Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

The Setting • Frame setting • Outside framework: • Narrator on yacht • Others on board are lawyer, accountant, director of companies, and Marlow • They are waiting for the tide to turn • On Thames in England • Marlow will be the one telling the story

Inside framework • Marlow talks of his steamboat traveling up the Congo • Late 1800s • Introduces us to characters he meets • Provides details about what was going on at that time in the Congo • Sets it up for us to judge

History • Belgium Congo • King Leopold II responsible for claiming it • Berlin Conference decided the territory was Leopold”s only, personally • He was a man of “notoriously immoral life” • Exploit it for ivory • More important was rubber • Violent actions, lots of abuses • Natives are not stupid; they just do not have the same experiences

“Spoke of bringing civilization to the Africans of the Congo. Bound men to fight in their army. Then they went from village to village taking the women hostage and forcing the men to go deep into the jungle to tap the indigenous rubber trees. Those who resisted were mowed down with machine-gun fire. Many were beheaded or had their hands cut off. One officer said, ‘My goal is ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people but that allowed five hundred others to live.’” Jezer, Marty. ”A Brief History of Colonialism in Congo.” Brattleboro(VT) Reformer.

Congo • 1885 Leopold II took control of the area and named it the Congo Free State • 1908 Belgian government took control of the Congo Free State and named it the Belgian Congo • 1960 country gains independence named Congo • 1971 country changed to Zaire • 1997 Democratic Republic of the Congo

Joseph Conrad 1857-1924 • Born in Poland; lived there, Russia, and Austria. • Mother died 1865, father 1869; uncle raised him after that; from there exposed to sea • 1874 French marine service • 1878 went to England and worked as seaman for English ships • 1890 traveled to Congo

Bits of Advice • Follow the quotation marks. When Marlow speaks, you will find “ …” If he is quoting someone, “ ‘…’” • Dense reading, very little dialogue, sophisticated vocabulary • Once Marlow reaches Africa in his story, the pace picks up

What we will be doing… • In pre-selected groups • Discussion leader daily- responsible for leading group, going through questions, being prepared. • All students answer questions in packet, separate sheet or on back, hand-written; will be turned in at the end. • Quizzed daily after discussion. Quizzed in groups. Group grade, unless want to branch off on own.

Part I, pages 65-77 • Imagery Light vs. Darkness • Light = civilization and its ideals, enlightenment, consciousness, self-knowledge • Dark = wilderness, ignorance, evil • HOWEVER: those who colonize are not always the light • Contrast the narrator’s perception with Marlow’s • The bringer of light also a bringer of darkness

The duality of man and his enterprises • “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth” • His trip = “Worker”, “an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle […] ‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways.’ […] I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit” (76).

Marlow • Gets command of a steamer on Congo through help of aunt who knows person in continental company • Replaces Dane, Fresleven, killed village chief over two hens • “Oh, it didn’t surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs […] he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause […] and probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way” (72). • “Cause of progress” “Glorious affair” “Glorious idea” “noble cause” SARCASM

The Aunt and Women • “Then-would you believe it?-I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work” (71). • “It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset” (76). • Comment about women

Brussels • “A whited sepulchre” “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also appear outwardly righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” • How is Brussels hypocritical?

Company Office • Ominous tone • Women knitting with black wool. Allusion? Guarding the door of Darkness • “Ave! Morituri te salutant.” “Hail Caesar; those about to die salute you.” Gladiators’ salute on entering the arena of combat. • Colors on map- red=British territories (“real work is done there”), yellow=Belgian, purple=German • “Dead in the centre” river like a snake

Foreshadow • During interview, hazy, foggy sense of what occurred “I fancy”, “I believe”, “I began to feel slightly uneasy” (74). • Doctor – need only a pulse to go • “The changes take place inside you know” (75). Asks about history of madness. “Interesting to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot” (75).

“’Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun […] one must before everything keep calm.’…He lifted a warning forefinger…’ Du calme, du calme. Adieu’”(76). ‘Keep calm, calm. Goodbye.’ • Setting off for the centre of the earth – has symbolic meaning

Theme • Work, efficiency, and belief. Their purposes. • “What saves us is efficiency-the devotion to efficiency” (69). • Looking into the truth of what colonists say they are doing and what they really are doing. “What redeems it is the idea only”(69).

