In the novella, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad states how, "I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means." What the author is trying to say is that people can only see the surface, however, the man putting forth the work see's the bigger picture and truly grasps the concept of his work. The theme of perception of reality is seen throughout Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, where, our main protagonist, Marlow ventures out to the Congo River Basin of Africa in search for a man named Kurtz. As the story progresses, Marlow loses his sense …show more content…
This “heart of darkness” is represented by the very continent of Africa itself. As Marlow and his crew venture deeper into the continent by using the Congo River, this shows how the men are venturing into the darker and more evil parts of man. When Marlow and his crew are getting close to the Inner Station, they are attacked by the natives’ with arrows. During the attack, Marlow simply throws his shoes off the boat. At first glance, this is seen as odd and pointless, however, this action does have a meaning. Since shoes represent modern and civilized societies, taking off the shoes and walking barefoot represents traditional or “savage” behavior. Overall, this action shows how Marlow is, “penetrating deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” (Pg. 44) and how he is losing his sense of civilization. After this, Marlow and his crew finally reach the Inner Station. At this point, the men have reached the deepest and darkest part of the heart. The men have witnessed the savage and mad behavior of Kurtz, where they see African heads’ stuck onto spikes. Even after all this, Marlow sides with Kurtz and turns his back on the Manager and the rest of the crew. The reason for this is Marlow understands Kurtz’s deepest self-awareness and applies it to himself. Henceforth, Marlow sees his own potential corruption mirrors Kurtz’s current corruption. If he killed Kurtz or sided with the Manager, he would be betraying himself. This clearly shows that Marlow has lost his own sense of judgement due to the fact that he sides with a psychopath who inflicted horror and fear into the hearts of the natives’. Finally, after his adventures within the Congo, he travels to speak with Kurtz’s Intended. Before meeting her, Marlow says how, “I don't know. I can't tell. But I went” (Pg. 91). Marlow does not know if he should tell her the true atrocities her
The things that Kurtz had both done and seen in his life were in fact horrible, but was something. that Marlow was able to see past. This is later clear by what is in. his thoughts as he talks to the woman. He condemns mankind as a whole with this statement. .
Marlow’s journey into the Congo River is treacherous and unpredictable. Therefore, in a desperate need for civilization and escape from savagery, the boat serves as a sanctum from the natives, and becomes the link to moral civility. Throughout Marlow's voyage, he and his crew encounter mass amounts of fog. The fog symbolizes ambiguity in its most primal form, not only obscuring but it also distorts. The fog impares not just physical visibility, but which often ends up being wrong, which suggests that the fog has both literally and figuratively clouded Kurtz’s judgement. Marlow’s need to be on the boat, reflects the boat as a safe haven, a place where he can examine his own moral conscious more clearly. When his is not on the boat, he is less decisive and his judgement and moral compass are
The moment in which Marlow experiences his epiphany is right after the helmsman gets killed by natives, which are associated with Kurtz. The thing that Marlow realizes is the savagery of man and the corruption of the ivory trade. The actual change takes place when Marlow sees the helmsman die. Marlow sees the death take place and is shocked. "The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little campstool. ... my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. ... It was the shaft of a spear that...had caught him in the side just below the ribs. I had to make and effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. ... I declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some question in an understandable language; but he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle. ... 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. 'No doubt about it,' said I." When this happened, Marlow realized the savagery of man, horror of death, and the corruption of the ivory trade. He realizes that in the ivory trade, that the ivory is more valuable than human life and that traders will do almost anything to get it. Marlow also realizes man's savagery in the event that man puts greater value on riches than on human life. This is the epiphany of Marlow in "The Heart of Darkness."
This situation of waiting for Kurtz allows Marlow to fantasize about Kurtz and create a larger than life figure out of a man who he’s never met before. Soon Finding Kurtz becomes an all-out obsession for Marlow; even the night before they meet Kurtz, he wishes to press on despite the danger. Here the reader can see that Marlow is willing to get to Kurtz at all costs. When Marlow does finally make contact with Kurtz, his fantasy carries over into the person who he sees Kurtz as. Marlow is willing to overlook some of Kurtz’s shortcomings and is very willing to see his greatness. Marlow is obviously fond of Kurtz, as it can be seen in the passage when he speaks of Kurtz’s “unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression.” Here the reader can observe that Marlow is truly fond of Kurtz’s. The narrator even chooses to side with Kurtz against the manager; even though he hardly knows the man. Kurtz has also managed to get the native people to worship him as a god, and has mastered their language. This makes Marlow respect him even more. Marlow’s point of view allows him to foster both the reality and the fantasy of Kurtz, and though he is very fond of Kurtz, he is still able to see the truth in him as
By far, Marlow is the most sympathetic and reliable character of Heart of Darkness - he even goes so far as to offer a native slave one of his biscuits, disturbed as he is by their suffering. Furthermore, he is not an apathetic character - his characterizations of the people around him, black or white, are apt and cutting, as when he describes a white companion as “too fleshy” (Conrad, 23) or the Company’s chief accountant as a “hairdresser’s dummy” (Conrad, 21). Clearly, he is observant, sensitive. A callousness begins in him, though, subtly, from tossing the dead native overboard when the other white men found a burial more suitable, to his time in the depths of Kurtz’s Congo. Upon seeing pikes adorned with severed heads, he is “not so shocked as you may think. The start back… was really nothing but a movement of surprise” (Conrad, 55). This Marlow is removed from the “horror-stuck” (Conrad, 21) individual that fed the starving native. His corruption could be the most implacable in Heart of Darkness, but it is, in fact, there when he loses his will in response to the trauma, the agony of the Congo. His experience with disgust in Chapter 3 is laced with weariness, with detachment. Like the hollow men’s response to the trauma of war, Marlow is made desensitized and corrupt. The hollow men “grope together and avoid speech,” and Marlow avoids speaking the truth, preferring to falsify Kurtz’s final words to his fiancee, to protect the identity of Kurtz when, perhaps, the Marlow that “hate[d], detest[ed], and [couldn’t] bear a lie” (Conrad, 29) would have been disgusted to do
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.
