Was Melville alluding to wars with Native Americans in Moby Dick?

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

See, this is why the ambiguity of Marlowe's lie is so frustrating. Maybe the point is that after his recent experience in the primal darkness, he clings to the redemptive force of civilization enough to care about a lady's feelings. That would fit in with the opening Turneresque image of light emanating from the Thames estuary and illuminating the darkness. Now he returns to the light and the hope it affords a dark world. Maybe. That interpretation works best if you see Kurtz as corrupted--as a fallen angel as you say.

But maybe there is nothing corrupted about Kurtz. Maybe Kurtz is just what human beings are without the pretty lie of civilization. Maybe his atrocities are the real human norm, and his illness is just his Europeaness: the part of him that cries, "The horror! The horror!" If that is the case, then perhaps Marlowe was not entirely lying after all. If "The horror! The horror!" expressed a revulsion at the darkness and a longing for the light, then calling for his fiancee may have expressed a similar yearning. He wanted the light of their promised life together (in civilization). But if so, the dying Kurtz was only grasping at illusion. That is because Europeans are as animalistic as anyone else.

Your interpretation seems to hold elements of both these arguments, but I don't see them as being very easily harmonized.

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Well, perhaps there is two words that may be causing a problem. I used corruption and you lie. Now, I do not think Conrad theme is exactly ethical, for example like Melville, it is not about Good vs. Evil. It is perhaps a lesser problem, a moral problem. I am sure Conrad knows where is evil, there is not exactly in Heart of Darkness a search for good, what we see in Ishmael. Marlowe is not that inquisitive, he pretty much accepts how things turn to be and well, watever came to him. I do not think there is a lie. A lie would be a deliberate falsehood and I think Conrad is expressing something true in the core, as dark as it is.

I do not mean Kurtz is corrupted by evil, I think he lost his so called brilliant future. He is corrupted as self, I think the misterious horror, twice said, is a mirror-like recogninition of his failure and his failure meant all the european system. Kurtz cannt even maintain the mask - everyone can, if he could, he would be rulling his post, doing watever he wanted and nobody would bother with him. Probally give him medals, because that was what he was meant to be. I think Kurtz feels Marlowe will not be a man to bring the truth about what happened to England. So, it will happen again.

Marlowe action with the woman is a minor reflection of this. He cared enough with maintaining humanity, but he does it at which cost? Holding up the mask, as Marlowe cann't understand what happened, so he prefers the self-preservation. I do not see light on hope on Thames or back to Europe, I see him grasping the illusion. Marlowe knew the truth but in name of a lesser good, he prefered to hide it. Something like this.

By a lie I mean when Marlow told Kurtz's fiancee that his last words were her name. That was a deliberate falsehood, wasn't it? So why did he do it? And why does he remove from Kurtz's writing his direction to "Exterminate the brutes"? Isn't he trying to protect civilization from Kurtz by preserving the memory of him as a civilization's golden boy while obliterating the memory of what he became? I don't think this is a minor detail. In the first chapter, Marlow says: "There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world." So something changed in him after his experiences with Kurtz. I think he got scared and is now lying futility--even if it makes the lady feel better--because he can not stop the human heart from being what it is. Kurtz has not been corrupted by the Congo and he cannot corrupt "civilization" (whether Marlow lies or not); all were always corrupt. This is something Marlow comes to understand by the end of the last chapter, when he (or the outer narrator rather) concedes that the Thames estuary, whose waters flow to all the world, lead INTO "a vast heart of darkness." It is the very mirror image of the first chapter's illuminated waters. The heart of darkness is London itself.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

By a lie I mean when Marlow told Kurtz's fiancee that his last words were her name. That was a deliberate falsehood, wasn't it? So why did he do it? And why does he remove from Kurtz's writing his direction to "Exterminate the brutes"? Isn't he trying to protect civilization from Kurtz by preserving the memory of him as a civilization's golden boy while obliterating the memory of what he became? I don't think this is a minor detail. In the first chapter, Marlow says: "There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world." So something changed in him after his experiences with Kurtz. I think he got scared and is now lying futility--even if it makes the lady feel better--because he can not stop the human heart from being what it is. Kurtz has not been corrupted by the Congo and he cannot corrupt "civilization" (whether Marlow lies or not); all were always corrupt. This is something Marlow comes to understand by the end of the last chapter, when he (or the outer narrator rather) concedes that the Thames estuary, whose waters flow to all the world, lead INTO "a vast heart of darkness." It is the very mirror image of the first chapter's illuminated waters. The heart of darkness is London itself.

