow implies that the horrors he saw in Africa cannot all be blamed on one man. More importantly, Kurtz is not an isolated figure— all of Europe has produced him, and the power, hunger, and evil he embodies. The appearance of the Harlequin (like Kurtz’s jester) at this point emphasizes the charisma and power of the demagogue and prepares the reader—like the previously discussed digression—for the entrance of Kurtz in Part 3.

Commentary

Throughout Parts 1 and 2 of Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is a shadowy figure whose name is dropped at different times and whose personality and importance eludes both Marlow and the reader. Only after reading Part 3, however, does Kurtz’s overall importance become clear and Conrad’s design show itself; the novel is about the meeting of two men (Marlow and Kurtz) whose existences mirror each other. Ultimately, Conrad suggests that Kurtz is who Marlow may become if he abandons all restraint while working in the jungle. Part 3 emphasizes Kurtz’s godlike stature to show why Kurtz became what he did and how Marlow retreats from this fate.

Throughout Part 3, Conrad stresses the absolute devotion that Kurtz inspires in his followers. The Harlequin, for example, speaks with enthusiasm when speaking of Kurtz: “He made me see things—things,” he tells Marlow, and adds, “You can’t judge Kurtz as you would an ordinary man.” This is an important statement, because it reflects the idea that Kurtz feels he has moved beyond the judgement of his fellow man. By abandoning himself to his innermost desires and lusts, Kurtz has achieved a god-like status. Note that this god-like status is not simply an illusion in Kurtz’s mind, for the heads of neighboring tribes fall prostrate before Kurtz and, more surprisingly, the very natives being forced into slavery by the Company attack Marlow’s steamboat because they do not want Kurtz to leave. The sight later on of the three natives covered in earth and the “wild woman” reinforce Kurtz’s godlike stature. “He came to them with thunder and lightning,” the Harlequin explains, “and they had never seen anything like it.” Fulfilling what Conrad saw as the

wish of many Europeans, Kurtz has established himself as a violent force, ready to extract vengeance on anyone who disobeys his commands.

Ironically, however, Kurtz does not appear to fit this description physically. Pale, emaciated, and weak, he is often referred to by Marlow as a shadow of a man, a man who is “hollow at the core” and who actually longs for his own destruction. In essence, succumbing to what Marlow calls the “various lusts” that can possess any man has taken its toll on Kurtz’s soul—a toll that is reflected in Kurtz’s withered frame. Once a formidable tyrant, Kurtz is now “an animated image of death carved out of old ivory.” As Kurtz’s “wild woman” is a personification of the jungle Kurtz himself is the embodiment of the Company: a force that revels in its own power for power’s sake. (Recall how Kurtz turned his canoe around after coming two hundred miles down the river; after tasting the power that his position afforded him, Kurtz could not return to the confining “civilization” of Europe.)

Besides implying the idea that Kurtz embodies the Company, the passage is important because it suggests that even men with “great plans” such as Kurtz (recall his painting and ideas about how each station should be a “beacon on the road to better things”) can discover they are, in fact, exactly like the “savages” they are purporting to “save.” Underneath the sheen of “civilization,” there exists, in every man, a core of brutality. Many people manage to suppress this part of themselves, but Kurtz chose to court it instead. His previous beliefs and “plans” really meant nothing—there was no substance to them, which is why Marlow calls Kurtz “hollow at the core.” Kurtz’s report on “Savage Customs” reflects this duality—its opening pages are filled with grandiose plans for reform, but its author’s true feelings are revealed in his postscript, “Exterminate all the brutes!”

It is Kurtz’s abandoning all previously cherished codes of conduct and morality that strikes Marlow as so fascinating. No longer pretending to be a force of “civilization” (as the Company does), Kurtz has moved beyond the confines of modern morality and ideas about right and wrong. When Marlow says that Kurtz “had kicked himself loose of the earth,” he is metaphorically implying that Kurtz broke free from the restraints of the basic morality (a sense of right and wrong) that creates order in the world—but Marlow then qualifies this idea with, “Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces.” In other words, Kurtz has not created a new code of conduct or morality—he has dismissed the very idea of morality altogether. This is why Marlow cannot “appeal” to him in the name of country, finance, or even humanity. Like Frankenstein’s creature, Kurtz is in the world but not of it.

The Company wants to get rid of Kurtz because he reveals the lie to their methods. He collects more ivory than any other agent because he uses absolute brute force in collecting it and never hides his real intentions behind the kind of philosophy espoused by Marlow’s aunt in Part 1. The Company, however, does not want to appear “loose from the earth” like their number-one agent, which is why its representatives (the Manager and the spectacled man who accosts Marlow in Brussels about Kurtz’s papers) want to ensure that Europeans never learn the truth about him. Marlow, while not admiring Kurtz’s “methods,” does appreciate how Kurtz was able to journey into that part of himself that he (and the rest of us) suppress. According to Marlow, Kurtz was a noteworthy man because “he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot.” Kurtz is not heroic, but he is more of an adventurer than Marlow ever imagined he could be—instead of voyaging into an unknown continent, he voyaged into the unknown parts of his own soul. For this alone, Marlow feels the need to safeguard Kurtz’s reputation, because no one who had not made such a journey into himself could ever possibly understand Kurtz’s.

