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Compare marlow and kurtz in heart of darkness
Freud's theory of personality
Comparative study between kurtz and marlow in heart of darkness
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“The changes take place inside you know” (Conrad 13.) advises the doctor in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Conrad hints of a mental journey that will change Marlow as his physical journey takes him through 3 stations connected together by the Congo River. “Within this conception Marlow’s journey only incidentally involves movement through physical space; in essence it represents a “journey into self”.”(Levenson 153.) As Marlow’s journey down the river takes him deeper into the Congo, it also takes him deeper into the darkness of the mind. When examining the three stations, connections can be made to Sigmund Freud’s model of the mind. Connections can be made between the Outer Station and the Superego, which represents standards of morality …show more content…
The Inner Station is connected to the Id¬, which is defined as “the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that is completely unconscious and is the source of psychic energy derived from instinctual needs and drives.” (Merriam-Webster). It is immediately apparent to Marlow through the heads on the fence posts that the Inner Station is a place completely without order. Marlow says, “The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.” (Conrad 44.) For Kurtz, the Id has completely taken over due to the fact that he has been removed from society and he has succumbed to his own desire for ivory and worship. As Kurtz is removed from the Inner station and is headed towards the Central Station he cries, “The horror! The horror!” (Conrad 86.) This further shows that the Inner Station represents the Id as Kurtz moving toward the Central Station causes his Ego to start rebalancing his mind making him aware of his wrongdoings. The last stop in Marlow’s journey deeper into the Congo, the Inner Station, reflects the deepest level in the mind, the Id. As Marlow is this deep into the heart of darkness he experiences his own mental decent to savagery but does not completely commit himself to his primitive desires like Kurtz had. Unlike Kurtz he lives through the urges of the id and returns from his journey an enlightened
Kurtz was the chief of the Inner Station, where he was in charge of a very important ivory-trading post. Marlow learns that because of Kurtz’s ability to obtain more ivory than anybody else, he is of “greatest importance to the Company” and is to become a “somebody in the Administration” (Conrad 143). However, a critical aspect is the way in which he went about his business, as it was ruthless and selfish, characteristics that go hand-in-hand with European colonization.
This is where the relation takes place. Once one section of the body, as in the mind or physical aspect, is affected by the darkness, it’s easy to dominate the other section. Through Marlow, Conrad gives his readers a visualization of the beginning stages of someone evolving into a local in this type of environment, “And this also… has been one of the darkest places on earth”(Conrad). Conrad shows the relation between insanity and physical illness by forcing Marlow to experience both. Among the Congo, Marlow encounters true darkness for the first time.
Conrad's racism is portrayed in the actions and perceptions of Marlow along his trip up the Congo. Marlow's views of the area during the beginning of the trip are given as inhumane, and uncivilized. The Heart of Darkness for Marlow is the ignorance and brutality that he witnesses from natives as well as Whites that are met upon his trip.
In Heart of Darkness, the main character Marlow is being exposed to a whole new side of the world. He is on a trip down the Cong...
Marlow in the novella is on a mission to find Mr. Kurtz, who is a well-respected ivory agent in Europe, but is believed to be using “unsound methods” to find and trade ivory in Africa, and also his cruel treatment of the African laborers. Marlow becomes interested in knowing Mr. Kurtz, upon hearing such rumors. he becomes even more interested after seeing, “black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids- a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.” The heads are perhaps an important part of this novella, and they show how much Mr. Kurtz had changed. Another similar scene is in the movie, where Captain Willard sees all the heads of those who opposed colonel Kurtz. Both of these scenes show how both Kurtzes had changed and how their surroundings had transformed them into different people. Although he is not paralyzed similar to the “hollow men” in T.S. Elliot’s poem, he was one of the “lost and violent souls.” His lack of moral or spiritual strength to sustain him caused him to turn into a barbarian. Kurtz becomes aware of this when he is close to dying, and that is why he mentions, “The horror! The horror!”
