Heart of Darkness
...xperience in Africa, which forced him to become a fresh water sailor and gave him a glimpse of colonization. Marlow has always had a passion for travel and exploration. Marlow decides he wants to be the skipper of a steamship that travels up and down the river in Africa. His aunt has a connection in the administration department of a seafaring/exploration company and manages to get Marlow and appointment, because one of the steamboat captains was killed in a skirmish with the natives. When Marlow arrives at the office, the atmosphere is extremely dim. The doctor who performs his physical asks if there is a history of insanity in Marlowˇ¦s family, and tells him that nothing could persuade him to attend the company down the Congo. The next day Marlow embarks on his journey into the heart of darkness. The African shores he observes look welcoming. ˇ§ The Voice of the serf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning...for a time I would feel I belonged to a world of straightforward facts...ˇ¨(Heart of Darkness, 78) When he arrives he comes across a very well-dressed man who is known as the Accountant. After ten days Marlow departs on his journey into the Congo, where he will work for a man named Kurtz. Marlow come across many villages, and black men who are working. They are never described as humans. ˇ§ Now and then a boat from shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; thier bodies streamed with perspiration, they had faces like grotesque masks - these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, and a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along the shore.ˇ¨(Heart of Darkenss, 78) Marlow finally arrives at the station, where he meets the manager. The ship that Marlow is supposed to sail is broken. When his ship has been repaired he sets out for Kurtzˇ¦s station with the Pilgrims, the cannibals, and the manager. Marlow finally gets to meet Kurtz but finds he is ill. Kurtz can be described as a murderer and a thief. Kurtz also allows himself to be worshipped as a god. There is no trace of Kurtzˇ¦ former good looks or health. Marlow says that Kurtzˇ¦ head is as bald as an ivory ball and that he resembles ˇ§... an animated image of death carved out of old ivory.ˇ¨ Kurtz dies a few days later, with Marlow having attended him to the end. Throughout the narrative Marlow characterizes events in terms of light and darkness. In the beginning Marlow compares the light with civility and reality. Marlow uses darkness to depict savagery. These two aspects are major themes in the Heart of Darkness.As Marlow proceeds deeper into the heart of the African jungle he begins to thing that savagery is just an early form of civilization, and that Thames seemed to ˇ§lead into the heart of immense darkness.ˇ¨ (book) Marlow associates light with knowledge and truth; darkness with mystery and seductive evil. When Marlow realizes that his auntˇ¦s acquaintances had misrepresented him to the Chief of the Inner Station, Marlow says, ˇ§ light dawned upon meˇ¨, as to point out that light represents knowledge and truth. Another way light is associated with this story is when Marlow describes the knights who went out from the Thames to bring light into the darkness of the world. He states they were ˇ§ bearers of a spark from the sacred fire.ˇ¨ (book) As he walks deeper in the jungle he observes the natives and relates the African jungle savagery to his own reality. Marlow has different contrasting experiences in the sunshine and in the shade. Contemplating this he remarks : ˇ§Iˇ¦ve seen the devil violence, the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! These were strong lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men - men, I tell you. But as I stood on the hillside, I foresaw in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become aquatinted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later.ˇ¨ ( Heart of Darkness, 81) Marlow walks over to the shade and watches the natives in their ˇ§naturalˇ¨ habitat: the darkness. Marlow describes,ˇ¨ Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between trees, leaning against trunks, clinging to the earth, half-coming out, half effaced with the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.ˇ¨ (Heart of Darkness, 82) The dimness is symbolic of his half-awareness. When Marlow leaves the shade he runs into one of the colonialist: ˇ§ I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear silk neck tie, and varnished boots.ˇ¨ (Heart of Darkness,83) Again light and darkness is contrasted as Marlow runs into the man dressed in light colors. As Marlow learns of Krurtzˇ¦s activities his perception of civilization changes. What he thinks is rational and good, he decides is irrational and evil. At first Marlow blames Kurtzˇ¦s cannibalistic brutality on the dark mysterious forces of the jungle: ˇ§ onever, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of the blazing sky, appear to m...