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I do not think Marlow was trying to deceive the lady. He is giving her a placebo, which is also a placebo for him. He does not want to convice her about a false Kurtz, he just cannot deal with the real Kurtz and in a way, try to keep him back in Africa. Kind a way that it is not enough that europe did all they did, but they left behind their leftovers.

Also I do not think Conrad wants to say Civilization is bad. He wants to say we failed to be civilized. There was no civilization in the book, just the illusion (which is the contrast with the thames indeed). That is why I said his work is a critic to the european, who is confortable in the illusion while scrapping under the carpet the Kurtz of life. In a way that is why Copolla movie worked, because in the end the Vietnã needed a big carpet, but by the end of 70's all kurtz were back home.

I think you are right, Marlow has a big fear. He would feel better in his insignificance, but he cannot grasp a world where a "notable man" like Kurtz goes down in such spiral. There is impotence, there is a failure. The atheism is also expressed by the absence of leadership (or one you can trust, because Kurtz in the book is past the capacity of leadership.). I am not saying Conrad was writting about the absence of God (which is a form of faith anyways, very jewish), but his social organization is the same cynical form, there is an emptiness of reference (maybe that is why the men turn in such beasts).

As why he erases the order, maybe because he couldn't be sure who those brutes are. Maybe he was afraid it was himself and that a guy like Kurtz would bother with those africans (all the racial steriotype usually implies the european superiority fails to see the capacity among the natives. Melville uses this trick quite well in Benito Cereno). if it is possible to see Conrad writing about the european flaws, this is a good guess.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I do not think Marlow was trying to deceive the lady. He is giving her a placebo, which is also a placebo for him.

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Well, he tells her Kurtz's last words were her name. They weren't, they were: "The horror! the horror!" That sounds like a deception to me. And a placebo against even the grimmest reality (which is after all a kind of false optimism) is distinctly un-Conradly, I doubt that is what's going on. But I think you and I agree that whatever Marlow is doing is futile and based on fear after his experience with Kurtz.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Also I do not think Conrad wants to say Civilization is bad. He wants to say we failed to be civilized. There was no civilization in the book, just the illusion (which is the contrast with the thames indeed).

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Right, he didn't say civilization was bad, just superficial and insufficient; and that it was effectively inconsequential where Europeans and people Europeans thought of as uncivilized were concerned. The heart of darkness is a universal.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

He does not want to convice her about a false Kurtz, he just cannot deal with the real Kurtz and in a way, try to keep him back in Africa. Kind a way that it is not enough that europe did all they did, but they left behind their leftovers.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

That is why I said his work is a critic to the european, who is confortable in the illusion while scrapping under the carpet the Kurtz of life. In a way that is why Copolla movie worked, because in the end the Vietnã needed a big carpet, but by the end of 70's all kurtz were back home.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I think you are right, Marlow has a big fear. He would feel better in his insignificance, but he cannot grasp a world where a "notable man" like Kurtz goes down in such spiral. There is impotence, there is a failure. The atheism is also expressed by the absence of leadership (or one you can trust, because Kurtz in the book is past the capacity of leadership.). I am not saying Conrad was writting about the absence of God (which is a form of faith anyways, very jewish), but his social organization is the same cynical form, there is an emptiness of reference (maybe that is why the men turn in such beasts).

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

As why he erases the order, maybe because he couldn't be sure who those brutes are. Maybe he was afraid it was himself and that a guy like Kurtz would bother with those africans (all the racial steriotype usually implies the european superiority fails to see the capacity among the natives. Melville uses this trick quite well in Benito Cereno). if it is possible to see Conrad writing about the european flaws, this is a good guess.