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...
An example is his inability to deal with the dying natives at the “grove of death”, offering a native a biscuit as an apparent gesture of kindness. Yet this is only due to him not being confronted with situations like this previously where his own values, and the whole premise behind colonialism, the exploitation is revealed. The patriarchal views of women he displays also outline the background of Marlow and the associated values.... ... middle of paper ... ... "This heart is drowned in a bath of light shed by the advent of civilization.
In the novel Marlow is saved by restraint, while Kurtz is doomed by his lack of it. Marlow felt different about Africa before he went, because the colonization of the Congo had "an idea at the back of it." Despite an uneasiness, he assumed that restraint would operate there. He soon reaches the Company station and receives his first shock, everything there seems meaningless.
...s to look at Kurtz as a hero for all that he had accomplished, no matter how evil. Marlow?s obstacles as the hero are not the overcoming of a dragon or evil villain. It is the eternal battle of the story of a Hero versus Antihero. Marlow?s blindness to Kurtz?s impurities are both his strength and weakness. His ignorance to the greatness of his own qualities can best be stated one way: ?The Horror.?
Marlow lied. But it wasn't wrong. What he learned vicariously through Kurtz was that his knowledge was "droll", "not interesting in any way," and "disappointing." He didn't need to share that with her. Just like the Europeans back in Africa, he has the chance to bring his "horrible light" into a new place, but unlike the explorers, missionaries, and traders of which he was part, he decides that it is best to leave the natives alone.
Marlow has gone through three mental phases throughout his trip to Africa which have forever changed him. He has become wise. He has not just experienced new cultures but he has completed an extremely tough mental journey. After this journey had ended he experienced extreme changes to his psyche which had occured on his way to and from the Congo. He begins as a naive sailor who longs for adventure, which represents the superego. Then as he became isolated on the Congo, away from society’s restraints his id instincts came out. He has the courage to continue and when he returns to society, his ego balances his id and superego.
Marlow is an honest man. He sets out on a genuine search for answers to his questions of exploration of the unknown "when (he) was a little chap" (Conrad 64). Marlow was drawn to a certain place on the world map, called the Congo "the biggest, the most blank, so to speak---that (he) had a hankering after" (Conrad 64). Upon first entering the mouth of the Congo River, Marlow declares his stance on lies and those who lie. [He believes that lying in the worst thing for a person.] He vows never to lie in his life. After reading Kurtz's report about his progress down the Congo, Marlow finds that Kurtz lied, and in part loses all the respect he ever had for Kurtz. However, Marlow still continues to pursue him. Marlow continues his journey up the Congo River, penetrating further and further into the heart of darkness. In the process, Marlow reverts back to his innate state to survive, whether or not that means going against his principles. Finally, 200 miles later, Marlow meets Kurtz, who is the object of his psychological desire, only to find him very ill. After Kurtz's death, Marlow finds himself transformed into a person he thought he would never become, a liar. Marlow lies to Kurtz's intended about Kurtz's last words when he returns to Europe. After being consumed by the heart of darkness, Marlow throws away his previous values as he reverts into a savaged, almost evil state of mind.
On one hand, Marlow is saved by his self-discipline while on the other hand Kurtz is doomed by his lack of it. Before Marlow embarked on his voyage to Africa, he had a different view. Due to propaganda, he believed that the colonization of the Congo was for the greater good. In his head, he judged that the people of Africa were savages and that colonization would bring them the elation and riches of civilization. Despite an apparent uneasiness, he assumed that restraint would function there.
By the time Marlow and Kurtz meet, Marlow is already well aware of the similarities they share. Both are imperialists, and while Marlow detests the treatment of the natives by his employers (Belgian colonists), he also makes apparent his abhorrence toward the Africans. On the other hand, Kurtz abandons the pretense of helping the natives achieve civilization, as displayed by the Europeans. Instead, he adopts their customs and becomes their leader in the never-ending quest for ivory. "He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of the supernatural beings- we approach them with the might as of a deity' (Longman, 2000, p. 2226). Marlow also admired Kurtz' resourcefulness and survival skills, especially his perseverence through jungle fever. "The wilderness had patted him on the head....it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite." (Longman, 2000, p. 2225).