What Kurtz himself thinks of his own actions and “kicking the earth to pieces” is much more difficult to pinpoint; his final words—“The horror! The horror!”—have elicited an enormous amount of critical commentary. Marlow suggests that these words reflect Kurtz’s “supreme moment of complete knowledge”—an epiphany in which Kurtz saw exactly what succumbing to his own

darkness had done to him. Care should be taken, however, not to read Kurtz’s finals words as an apology or deathbed retraction of his life. Heart of Darkness is not a fable, and one of its themes is that the darkness courted by Kurtz is potentially in everyone’s heart—not just the one belonging to this “voracious” demagogue. Kurtz may be commenting on the force for which he has given his life, or the fact that he will not live long enough to finish his “great plans.” Conrad’s deliberately ambiguous choice of Kurtz’s dying words allows for a number of interpretations while simultaneously refusing the reader the comfort he or she would feel in reducing Kurtz to neat categories and descriptions. Like Africa, Kurtz is mysterious, and the workings of his heart at his “supreme moment” remain mysterious as well.

Still, the only character remotely aware of what Kurtz did and what drove him is Marlow, which is why, upon his return to Europe, he finds the people there to be “intruders whose knowledge of life” is “an irritating pretence.” He finds them “offensive” because of their self-assuredness in their morals and belief in the inherent “rightness” of their civilization—a “rightness” Marlow now scorns because he sees it (like the Company’s wish to bring the “light of civilization” into Africa) as a façade. This is why, in the opening pages of his narrative, Marlow speaks of the Romans conquering England, which “has been one of the dark places of the earth.” Marlow now understands that empires are not built without the kinds of activities he witnessed in the Congo and that the “civilization” that is held in such esteem is, in a sense, “just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a grand scale, and men going at it blind.” While Marlow never wishes to abandon civilization in favor of the path chosen by Kurtz, he can no longer view it with the same enthusiasm and comfort that he did before working for the Company. Kurtz has taught him too much.

The final meeting between Marlow and Kurtz’s Intended dramatizes this conflict in Marlow’s heart. The Intended (who knows little about the real Kurtz) contrasts Kurtz’s native mistress (who presumably knew intimately of his “various lusts”) and brings to mind the duality of Kurtz’s character. Dressed in mourning for over a year, she, too, suggests the complete devotion of Kurtz’s followers: “For her he had died only yesterday.” Her black mourning dress, “ashen halo,” and dark eyes bring to mind the numerous examples of light and dark imagery throughout the novel—except that here, the images are more pronounced than anywhere else in the book. The Intended’s “darkness” reflects her own sorrow at the loss of her love, but Marlow attempts to hide a greater and more threatening darkness: The truth about Kurtz.

Marlow is not deliberately trying to be sarcastic by repeating the Intended’s words; the irony of the naïve Intended presuming to “know Kurtz best” is what gives Marlow’s repetitions their bite.

As Marlow struggles to maintain his composure, he notices the physical and metaphorical darkness that permeates the room. He arrives at the Intended’s house at dusk. At the beginning of the conversation, he notices the room “growing darker” and only her forehead remaining “illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and love.” When she begins explaining that she knew Kurtz better than anyone else, Marlow comments, “The darkness deepened” and, in his heart, bows his head before her. The truth about Kurtz—metaphorically represented in the coming of night—becomes more difficult for Marlow to hide, because the Intended’s presumed knowledge of Kurtz becomes more unnerving to him as they continue. After the “last gleams of twilight” fall, Marlow even admits to feeling some “dull anger” at her naiveté, but this feeling turns to “infinite pity” when Marlow realizes the immensity of her ignorance. This is why, when asked to repeat Kurtz’s final words, Marlow cannot bring himself to repeat, “The horror! The horror!” and instead tells a lie that gives great comfort to the Intended while simultaneously securing Kurtz’s reputation. Despite the fact that Marlow knows that lies are wrong, he cannot refrain from telling this one, because to do so “would have been too dark—too dark altogether.” As the Intended gratefully receives Marlow’s lie, so Europe accepts the one it tells itself about building empires and civilizing “savages.”

Study Guide to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

-- Part One --

Throughout the story, you want to keep systematic track of the motifs that show up in the work's title -- of "darkness" and "heart," literally and metaphorically.  This means, too, that you'll want to keep track of their various contraries (or supposed contraries) -- of "light,"  and of such different things conventionally distinguishable from the "heart" as the "intellect," "will," "appetites," "soul." 

Be alert for the possibility that "darkness" (and "black") may take on a variety of connotations (evil? unclarity/obscurity? ignorance?), depending on the specific context, and that "light" (and "white") may not always be able to be trusted to indicate the contraries of these (goodness, clarity, knowledge or insight).  That is, there may be ironic play at work about appearances and reality in connection with these notions.

Notice that the entire tale is conveyed by a frame narrator, who describes to us the situation in which Marlow, the protagonist/narrator of the main story, tells that story to his audience.  The frame narrator introduces Marlow, telling us certain important things about him, and relating some of Marlow's reflections that motivate him to recall and relate his story, and then in effect quotes from memory the entire story Marlow relates, occasionally intruding when Marlow briefly breaks off, and then receding into the background until the final paragraph of the novella.