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We have to part ways a little bit on this, but not entirely. As you know, after Achebe, many critics dismissed The Heart of Darkness as racist; but some have since considered it a critique of imperialism. My own opinion is that either of these readings are possible (Conrad was racist on some ways and he knew well the rottenness of colonialism and imperialism) and that both may be helpful ways to look at the texts; but that both readings miss the heart of Conrad's meaning.

For Conrad, men do not (as you say) turn into beasts. Men are beasts. Europeans, Africans, everyone. However they dress it up, they are just brutes trying to dominate one another. Note how closely this is paralleled in the novella: the horrific tree with the dead and dying slaves beneath it at the Company's compound and the tree-like posts with heads on them at Kurtz's; the dubious designation of the Company's victims as criminals and of Kurtz's as rebels; the river journey up the Congo and Marlow's comments at the beginning of the story about the Romans sailing up the Thames estuary.

It is not that even superior civilized man has a vestige of the savage in him (that is, in effect, the racist reading), but that there is no significant difference between the the so-called civilized man and the so-called savage. That is what Kurtz learns. That is the horror. And it is what Marlow tries to lie about when he returns. But it is futile, because (as the story concludes) the heart of darkness is a much London as it is the Congo. The heart of darkness is the human condition. For Conrad, this is just what human beings are.

That is just semantics (or just my english), it is ok that they are already beats when the novel begins, albeit, Kurtz was not a beast at some point in the past. (Does not means he became this beast in africa and not previously, as he was already a man of status when he goes to Congo and this status could be beastility).

The point of Achebe is another - he does a lot of noise in some other point, which is the racist - Conrad is not presentative of african literature. He is an european bias as it was all previous literature that people were studying or giving vallue. It wouldnt matter if they were racist (which can be Kipling, Conrad or Haggard kind of writers or Stevenson, Melville or watever). They weren't an african point of view. They werent african literature, so in way they were just the empire with a sympathetic view (even when they didnt consider sympathetic view, as Achebe ended leading the debate).

But the discussion about Conrad racism - as you pointed, even his very language is tainted - is different. He is not imperialist and he pretty much shots as humankind, not africans. Achebe I think was smart to direct his critic to a work that would generate such fuzz. Obvious racism would probally just get him some nods, no argument, which probally prompted a review of Conrad, which was more complex that the "his racism was the typical racism in early XX century"to a bit about conrad was kicking out the human condition in such pessmistic manner that would make him a very represenative novelist of the period of Waste Land.

I vallue post-colonial reading not as political correctness. Political correctness is attitude towards the non-existence of debate and without conflicts. It is a conservative imposition. Post-colonial reading is new perspective, many times imposed, but if they can bring something interesting it is as good as structuralism.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

That is just semantics (or just my english), it is ok that they are already beats when the novel begins, albeit, Kurtz was not a beast at some point in the past. (Does not means he became this beast in africa and not previously, as he was already a man of status when he goes to Congo and this status could be beastility).

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I'm not sure if we are saying the same thing, but Kurtz was a man of status as a rising star in Europe and he was a man of status when he was worshipped as a god in the Congo. Yes, he ordered head hunting raids, but the Company that employed him enslaved Africans and worked them to death in prison camp conditions. There was a change in Kurtz, but it wasn't a downward spiral; it was a lateral move. The veneer of civilization turned out to be mighty thin.

I'm convinced this was Conrad's point. To make it, he had to show how brutal the Company's imperialism was. That's helpful to (and in fact legitimizes) post-colonial hermeneutics. But it was only part of the point Conrad was making. I agree the post colonial reading is worthwhile, though. I also agree that political correctness seeks to impose itself by delegitimizing debate. Personally I don't distinguish between left and right PC. It's all the imposition of (interested-) party line on individual thought. But I digress.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

The point of Achebe is another - he does a lot of noise in some other point, which is the racist - Conrad is not presentative of african literature. He is an european bias as it was all previous literature that people were studying or giving vallue. It wouldnt matter if they were racist (which can be Kipling, Conrad or Haggard kind of writers or Stevenson, Melville or watever). They weren't an african point of view. They werent african literature, so in way they were just the empire with a sympathetic view (even when they didnt consider sympathetic view, as Achebe ended leading the debate).