I, pages 77-87 • Travels along African coast • “an enigma” • “air of whispering ‘come and find out’” • Black, creeping mist, sun fierce • “God-forsaken wilderness” • “the uniform sombreness of the coast seemed to keep me away from the truth of things” • “as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders”

Surf – natural, had its reason and meaning • Natives – “They wanted no excuse for being there” VS • Soldiers taking care of clerks “presumably” • 30 days of travel • “For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts”

Shelling the bush • “There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding” • Natives – called enemies, criminals and savages BUT “these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies” • “It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares” • Swede hangs himself “The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps” • “Stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno” (81)

Waste vs Efficiency • Exterior (coast) vs interior • Waste of excavations, inhabited devastation • Natives become “inefficient” • What he sees that is waste? • What is supposed to be “work”? • Dynamite, no change appears • “The philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do” (81) juxtaposition

“The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die” (82) • “After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings” (81)

Natives and Trade • White worsted- “Was there any idea at all connected with it […] this bit of white thread from beyond the seas” (82) • Are we supposed to see the cloth or the man? • “a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory” (84-85)

Chief Accountant • “miracle”- dressed in white; a “vision” “Amazing”- lights attire despite the surrounding darkness • “in the great demoralization of the land he kept up appearance. That’s backbone” (83) • Three years • WORK! Tending to his books; hates savages as distraction from work • Tells Marlow “you never know who may get hold of your letter-at that Central Station” (85)

Kurtz • Hints of him • “He is a very remarkable person” • In charge of a trading-post, a very important one, at ‘the very bottom of there’ • “He will be a somebody in the Administration before long”

Travel to Central Station • 15 days, 200 miles • Drums- “Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild-and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country” (85-86) • Road upkeep • “I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting” (86) • “Flabby devil running the show. White men’- appear like ghosts (hollow)

I, pages 87-89

Allusions • “papier-mache Mephistopheles” Mephistopheles in the Faust legend is Lucifer; papier-mache is cheap, deceptive, and lacks strength. • “Steal a horse while another must not look at a halter” – meaning that some people are privileged and may commit crimes with impunity, while others are unjustly punished for trivial or imaginary misdemeanors • “bricks without…straw maybe” – Exodus 5:7 ‘Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves” • Eldorado Expedition – imaginary region in interior of S. Am. supposed to surpass all others in its richness of its productions, esp. gold; any region or source of great abundance

Marlow • “I was getting savage” (89) • “my body was full of chills” (92)

Manager • Cold, inspires uneasiness, stealthy • Good health is power • “Perhaps there was nothing within him” (88) • ‘Men who come out here should have no entrails’ (88) • “for out there there were no external checks” (88)

Wilderness • “the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic vision” (89) • After fire and beating – “he arose and went out-and the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again” (90) • “the silence of the land went home to one’s very heart – its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life” (93)

“What was in there?” (94) • “a rolling wave of plants […] to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence” (98) • “Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us?” (94) • “no one here bears a charmed life” (96)

Further Evidence of Inefficiency • The “avenging fire” (90) – hole in bottom of bucket • Brickmaker – does not have materials to make bricks • Lack of rivets for repairing boat • What does this inefficiency allow?

Work! • “I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on the station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life” (89) • Pretence of work (91) • “What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work” (95) • “There was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world” (99)

“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” (97) • “No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence” (95) • “We live, as we dream – alone…” (95)

Kurtz • “He is a prodigy”; “He is an emissary of pity and science and progress” “universal genius” • “new gang of virtue” • He is ill • Painting – “representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre – almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face and sinister” (92)

“I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work when there” (99) • “faithless pilgrims” “bewitched pilgrims” • Praying to ivory • “unreal […] as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern” (91)

Lies • “I hate, detest lies, and can’t bear a lie […] There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do” (94)

II, pages 99-109

Style • Why the slow pace?

Overheard Conversation • What is the contrast between the manager/uncle and Kurtz? • “’Anything – anything can be done in this country’” (101) “Trust to this” (102) • What do learn about Kurtz from the manager? • Kurtz “turning his back” on the headquarters, relief, home • Marlow suggest “Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake” (101)

The Journey • On board- Marlow, manager, pilgrims, and cannibals • Mentions cannibals and restraint – “They were men one could work with” (103) and hippo meat

Going Back in Time • “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world” (102) • “You thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far away - in another existence perhaps (103) • “We were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone” (105)

“Well, you know, that was the worst of it – this suspicion of their not being inhuman […] but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity – like yours – the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it – you so remote from the night of first ages – could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future” (105-106) • Potential problem for colonists

Sensations • “There was no joy in the brilliance of the sunshine” (102) Double meaning? • “You lost your way on that river” (103) • “It was this stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention” (103) • “The inner truth is hidden” (103) • Feeling small • “No man was safe from trouble in this world” (108)

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there” (105) Why?

Major Theme • “He must meet that truth with his own true stuff – with his own inborn strength […] you want a deliberate belief” (106) • What is a deliberate belief? • What is its purpose? • The book that Marlow finds and its significance – “There was a singleness of intention, and honest concern for the right way of going to work” […] made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real” (108)

Part II, 109-119

Marlow • “I had a little fever […] I had often ‘a little fever’ the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course” • Foreshadowing • Efficiency in navigation

Heart of Darkness