What seems to be the narrator's own attitude towards the history of British maritime imperial enterprise?  (p. 2)

Make it a point to note what the narrator says sets Marlow apart from other seafarers.  (3) How are these qualities of personality important in the story that Marlow eventually tells? 

What is it about the surroundings of the moment that leads Marlow to tell the story that makes up the main business of the novella? (3-4)  What is his sense of the kind of enterprise the Roman conquest of Britain was?  What are his feelings about it?  What are his feelings about the different sorts of people involved in it?  How does he think it compares and contrasts to the British imperial enterprise of his own day? 

When you finish the novella, return to Marlow's ruminations about the Roman projection into Britain.  How does his sense of the Belgian imperial project compare with his feelings towards the British Empire?  Do you think Conrad agrees with him?  Are do we have here a narrator that we are supposed to part company with in some important respects?

Marlow's story begins on p. 5.  Make a descriptive note in the top margin of the appropriate page where each of the following episodes begins.  This will make it easier for us to find our way through the text during class discussion.  (You must, of course, bring your text with you to class.)

London and Brussells.

Marlow explains how he came to get the job that led to the adventure that is the substance of his tale.

Checking the maps:  what's this stuff about a snake charming a bird?  (Where later on in the story does the idea of "bewitchment" come in?)

Working through his aunt to get connections. 

What episode opened the opportunity for him to get a job with the Company?  How does Fresleven's fate function as a foreshadowing of what Marlow will encounter later on?

What is ironic about the juxtaposition of the deserted African village (described in a flashforward) and the metropolis of Brussels (the capital of Belgium)?  What is ominous about the impression Brussels makes on Marlow?

The appointment at the Company.  Look carefully at the elements and structure of this mini-episode.  How are the two women at the door described?  the maps?  the secretary?  the CEO?

Ave!  Morituri te salutant.  "Hail!  We who are about to die salute you":  this is how the gladiators in the Roman Colosium addressed the spectators.

The appointment with the company doctor:  what impression does this leave?

The goodbye/thank-you visit to his aunt:  what are his aunt's ideas about him?  (How do these evidently affect his reception later on, when he's working his way up the Congo?  How do they connect with the kind of reputation Kurtz has?)

P. 10, end of ¶3:  what are some different things we might conceive to exist at "the center of the earth"?  (In what sense does this sentence turn out to be appropriate?)

The trip on the French steamer.

What's the impression we get of the European contacts with the edge of the African continent?

What mentality is testified to by the gun-boat shelling the bush?  (What have we already heard of that this calls to mind?  What do we eventually meet with that in turn calls this to mind?)

The trip from the mouth of the river (the Congo) to the Company's Outer Station.

What is the opinion of the Swedish captain of the seagoing steamer concerning what's going on?  What question does he plant in our mind?

The Outer Station.

What is signified by the "boiler wallowing in the grass"?

What's implied by the statement that the blasting is "objectless"?

What can we infer from the appearance of the chain gang?  What attitude on the part of Marlow is conveyed by his referring to the man in charge of them as "one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work"?

What is the point of Marlow's disquisition on the various kinds of devils he's seen?

Be on the alert for where this motif gets picked up later on.

The "grove of death."  What does Marlow encounter here?  (What's the implication of the hole being as it is?  of there being all these smashed imported drainage pipes?  What's the condition of the people?  What is Marlow's reaction?  Should it / could it be anything else?)

The Company Accountant.  What's striking about his appearance and behavior?  Do we detect any irony in Marlow's description of this personage?

What do we make of his attitude towards the sick person?

What do we make of his remarks about his laundry woman?

First mention of Mr. Kurtz:  what expectations are aroused for Marlow by the Accountant's remarks?

The trek from the Outer Station to the Central Station.

What are the chief things Marlow encounters along the way?

What's his attitude towards his white companion on this journey?

The Central Station.

What's running the show here?

"White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly...":  this is Marlow's first acquaintance with what he comes to dub "the pilgrims."  Keep your eye out for his attitude towards them, and the reasons for it.  Also:  why do they appear this way?  What are they hanging around for?  What is their attitude towards the natives around them?

Marlow learns the steamer he's to pilot up the river has been sunk.  How did this come about?  What does it seem to indicate about the quality of management at the station?

The Manager of the Central Station.

What initial impression does he make on Marlow?  Does this impression change later on?  Does it intensify?

What impression is made by his explanation of how the steamer ended up getting its bottom torn out?  What are we to infer the Manager has really been up to?  (Cf. the last sentence of the last full ¶ on p. 19.)

What are "the redeeming facts of life" that Marlow fought to keep his hold on?  How did he do this?

What attitude to you see developing on Marlow's part towards the "pilgrims"?  (Look carefully at the full description.)

What's signified by the reaction of people at the CS to the burning of the grass shed warehouse?

What does Marlow overhear during the fire, between the manager and the first-class agent?  What is his "take" on it?

What's the first-class agent's job?  What do we learn of the personality of the first-class agent, from Marlow's relation of his conversation with him?

Why does this person want to make the acquaintance of Marlow?

Study carefully the description Marlow gives of the painting attributed to Kurtz.  What meanings is this susceptible to taking on, in the light of the story that follows?