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I've never actually read the Achebe essay. In fact, the only thing of his I've read Things Fall Apart. That was 30 years ago while I was living in a remote part of central Africa. It didn't impress me stylistically, but I was just a dumb 20-something at the time, so who knows? It certainly didn't resemble the African world I saw on a daily basis. The novel that did--quite precisely--was V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River. But I was an outsider, of course, as was Naipaul's narrator, and I only stayed for a few years.

It would be ironic if Achebe attacked or dismissed Conrad for his pessimism, especially given how nightmarishly wrong so much of African independence went. Maybe Conrad knew a thing or two about human nature.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

I'm not sure if we are saying the same thing, but Kurtz was a man of status as a rising star in Europe and he was a man of status when he was worshipped as a god on the Congo. Yes, he ordered head hunting raids, but the Company that employed him enslaved Africans and worked them to death in prison camp conditions. There was a change in Kurtz, but it wasn't a downward spiral; it was a lateral move. The veneer of civilization turned out to be mighty thin.

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Yeah, perhaps I expressed myself badly, but it is a bit of what I meant, when you say men are already beast to conrad, this mean no character Kurtz or Marlowe have some changes. They would be born like this, so it would be a bit like locke. There is those small changes on Marlowe and well, we cannot expect Kurtz big changes, he is not the main character and it is a small novella. The status i mean is that Kurtz was notable from the militar academy, kind like a star and , maybe we can say, the empire changed him. Maybe Conrad aspired the Empire to be better, dunno, and was unhappy with that.

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I'm convinced this was Conrad's point. To make it, he had to show how brutal the Company's imperialism was. That's helpful to (and in fact legitimizes) post-colonial hermeneutics. But it was only part of the point Conrad making. I agree the post colonial reading is worthwhile, though. I also agree that political correctness seeks to impose itself by delegitimizing debate. Personally I don't distinguish between left and right PC. It's all the imposition of (interested-) party line on individual thought. But I digress.

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I do not think there is left PC (and yeah, i am ignoring watever political party this may imply, so perhaps may point is there is no left or right, just conservative...)

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I've never actually read the Achebe essay. In fact, the only thing of his I read Things Fall Apart; that was 30 years ago while I was living in a remote part of central Africa. It didn't impress me stylistically, but I was just a dumb 20-something at the time, so who knows? It certainly didn't resemble the world I saw on a daily basis. The novel that did--quite precisely--was V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River. But I was an outsider, of course, as was Naipaul's narrator, and I only stayed for a few years.

It would be ironic if Achebe attacked or dismissed Conrad for his pessimism, especially given how nightmarishly wrong so much of African independence went. Maybe Conrad knew a thing or two about human nature.

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I think he does. Despite all beastiality of his characters, they (the real characters, those he bothers to use, name, give life and not just place in a scene as part of the furniture) are very human.

Anyways, I was talking more beyond the essay. Once created the controversy, Achebe lived by it. I saw interviews were he refused a dialogue, but frankly, why so. He managed to change things with his attitude, he put the sittuation on the table to be addressed. He choose well Conrad, which literal reading is indeed very close to racism, a guy who was not ahousehold name (as could be an attack on Joyce, it would raise an army to defend him) and Conrad is very nasty, in the sense, he wants to place his reader in many troubles.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Yeah, perhaps I expressed myself badly, but it is a bit of what I meant, when you say men are already beast to conrad, this mean no character Kurtz or Marlowe have some changes. They would be born like this, so it would be a bit like locke. There is those small changes on Marlowe and well, we cannot expect Kurtz big changes, he is not the main character and it is a small novella. The status i mean is that Kurtz was notable from the militar academy, kind like a star and , maybe we can say, the empire changed him. Maybe Conrad aspired the Empire to be better, dunno, and was unhappy with that.

