Heart of Darkness

One thing we really didn't talk about in class was the outside frame story of Heart of Darkness. When Marlow begins to tell his story, the narrator says "His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence" (3). Here the other characters on the boat do not seem to have an intense interest in what Marlow has to say. From this quote, the reader can assume Marlow often brings up what appear to be random remarks about life. He simply wants to tell a story. But beginning around the time he starts to reach the inner station in his story, he becomes very emotional. He is no longer as calm, and someone even says to him, "Try to be civil, Marlow," (30) after he rants about truth. He comments more on these moral issues as they arise in his story. By the end, all he does is talk about how his life was changed. There is little action in the last few pages because Marlow has gotten so worked up and is somewhat reliving everything he has said and his emotions come back. Right in front of his friends he claims most city people "were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not know the things I knew" (66). His friends even cannot truly understand everything he went through unless they were to go to Africa as well. Marlow seems to fail to realize where he is while he tells this story.

Another aspect that changed from the beginning of the book to the end was the setting. In the beginning, the sun was still going down, hinting at the coming darkness. The air was gloomy and mysterious. After Marlow is finished, the narrator describes the setting as "barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under and overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness" (72). This passage represents the dark and mysterious heart of Africa. Whiel the outside of Africa was gloomy, the middle was worse. The story Marlow tells starts off as very mysterious and gloomy, but it only gets darker as he continues to talk. Marlow's story has now brought all of his friends into that dark place that they can no longer get out of. While they did not experience it, they heard it with the emotion of Marlow. They may not feel as strongly as he does, but they now have his opinions in their minds that they cannot take out.

When Marlow is meeting with Kurtz's fiancee, he is overwhelmed with thought. "For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time- his death and her sorrow- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together- I heard them together (69). Marlow seeing Kurtz's death and Kurtz's fiancee's sorrow being intertwined reminded me of when Adah, from the Poisonwood Bible, witnesses the death of Ruth May. Adah says that, "I was not present at Ruth May's birth but I have seen it now, because I saw each step of it played out in reverse at the end of her life. The closing parenthesis, at the end of the palindrome that was Ruth May. Her final gulp of air as hungry as a baby's first breath. That last howling scream, exactly like the first, and then at the end a fixed, steadfast moving backward out of this world (365)." Adah saw Ruth May's death as a insight into Ruth May's birth. Just as Marlow saw the death of Kurtz and the sorrow of Kurtz's fiancee as intertwined, Adah saw Ruth May's birth in her death.

I didn't get a chance to talk in class on Tuesday over the section: Time at the Inner Station (47-61) and I had a few points to make.

Marlow has landed at the Inner Station, but he questions himself about Kurtz. He wonders if Kurtz is actually worth the trouble or not.

At the Inner Station, the first person he sees is a Russian. A well dressed, clean shaven man which really surprises him. He calls him a "harlequin" (48) "look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal" (48). Marlow is surprised when he sees this man because he's so clean even after living in Africa for a long time. He would have expected someone that looked a savage. There is also a portion of duality in this section, when Marlow describes the man "with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next" (48)

We learn more about Mr. Kurtz and how this Russian man idolizes him. The russian had continuously said "he has enlarged my mind" (50) "you can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man" (51)

They also talk about how Africa, more like the greed for ivory, kind of settled into Kurtz "go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks, forget himself amongst these people-forget himself-you know." (52).

Later on Marlow runs into black men's heads on stakes near Kurtz's shelter. He is disgusted by this; but his reaction was surprising, like he wasn't very shocked to see heads but he was shocked to find an English book. The book was like a connection he had to civilization, his past, Europe.

Marlow compared Kurtz's body to ivory, "i could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with the menaces at the motionless crowd if men made of dark and glittering bronze" (55).

This section ended with Marlow saying, "and he was not much heavier than a child." (61)

I have read this novel long ago and was mesmerized by its beautiful expression. One of the truths manifested to me through this book is if we can access the recesses of our minds we can see the bleakest part of us that can blacken anybody's souls. Everyone is capable of the unthinkable in point of fact no matter what saintliness you try to prove to others. You are capable of loving a human and the other side of you shows you are capable of strangulating him. You have both motives innate though on the surface you may act as a saint. This book has helped me understand human natures more deeply

I was absent today for the class discussion.

Marlow is on his way back to Europe with Kurtz but sadly, Kurtz dies on the way, his last words being "The horror! The horror!" (64)

They all knew that Kurtz was to die soon, "whose fate it was to be buries presently in the primeval earth."

"But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that sour satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power" (63). This shows duality of power and success.

Marlow began to praise Kurtz again after his death, "i understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darknes" (65)