What is the first-class agent's opinion of Marlow?  of Kurtz?  How does he feel towards what he sees as the new breed of agent being recruited by HQ?  Why does he feel this way?

What is Marlow's attitude towards the first-class agent?

Can you paraphrase the sense of Marlow's disquisition upon lies?

What attitude does Marlow find himself taking on towards Kurtz?

[Here the frame narrator intrudes for a little while.  Why do you think Conrad arranged for this to happen this way, here?]

What's Marlow getting at, concerning the first-class agent, with all his (Marlow's) carrying on about rivets?

What does the incident with the hippopotamus remind us of?

What does Marlow think is crucially important about work?

What is Marlow's attitude towards the native foreman, boilermaker by trade?

What shows up instead of the rivets?

What's implied by the name the expedition has been given?

What's its purpose?

What is the relationship of the expedition's leader to the manager of the CS?

What is Marlow's impression of this leader?

What is Marlow's curiosity about Kurtz?

The Central Station [continued].

Marlow is lying on the deck of the steamboat he is repairing, when he overhears a conversation between the Manager and his uncle, the leader of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition. 

What are the important things he learns from this exchange?

What is the uncle gesturing towards at the end?

When the EEE leaves, news filters back about what became of it.  What is Marlow referring to by the phrase "the less valuable animals"?

The journey by river steamer from the Central Station to the Inner Station.

The opening paragraph of this section, a sort of overture:  what seem to be its main themes?

[The frame narrative intrudes, and then recedes:  why did Conrad arrange for this at this point, and why did he arrange for it to happen on the issue it does?]

Marlow's meditation on prehistoric humanity, and on the earth (then) as an "unshackled monster":  what are the important notions that get elaborated here?  What does their relevance turn out to be in the sequel?

What does Marlow say kept him from succumbing to madness?

What is Marlow's attitude towards the fireman in charge of stoking the boiler on the steamer?  Its complicated.  What elements does it seem to be composed of?  Which element predominates?

About 50 miles below the Inner Station:  a woodstack (for what?) and a warning (what?) 

What questions does this encounter raise?

What else does Marlow find there?  What impresses Marlow about it?  (How does a man like Towson differ from, say, the "pilgrims"?)

When they are once again under way,

what does the manager think accounts for what they found?

What does Marlow mean when he says, "The manager displayed a beautiful resignation"?  (What's the tone here?)

What would Marlow be saying if he were to "talk openly with Kurtz"?

What temptation is Marlow near to when he has the sudden feeling that "What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored?  What did it matter who was manager?"

What insight is Marlow referring to when he says, "One gets sometimes such a flash of insight"?  How does this claim square with the one that follows:  "The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling."

About 8 miles below the Inner Station, at evening, the manager wants to wait until morning to proceed further, Marlow anchors the boat in the middle of the river.

What is heard and seen as dawn breaks, in the fog?  (Why is fog appropriate here, by the way?)

What does this indicate?  What is the reaction of the passengers?

Summarize Marlow's meditation on the cannibal crew?  What is he impressed with? 

This moral trait will play a huge role in Marlow's reflections later on, when he encounters Kurtz.  Keep this passage in mind.  How does it relate to Marlow's fantasies about what the Roman imperial enterprise was all about in its day?

Marlow flashes forward to tell his audience that later on that what they had taken as the motive of the event that scared them was way off the mark.  How so?

After the fog lifts and they get under way again, what happens a little up the way, when the boat has to enter a narrow channel?

What's the reaction of the pilgrims?  What does it remind us of?

What happens to the helmsman?

What is Marlow's reaction to this?

What possibility concerning Kurtz does this episode raise, for the manger?

What is Marlow's reaction to thinking about this?

What explanation does he give for this?

In the course of this explanation, we are introduced to the idea of Kurtz's "voice" -- of Kurtz as "voice."  This is a motif to be sure to trace from here on out.

[At this point, there is another interruption of Marlow's narrative, by some conversation that takes place in the frame narrative:  Marlow stresses the contrast between the situation of his hearers and the situation he is narrating.  This will come up again later on, when Marlow moves into talking about the topic of "civilization."  When this latter eventually turns up, be on the lookout for some irony.]

Marlow jumps forward to mention something about his encounter with Kurtz.  What does he telegraph was the nature of this overcoming of his premature disappointment?  Was he thrilled?  Or was he set up for being more deeply disappointed?

He also gives us a flashforward to his conversation with Kurtz's "Intended" (i.e., fiancée).

How does he say he lays the "ghost" of Kurtz's voice to rest?

How does this square with his earlier remarks (p. 23) on the topic of lying?

How does he justify not telling Kurtz's Intended the truth about Kurtz?

What assumptions does this reveal, on Marlow's part, about how the world is divided up, between women and men, and about what is proper to each domain?  [What's your own view on these issues?]

How, supposedly, does their staying, with "our" [who is "we" here?] help "in that beautiful world of their own" contributing to "our" world not getting worse?  Worse in what way?  How are lies necessary to sustain this "beautiful world"?  How can a world sustained by such means help prevent the world outside and surrounding it from getting worse?

Take note of an ambiguity in the connotations of the phrase "be[ing] out of it"?  Are there some things on the level of conduct and action that you would want very much to "keep out of" that on the level of knowledge you would nevertheless not want to "be kept out of"?