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I don't think Conrad has many hopes for people--imperialists or otherwise. His major idea (at least in the novels and stories I've read) is something like: if you want to know what people are like look at the way they are at sea. We can contrast this with Melville's idea that sea normal and land normal are just different. For Conrad sea normal is all there is, but people find superficial ways (like civilization and notions of cultural superiority) to prettify it. Or perhaps I'm putting it too strongly. What Axel and Lena experience in their love for each other and their need to separate from the predatory world is not superficial. Perhaps insufficient is a better word. But their island unto themselves is just a wasteland of failed projects, and in the end it does not prevent predators from coming after them. I think for Conrad the world is just what it is and there is no other way. As I said before, Melville's Stubb had a similar idea. His response was to laugh.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Anyways, I was talking more beyond the essay. Once created the controversy, Achebe lived by it. I saw interviews were he refused a dialogue, but frankly, why so. He managed to change things with his attitude, he put the sittuation on the table to be addressed.

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Yes, Africans got a whole new kind of misery. He may have changed things for a minuscule number of intellectual elites, but for everyone else the troubles just kept on going. No wonder he didn't want to talk about it.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Conrad is very nasty, in the sense, he wants to place his reader in many troubles.

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That's a good point. Achebe needed an underlying optimism for the dream of independence. He wasn't going to get it from The Heart of Darkness. But I think he would have been wise to have heeded Conrad's caveats instead of throwing him to the sharks. Or is it lions now? :)

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

I don't think Conrad has many hopes for people--imperialists or otherwise. His major idea (at least in the novels and stories I've read) is something like: if you want to know what people are like look at the way they are at sea. We can contrast this with Melville's idea that sea normal and land normal are just different. For Conrad sea normal is all there is, but people find superficial ways (like civilization and notions of cultural superiority) to prettify it. Or perhaps I'm putting it too strongly. What Axel and Lena experience in their love for each other and their need to separate from the predatory world is not superficial. Perhaps insufficient is a better word. But their island unto themselves is just a wasteland of failed projects, and in the end it does not prevent predators from coming after them. I think for Conrad the world is just what it is and there is no other way. As I said before, Melville's Stubb had a similar idea. His response was to laugh.

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Well, I think "the world is just what is" and people being "just what is" are two different things. I agree that the world is a hell for Conrad, where people are set for suffering and there are things bigger than man that mess with men's condition. But I think he is moving those characters in this world, showing those characters are failing because of those powers to be (the empire, the company, etc). It is a time for a lot of despair in europe and mistrust on the kind of society existed in europe (freud was around for example), because we can see some characters are not beast. Marlowe for example (albeit, somehow mediocre) or in other books, in Narcisus we have a conflict between the crew, some worry with the sick sailor, some dont (and all is pointless, not because of their action, but because he would die anyways) and Nostromo is a story about a man being corrupted, so there is some use for humanity for Conrad there.

I think you get right when you mention "But their island unto themselves is just a wasteland of failed projects, and in the end it does not prevent predators from coming after them.", it is a bit like people who for some motive disobey the warning and keep carrying their hopes when they are in hell. Hell will come and prove over and over again that our individual hopes and dreams are a wasteland of failed projects, in Heart of Darkness, i think this project is Civilization. No matter how we have rules, there come back the world to shove up the proverbial *** that all will go wrong.

I am reading D.H.Lawrence essays and his mindset is very similar. Despite his claim of love for life, he talks predicting a huge bloodbath in europe and while, he hopes the circle of destruction will lead to construction he sundenly see it will not be the case. Destruction will not build up a better man to strive, because what happened in Russia didnt bring better russian, just more scared folks. He is writing before the second world war, but I think this echoes well with Conrad. It was probally the mood for those writers, the feeling of end of empire.