The voyage into the "Heart of Darkness" is told to us through the eyes of Charlie Marlow. As Marlow is aboard the "Nellie" he tells his story of expedition and growth. The men on the boat sit still yet bored. Marlow is like an old man sharing a story of his childhood, that for himself may be of great significance, and lead to a lesson, but the children yearn to hear a story of magic, castles and sword fights. Joseph Conrad uses Marlow's character to get across and express his own opinion.
and is sent to ivory stations along the river. Marlow is told that when he arrives at the inner station to bring back information about Kurtz. the basis of this comparison and contrast in this paper, who is the great? ivory agent, and who is said to be sick. As Marlow proceeds away to the inner station "to the heart of the mighty big river.. resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving.
Marlow’s thoughts are so consumed by Kurtz, that he is built up to be much more of a man than he truly is. In turn, Marlow is setting himself up for a let down. He says at one point, “I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time...the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home...towards his empty and desolate station”(P.32). When Marlow reaches Kurtz’s station, he begins to become disillusioned. He begins to hear about, and even see, the acts that Kurtz is committing, and becomes afraid of him. He sees in Kurtz, what he could become, and wants nothing to do with it. He does not want people to know he has any type of relationship with him, and says in response to the Russian, “I suppose that it had not occurred to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine.” (P.59). It is at this point that he begins to discover the darkness in his heart.
is an exposure of Belgian methods in the Congo, which at least for a good
Marlow is the raconteur of Heart of Darkness, and therefore is one of the more crucial characters within the plot. He embodies the willingness to be valiant, resilient, and gallant, while similarly seeming to be cautiously revolutionary. He is, seemingly the epitome of bravery, going into the jungle. Marlow’s voyage is, in essence, a “night journey into the unconscious, the confrontation with an entity within the self” (Guerard 38). The ominous coast is an allegory for the idea of the unconscious mind. “Watching a coast as it slips by the ship […] there it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering” (1...
Conrad’s shifting setting introduces new environments and attitudes for Marlow to cope with. Marlow begins the novel in “a narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, [with] high houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting right and left, [and] immense double doors standing ponderously ajar” (Conrad 45). Nearly all of the surroundings have intimidating connotations, which surprisingly fight Marlow into a comfortably safe and secure standing. Marlow notices the map in the office, and examines it to see just where his travels will take him. After observing the map, he points out that he was not going to the points of Africa that seem welcoming but he “was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the river was there – fascinating – deadly – like a snake” (45). He already realizes he will have trouble transitioning into the new environment, being surrounded by what seems like death. Because Marlow grows accustomed to the urbanized streets of Brussels, the difficulty of the transition to the Congo develops exponentially. Before Marlow knows it, he travels to a land with “trees, tress, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high” and they “made [him] feel very small, very lost” (75). Marlow, already apprehensive of the change to the Congo, shows his loss of confidence in his new environment.
"He owes no allegiance to anything except those animal powers, those various lusts, those unpermitted aspirations lurking in the darkness of his inner station. Marlow also responds to these dark callings, and he almost becomes their captive. He confuses the beat of the drum (the call to man's primitive side) with his own heartbeat, and is pleased.
However, when Marlow finally reaches Kurtz, he encounters his very own reflection of his own immoral behavior. Such an experience serves as an enriching enlightening and defining experience for Marlow as he comes to see his own wickedness in the actions of another Kurtz, and is appalled by what he sees. When Kurtz pronounces on his deathbed, “The horror, the horror”—a confession to his own wicked actions as a barbarous ivory trader and slaughterer of Congolese natives—Marlow feels as if these words are additionally his own; the words represent acknowledgment of his own evil actions. In the Congo, Marlow is cut off from his native home of England—cut off from the structured, civilized life in which he was raised, which was full of social regulations and defined parameters of socially acceptable behaviors &
... identity grow to be intertwined. Interestingly, Marlow and Kurtz are very comparable and several parallels can be drawn between them, yet their fates differentiate in the end. Kurtz’s fate is due to his lack of restraint but Marlow’s restraint only saves his life for the time being. They were both exposed to the dark side of human nature and both eventually realized that the real heart of darkness is buried in the inside of every individual.
This sight angers Marlow, and when he gets to Kurtz, it’s too late. Even he has been pulled in by the darkness. Conrad makes an effective distinction between Marlow and Kurtz.