What effects does Conrad allow for by having Marlow refer throughout to Kurtz's fiancée as his "Intended"?  (Do you recall this term when you get, for instance, to Kurtz's remark at the beginning of the last ¶ on p. 60?)

Note that Marlow doesn't disclose to his hearers at this time what precisely that truth was about Kurtz that he came to know but withheld from Kurtz's fiancée.  Nor does he tell us exactly what fib was by which he covered up this truth.  Conrad, then, behind the scenes, is manipulating us, his actual readers, to read forward with certain curiosities in mind.

When you get to the scene (pp. 68-71) in which Marlow visit's Kurtz's Intended, you will want to be asking yourself whether his conduct to her is best described as "respectful" or as "condescending."

He then returns to his earlier anticipation of the narrative (his flashforward to talking about his eventual conversation with Kurtz). 

Why, do you figure, does Conrad arrange for these two breaks with chronology to occur?  (Consider that he may be getting multiple businesses done, and this with each.)

Actually, the interruption is significantly more complicated than the phrase "two breaks with chronology" above suggests.  The forward pressure of the direct narrative at this point (p. 44) is delayed further by an interweaving of four elements, only one of which advances the direct reportage of events (and only slightly) .  Marlow does not resume with chronological order until p. 47).  This interlude is clearly one of the most important extended passages in the whole narrative, and bears careful attention and restudy.  Throughout, you want to trace the implications of the thematic strands that are the basis for Marlow's bringing these separate elements together.  The four interwoven elements are:

(1) this flashforward to his meeting with Kurtz (continued after the interruption by Marlow's flashforward to his meeting with Kurtz's Intended);

Pay close attention in these passages to the theme of "possessing" and "being possessed by."

How does Marlow use Kurtz's baldness as a jumping-off point for his ruminations on this theme?

Here also we get some important information (in two places) as to what measures Kurtz has adopted in recruiting the natives to his purposes in harvesting ivory.

What has he set himself up as? What beliefs does Marlow believe put the idea in Kurtz's mind that such a path

was open to him?  (Marlow cites some evidence here.  What is it?) What specific moral weakness enabled Kurtz to be seduced into taking this path,

once he had conceived it? What does Marlow surmise are the facts of Kurtz's background that left Kurtz

without the moral resources to resist this temptation? How are these facts, in Marlow's picture, connected to the typical conditions of

"civilized life" as such?  What is Marlow's literal point in saying that "all Europe contributed to the making

of Kurtz"?  What is his figurative, more extended point?

Let's look again at the manuscript of the report Kurtz had been commissioned to write for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.

What tone do you detect in Marlow's remark that "it was a beautiful piece of writing"?

How do the qualities of this treatise relate to the motif of Kurtz's "voice" (of his being, in fact, only a "voice")?  What does Marlow say about its peroration?  (In classical rhetoric, the peroration is the culminating phase in an oration, in which the speaker sums up his case so as to make the deepest and most lasting impression on his audience.)  It will soon be clear that "eloquence" is a motif of its own in the story, and you'll want to be on the lookout for places where it crops up.

What glaring contradiction does Marlow report finding in the manuscript? What are some of the ways in which it might be possible to account for this

contradiction?  This is a question readers are being stimulated to speculate about as soon as the contradiction is on the table.  But the answer or answers that apply in Kurtz's case will of course have to wait on our further knowledge about Kurtz.  This, then, is an important curiosity we are being prompted to carry with us in the ensuing narrative.

Perhaps you've already detected an irony at work here.  If not, perhaps it will be clearer later on.  When the story is concluded you might want to pose to yourself the following question:  If the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs is genuinely concerned about what the name it has given itself suggests it is interested in accomplishing, where might it be advised to focus its labors?

What does the arrogance consist in that Marlow is mocking here?

(2) the report of the rescue expedition's taking possession of the ivory stored in the huts at the little clearing where they've just stopped (8 mi. downriver from the Inner Station) to take aboard the wood that had been stacked in anticipation of the steamer's arrival;

What do we figure Marlow understands to be the real point of the manager's disparagement of the condition of the ivory taken aboard here?

(3) Marlow's direct questions to his audience (on the deck of the boat of the River Thames, waiting for the tide to go out so that they can return to the city and Marlow depart on his mission as captain);

At a certain point we imagine Marlow picking up his hearers looking at him in bafflement, because he says, "You can't understand.  How could you?" (p. 44).  What precisely is it that he's referring to that evidently they've not understood?

Pay careful attention to Marlow's account to himself, and to his hearers, of why they can't (at least not without the explanation he's embarking on) understand what he's just said.

Key to the passage is the theme of "restraint."  You'll see this coming up repeatedly in the course of the story.  In fact, you've already seen it, in the report of what happened to Fresleven, Marlow's predecessor as captain of the river steamer (pp. 6-7), and in Marlow's reflections on the [to him] surprising conduct of the cannibal crew (pp. 39-40).  See how?  This means it is working as a motif, and you'll want to be alert to tracking it from now on.

What is Marlow referring to here?  That is:  What is it for -- what's its function?  What sorts of situations call for it?  What does it enable?  In other words, what is it a condition for?