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That's is a good point. Achebe needed an underlying optimism for the dream of independence. He wasn't going to get it from The Heart of Darkness. But I think he would have been wise to have heeded Conrad's caveats instead of throwing him to the sharks. Or is it lions now? :)

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I think he helped Conrad. His reading is now linked with Achebe's view, so most people will pay attention to the undertones of the novels, in such way, that those aspects Achebe left with be highlighted. (Of course, some people will read - or just not read - Conrad in the most simplistic way). Imagine if it was with Kipling? His reading would be alive again (beyond the children fables) because would have to discuss the complexities beyond Kipling and just not accept the notion he was some servile slave of British Empire. He cannt be even considered great enough to be hated.

Interesting stuff. I would just say that Achebe was wrong in taking Marlowe for Conrad. Perhaps on purpose if as you say he was pursuing a political agenda. It does not follow at all that a main character must have the veiws of the author or that a story he writes reflects his attitude. What was happening in 70's America though was Heart of Darkness was being examined mainly as a psycological drama as it pertained to the white men, with Africa merely the backdrop - 'Oh dear all those dead natives have traumatised poor me and brutilized my white pals,' approach. This wasn't Conrad's fault or his intention. So at least Achebe put the emphasis back on what was being done to Africa. In fact Heart of Darkness would be a more awkward unsettling read for his contempory audience than it is for us. Just as Conrad intended it to be.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Well, I think "the world is just what is" and people being "just what is" are two different things. I agree that the world is a hell for Conrad, where people are set for suffering and there are things bigger than man that mess with men's condition. But I think he is moving those characters in this world, showing those characters are failing because of those powers to be (the empire, the company, etc). It is a time for a lot of despair in europe and mistrust on the kind of society existed in europe (freud was around for example), because we can see some characters are not beast. Marlowe for example (albeit, somehow mediocre) or in other books, in Narcisus we have a conflict between the crew, some worry with the sick sailor, some dont (and all is pointless, not because of their action, but because he would die anyways) and Nostromo is a story about a man being corrupted, so there is some use for humanity for Conrad there.

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Well in all fairness, I have to defer to you in some of this because you have read more Conrad than I have. I would point out that, for Conrad, the world is what it is (a phrase I actually stole from Naipaul) BECAUSE people are what they are--at heart. That doesn't mean that his characters are not differentiated or do not change in some ways. They just can't stop being human; and for Conrad that has a lot of negative implications. Actually one of my complaints about The Heart of Darkness is that there isn't enough distinction between characters. Kurtz is obviously sui generis, but Marlow is rather indistinct, and who are these Company men he meets in the field? They all seem like the same person to me. Maybe Conrad was trying to show the deadening effect of imperialism on its perpetrators, or that they were not intrepid heroes but indistinct mediocrities, or maybe it was just a flaw in the writing; but as I said before I found the Russian free agent the most interesting character in the story--more so even than Kurtz. But I don't think that is typical of Conrad. Certainly there are important moral distinctions between most of the characters in Victory. I need to read more novels about Marlow to decide whether there was something about him I was missing in Heart of Darkness.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

It was probally the mood for those writers, the feeling of end of empire.

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Maybe. But Conrad had also been to sea, so maybe he just knew what people are like (or thought he did).

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

He cannt be even considered great enough to be hated.

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Heh. Well, they say karma's a b*tch. And at least he's got his Nobel Prize. He and Dylan. :)

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

Interesting stuff. I would just say that Achebe was wrong in taking Marlowe for Conrad. Perhaps on purpose if as you say he was pursuing a political agenda. It does not follow at all that a main character must have the veiws of the author or that a story he writes reflects his attitude. What was happening in 70's America though was Heart of Darkness was being examined mainly as a psycological drama as it pertained to the white men, with Africa merely the backdrop - 'Oh dear all those dead natives have traumatised poor me and brutilized my white pals,' approach. This wasn't Conrad's fault or his intention. So at least Achebe put the emphasis back on what was being done to Africa. In fact Heart of Darkness would be a more awkward unsettling read for his contempory audience than it is for us. Just as Conrad intended it to be.