One equivalence Marlow gives for "your own innate strength" is "your own capacity for faithfulness."  But by itself, this is unsatisfactorily vague.  If we read further, do we eventually get some clue of what, concretely and specifically, this "faith" is "in," or this "faithfulness" is "towards"?  (Cf. about 11 lines down in the same ¶.  This passage is clearly meant to respond to the curiosity just evoked here.  But, on close inspection, does it work?  Even apart from the question of

whether "faith" and "faithfulness" are in these contexts properly understood as synonymous, is "your capacity for faithfulness to X" the same thing as "your faith in your ability to do X"?  Are we to avoid attributing confusion to Marlow by construing him, overall, to be talking about something like "the innate capacity to have faith in your ability to" do such things as do hard work work, etc.?)

Marlow also addresses the question of what factors are a condition in turn for this factor itself to exist.  Note that, from the standpoint of operation, there seem to be two distinct kinds of restraint, in Marlow's picture:  external restraint and internal or autonomous restraint.

What are the the most important different sorts, in "civilized life," of external constraint?  Some are negative, some positive.  What are the examples Marlow mentions to convey some idea of the variety kinds of factors he thinks are important?

And from the standpoint of origin, there seem to be two kinds as well:  nurture (or social environment) and nature.  (What kind of strength is "innate strength," if you have it?  Check the dictionary on this important term if you don't already know it.  What is the meaning of the Latin prefix and root out of which it is formed?) 

Here's an occasion where an alert reader will want to push the demand for conceptual clarification beyond where the narrator does.  Note that Marlow seems to regard the two orders of distinction -- I've called them operation and origin -- as equivalent.  Certainly they are related, but are they, really, identical?  Marlow seems to believe that, if you leave civilization, your only recourse is to fall back on your "innate strength."  Let's examine what the consequences of this view is, and whether it must be accepted as true?

Note that if this is so, then if you happen not to be one who happens to have been born with the power of moral restraint in the face of (what?), can there be any hope for you?  This picture, that is, commits us to the view that, in the ethical realm, there is a natural aristocracy:  some people are born with the power to autonomously act in a moral fashion, and others -- we might call them the "ethically vulgar" -- are doomed to behave immorally, unless they are restrained by external considerations.  Some people, it seems, are simply born without any "capacity for faithfulness" of the requisite sort.

But does it make sense to suppose that some people are born without the capacity to have faith in their own ability to stick to a difficult task?  Isn't this sort of faith something that people develop (or fail to develop) in virtue of their experiences?  That is, even if one admitted that there might be some who were innately without the capacity to develop this faith, are not those who do develop it beholden not merely to their inborn capacity but to their experiences for developing it?  Surely the faith in question does not spring full-blown and full-born into the world.  This means that if those experiences were never had, then one would not develop this faith in one's ability [to do hard things] even if one did possess the innate capacity for [i.e., to develop] this faith.  And this fact means we have to acknowledge a category that Marlow's way of speaking seems to rule out:  an inner strength to "do the right thing" autonomously (i.e., when police and neighbors are not looking over one's shoulders) that is nevertheless a product of social nurture (as well as

natural capacity).  We have also to dispense with a category that Marlow centrally relies upon:  a strength that is purely and simply innate. 

Here then is a matrix that displays what Marlow's way of speaking seems to entail:

  restraint that, if present, is present simply innately

restraint that is owing to social factors, ranging from

praise and blame by neighbors (shame) to fear of

jail or the gallows

externally motivated self restraint [No such thing.]

This is exhibited by everyone except (one might suppose) sociopaths (who are such in virtue of either natural defects or defects of upbringing or both).

autonomously activated self-restraint

This is exhibited only by (rare) individuals who

posses a "power of devotion, not to yourself but to an obscure, back-breaking

business."

[No such thing.]

In contrast, here is what our reflections have led us to:

  restraint that, if present, is present simply innately

restraint that is owing to one's life experiences,

including social factors, ranging from praise and

blame by neighbors (shame) and fear of jail or the

gallows to whatever in one's informal education fosters a

sense of self-respect for adherence to certain ideals introduced by society and taken over as one's own

externally motivated self restraint [No such thing.]

This is exhibited by everyone except (one might suppose) sociopaths (who are such in virtue of either natural defects

or defects of upbringing or both).

autonomously activated self-restraint [No such thing.]

This is exhibited by individuals who have, in the course of their up-bringing and wider life experiences, internalized the values imparted to them by their culture, and so are able to act upon them in the absence of social institutions of repression (police) and without the active pressure (encouraging or censorious) of a vigilant public opinion.

Those who belong in the upper right-hand box of the rightmost column but not in the lower -- that is, non-sociopaths who nevertheless are "not able" to restrain themselves in the absence of police or public opinion -- may be further theoretically divided into two sub-categories:  those who are innately incapable of developing a sufficiently strong sense of self-respect (we don't in fact know if this set has any actual members) and those who, though capable of developing this, never realize this capacity, for lack of the particular experiences the development of it requires.

Those who do belong in the lower right-hand box may also be usefully divided (on a different principle) into two sorts:  those who, on a given occasion requiring self-restraint, actually do "rise to the occasion" and exercise the restraint of which they are capable, and those who, on some such occasion, do not.  That is, we'd want to allow for someone's failing to exercise self-restraint not out of "incapacity" but out of deliberate choice or negligence.