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Welcome back, prendrelemick. :) I agree that the approach was Eurocentric (although the United States hardly had a monopoly on that) and Achebe succeeded in giving Africans their part, but I still believe Conrad's intent was universal. Note the ending where the outer narrator describes the Thames estuary flowing into a heart of darkness. That is not because Africans have traumatized white imperialists (as we agree) but because all humans share a single nature. And it ain't pretty. :)

I imagine you are right about there being at least some distinction between Conrad and Marlow, but until I read more of the Marlow stories I had better let you discuss that with JC. He knows more about Conrad than I do.

I remember the attitude to Empire was sorry that we lost it in the 60's, to sorry we ever had it in the 70's. When I did O level English, Heart of Darkness was taught to us with lashings of guilt for what "we" had done.

I think Conrad goes a little further than you say. He is saying we are worse than the savages, because we are able to hide behind the word "civilisation" or "progress" or "manifest destiny" or "unsound method of trade" or whatever. Marlowe holds the gone native Kurtz in higher regard than the other traders - at least he is honest. (exterminate the brutes.)
There is a passage I'm trying to remember where he compares modern imperialism to Roman, but says we are more efficient, and that although colonialism is agrivated murder, at least we (British) have a redeeming idea ... and never says what that idea is.

Prendrelemick is right about the confusion between Marlow and Conrad. It was a bit usual back then, the critics werent used with the First Person Narrator that well and many read those novels as something related to the writer. It happened with Melville also.

One thing about the Thames. While Conrad was not planning such thing (he was framing the narrative to an european audience), there is a message that europeans went to africa, screwed and returned home to look at their belly buttons and whine about their petty problems again! They made our river be their river!

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Well in all fairness, I have to defer to you in some of this because you have read more Conrad than I have. I would point out that, for Conrad, the world is what it is (a phrase I actually stole from Naipaul) BECAUSE people are what they are--at heart. That doesn't mean that his characters are not differentiated or do not change in some ways. They just can't stop being human; and for Conrad that has a lot of negative implications. Actually one of my complaints about The Heart of Darkness is that there isn't enough distinction between characters. Kurtz is obviously sui generis, but Marlow is rather indistinct, and who are these Company men he meets in the field? They all seem like the same to me. Maybe Conrad was trying to show the deadening effect of imperialism on its perpetrators, or that were not intrepid heroes but mediocrities, or maybe it was just a flaw in the writing; but as I said before I found the Russian free agent the most interesting character in the story--more so even than Kurtz. But I don't think that is typical of Conrad. Certainly there are important moral distinctions between most of the characters in Victory. I need to read more novels about Marlow to decide whether there was something about him I was missing in Heart of Darkness.

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I think it is the nature of the writing. He does not develop many characters except those he needs. Marlow is indistinct, average, because he is a bit Ishmael a bit a joyce character (just some chap). It is a short novella after all.

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Maybe. But Conrad had also been to sea, so maybe he just knew what people are like (or thought he did).

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But that is an imperial trate: guys that belonged to the world. Look how many of those british writers adventurers: burton, kipling, stevenson, conrad... they were travelers, but stevenson and burton from empire in the prime, so positive, Kipling is all awe and love until the wars killed his boy and Conrad is already pessimism. In a way there is chronology.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

I think Conrad goes a little further than you say. He is saying we are worse than the savages, because we are able to hide behind the word "civilisation" or "progress" or "manifest destiny" or "unsound method of trade" or whatever.

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You may be right (or perhaps those are your teachers talking :)). Certainly the pretenses of civilization and progress are shown to be ineffective.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

There is a passage I'm trying to remember where he compares modern imperialism to Roman, but says we are more efficient, and that although colonialism is agrivated murder, at least we (British) have a redeeming idea ... and never says what that idea is.

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I think he says all that makes the British different is a greater degree of efficiency. I don't remember a redemptive idea either. In that same exchange (it's near the beginning) he compares British civilization to a bolt of lightning: impressive to see but ultimately ephemeral.