Note that if a person fails to exhibit self-restraint on some occasion in which it is called for, this may be either because he is incapable of doing so (because he hasn't developed the powers of resistance that would have enabled him to do so) or because, though capable, he just didn't.  To determine which case we had to do with in a particular instance, we'd need to have some fair degree of knowledge of the particular facts of the individual's life.  Assessing a person's moral character in this sense would not necessarily be simple.

Why is all this important?  It opens the possibility that we are not necessarily to see Marlow as a completely reliable guide to what Conrad would understand as the appropriate way to understand moral failures.  On the other hand, we want to remain open as well to the possibility that Marlow is speaking for Conrad in this passage, and that the confusions we have uncovered are confusions of the novella rather than part of the subject of the novella.  It may be that we do not wish to endorse the work's vision of how things are in this respect.

(4) Marlow's meditations about what happened to his steersman.

How does Marlow's attitude towards the steersman contrast with his attitude towards Kurtz?  What factors account for this?  (Consider that there may be more than one.  In addition to what Marlow says on this occasion, you will want to recall what he's said on pp. 37-38.)

What point of contact does he see between the steersman on the occasion that led to his death and Kurtz, in the latter's moral demise?

Why would it not be fair to describe both characters simply as "incapable of restraint"?  (Do we have to do here with different sorts of situation calling for restraint?  [And if we do, is the restraint in question of a different sort?  That is, does one, but not the other, deserve to be labeled "moral restraint"?)  Do we have do do in one case, with a failure of restraint on the part of someone who is capable of restraint, but in the other with an incapacity for restraint?  What evidence bears on the answer?)

Now the main narrative resumes [journey upriver between the Central and Inner Stations]: 

Marlow throws the corpse of the dead helmsman overboard.

What determines him to do this?  How does this relate to his attitude towards the dead person?

Conversation arises on deck among the "pilgrims."

What is Marlow's attitude towards the remark of the "red-headed pilgrim"?

What opinion in general does he have of their conduct during the attack from the bank?

Arrival at (what turns out to be) the Inner Station. 

Note that it does not become definitively clear until somewhat later that the station the boat comes upon is indeed the Company's Inner Station.  Why is this?

What is odd about the response of the man who is shouting to them to land to their news that they've been attacked?

What assumption do we eventually discover he must have been acting upon, when he responded this way?

What is odd about his reaction to the evidence (later on:  the blood on the pilot house) that his assumption was mistaken?

What is odd about the man's appearance?

What connotations attach to the idea of a "harlequin"?  (Check your dictionary on this one.)  What is the simple realistic explanation that accounts for this appearance?  In what respects does the idea of this person as a "harlequin" turn out to be symbolically apt?

Where does he say Kurtz is?

As we will see in Section III of the novella, the main function of the "harlequin" is as a lens on Kurtz, before we actually encounter the latter.  But In the rest of this section (II) he says only one thing about Kurtz.  What is that? 

What does it indicate, perhaps, about Kurtz?

What does it indicate, perhaps, about the harlequin?

In the remainder of Section II, the main business is to give an impression of the lens itself through which (in Section III) we will approach Kurtz.  (Recall that there have been other lenses, downstream, and that our evaluation of Kurtz so far has been affected by our evaluation of the media through whom we were getting our impressions of him.)

What is his history?  How has he come to be here?  (We can from now on alternatively refer to him as "the Russian trader.")

What kind of a person was he before he met Kurtz?

It turns out to be he who stacked the wood at the clearing 8 miles downstream.  How did he come to leave his place there?  (The nautical manual is his:  how did it get left behind.)  What questions does the answer to this one raise in turn?

It is here (p. 49) that we first here a phrase that we are going to hear repeatedly from this personage:  the idea of "enlarging the mind."  What ironic overtones does this take on, in its future appearances?

A question for here and further on:  has his encounter with Kurtz changed him in specific ways?

The Inner Station [continued].

Conversation continues with the Russian trader (the "harlequin," the "man of patches" [in how many ways, by the way, does this last phrase resonnate, in its possible connotations?).  The subject that comes now into the foreground is Kurtz himself, as transmitted through the lens of this striking character.  Some questions to be alert with:

What are the various ways in which Marlow suggests that this fellow [our lens for the moment] is "unsubstantial"?

What are we able to gather of what the Russian and Kurtz talked about that has so mesmerized the former?

One of the topics, he says (p. 50), is "love."  What is Marlow's reaction to that?  And what is the Russian's reaction to Marlow's reaction in turn?  What is our reaction to the Russian's reaction?

What do we learn about how Kurtz has been proceeding after his contact was broken with the Company's stations downriver, from which he would have been supplied with goods to trade for ivory?

How does this connect with what Marlow has already conveyed (near the bottom of p. 45) about the report he (eventually) read that Kurtz was writing under commission from the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs?

How has Kurtz treated the Russian?

How has the Russian responded?

What are we to make of this response?

The Russian/harlequin says (pp. 51-52) "This man suffered too much.  He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away?"

What do we take "all this" to refer to?

What clues do we already have as to why "he couldn't get away"?  (What do we come to learn down the line that reinforces or supplements this understanding?)

What does the R/h mean by Kurtz's going off again to "forget himself amongst these people -- forget himself -- you know"? 

What is the "self" he supposedly is undertaking to forget?

Why does Marlow infer that Kurtz must be "mad"?

The R/h vehemently disagrees.  What do you think of his reasons?

What do you think of what you infer Marlow's conclusion that Kurtz is mad?

Supposing Kurtz is "mad," is he "mad" in any sense which relieves him from culpability for his actions?

What does Marlow discover, as he looks through binoculars --

about the woods?  (What motifs does this connect up with?)

about the "round knobs" atop the poles of the "vanished fence"?

What does this tell us about why the fence has been allowed to lapse?  (How is this different from what we supposed when we were first introduced [pp. 47-48] to the fact that the rails that the poles supported have left the scene?)

What does Marlow infer Kurtz has been forced by his life away from the externally restraining forces of civilization to learn about himself, in the jungle, faced with the opportunity to achieve what the civilized world accounts as riches?  (The middle ¶ on p. 53 is a key passage in the story as a whole. What are the connections it asserts?)

How does this connect up with the theme of "restraint"?

Reflect on the sentence in the last ¶ on p. 53 that begins "Curious..." and ends "...sunshine."

How might Marlow's "not wanting to know" connect with his ambivalent sentiments about lying?  (Cf. pp. 23, 44.)

How does this connect up with the phrase we encountered (back on p. 10, end of ¶3), about allusion we heard to a journey to the "center of the earth"?

What motif system does the imagery of "sunshine" connect up with?

Marlow's reaction here provokes surprise and defence in the R/h.  What does the Russian trader's defense reveal are the logically immedieate assumptions from which he is working?  (That is, what conditions must be fulfilled if these dead ones are to be categorized as "rebels"?)  Which of these assumptions (all?) does Marlow's remark (not the the Russian, but to listeners of Marlow's tale, on the Thames) tell us he disagrees with?  What deeper disagreements in principle does this disagreement testify to?

What motifs does the second ¶ on p. 54 develop?

Kurtz finally appears (p. 54).

[To be continued.]

Writing Assignment on

Joseph Conrad's “Heart of Darkness”

Remember that, if you are aiming at all the points possible from the Writing Assignments, you need to submit a total of 5 writings, and 2 of these must be on longer pieces (each worth 10 points rather than 5). Conrad's piece is one of these longer stories.

Topic A. This story makes a rich use of motifs. Show how the story develops one of the following in a way that contributes to some important part of the overall theme of the story.

“Bewitchment,” “charm.”  Possible aspects to consider: Marlow's being “charmed by a snake”; the influence Kurtz works (by charismatic eloquence) upon his sponsors, upon the “harlequin,” and upon the natives in the immediate vicinity of his station (you will want to be mindful of significant differences here.); the fascination Kurtz has for Marlow (at various stages of his approach and acquaintance with Kurtz).

“Hollowness.”  Your task would be to show how Conrad's development of this motif contributes to one of the following:

the theme of restraint as a moral necessity, and its conditions (external, in “civilized” social existence, and internal, in “character).

the idea of Brussels (the HQ of the trading society that employs Kurtz and Marlow) as a “whited sepulcher.”  (You'll want to cover Marlow's visits -- at the beginning and at the end.)

“light” and/or “darkness.”  Here you would need to find a principled way of focusing your topic on something specific, since Conrad works this coupled pair of motifs in such a rich and complicated way that you can't do justice to it in the time and space you have available for the assignment.

One way to do this would be to concentrate on ways in which these concepts are deployed ironically: instances in which, for example, “flashes of light” are actually (in some sense) “dark.”

Another would be to focus on moments in which the concept of “introducing someone to [or into]” a darkness is invoked. If the same notion is applied several situations, one effect is to prompt the reader to consider each of these situations in the light of the other. Does it happen that doing this causes us to understand one or more of these situations in a usefully new way?

And what are the senses of “dark” that are being conjured with in a given case: evil? ignorance? the undeclared? [more than one of these?] In each case where you see one of these implications at work, it would be essential to say something about the specific ways in which it applies. (What does the evil in question [etc.] consist in?)

A different idea you could make the subject of your analysis might be the notion of "the darkness" as paradoxically threatening and inviting.

Topic B. The story is constructed around series of foils.  What do you turn up if you pursue the following agenda of curiosity?

How are the “harlequin” (p. 48f.) and the manager (from the Central Station) differentiated from each other?

What do they have in common?

How do they function to highlight important defining qualities of Kurtz? How is Kurtz used, by comparison and contrast, to define Marlow?

Topic C. What is the role, in Marlow's mentality, of women, in civilized society?  Among the questions it would make sense to take up are the following:

How do Marlow's views about women's nature and role show up in the contrast between the situation in which he tells the story we eventually read and the situation in which, he tells his hearers, he completely misrepresented it?  

Is Marlow's conduct with Kurtz's “Intended” (and with his aunt) an instance of proper moral restraint? Or are we expected to see it as an instance of failure of moral restraint?

Is it an instance of moral respect for the other (the "Intended")? Or is it a symptom of limits on moral respect for that other?

Are some lies genuinely morally necessary? Are we meant (by Conrad) to see this as one?