Megan Mulder Notes for HEART OF DARKNESS
Cool Stuff Setting of the story:
Cool Quotes ³the air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.´ (3) ³and this also,´ said marlow suddenly, ³has been one of the dark places of the earth.´ (6)
River into the congo ± snake (imagery, symbolism of snake in garden of eden, piercing paradise and bringing hardship, bringing the knowledge of evil into the world and destroying innocence.)
The river ³resembling an immense snake uncoiled´ (10)
Example of conrad¶s symbolism; fates knitting
The two women ³guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall´ (15)
HOW TO DESCRIBE MARLOW
A man, to Marlow: ³You are of the new gang ± the gang of virtue.´ (37)
Link to Gatsby: Nick is ³the only honest person I know´
³You know I hate, detest, and can¶t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies´ (39)
We are the stuffed men We are the hollow men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. T.S. Eliot
³It seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through [the manager], and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.´ (38)
M. first appears as a devil who makes a wager with Faust, a character in German folklore. He is not a devil who searches for souls to corrupt; instead, he collects the souls of those already damned. In greek, name means not-light-lover In Hebrew, name means liar-destroyer
The manager: ³a papier-mache Mephistopheles´
On existence, and meaning
³it is impossible to convey [...] its subtle and penetrating essence. [...] we live, as we dream ± alone´ (40)
The nature of the world marlow finds himself in ± it is Africa, and its elusive quality is attractive, pulling men in. It attracts hollow men, and fills their cavities with hidden evil and lurking death.
³µtrust to this.¶ i saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river ± seemed to beckon with a dishonouring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.´ (49)
Link with Gatsby: Gatsby wants to repeat the past. ³Going up that river was like travelling back to the Conrad uses the imagery of traveling up a river to earliest beginnings of the world´ (49) symbolise going back into the past. Fighting against a current is symbolic of fighting against ³we were wanderers on a prehistoric earth. [...] we time. Time keeps running out, and only fools ± or could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking humans ± attempt to row upstream. possession of an accursed inheritance,´ (52)
The physical intensity of the African landscape keeps Marlow occupied, and he says that if he had not had that to deal with, he might have gone the way of Kurtz, and let the darkness inhabit him, too.
³When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality ± the reality, I tell you ± fades. The inner truth is hidden ± luckily, luckily.´ (50)
What was his goal? Kurtz, and Kurtz only.
³For me, it crawled towards Kurtz ± exclusively´ (52)
³you can¶t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.´ (61)
Kurtz, who believes he possesses everything, is in fact, possessed.
³My ivory´ Oh yes, I heard him. ³My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my - ´ everything belonged to him. [...] but that was a trifle.´
Kurtz ± represents Europe, and the ³civilized countries´
³all Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz´ (74)
³I went a little farther,´ he said, ³then still a little farther ± till I had gone so far that I don¶t know how I¶ll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage.´ (82)
On the hollowness of Kurtz Support for the ³veil renting´ interpretation, that the horror he sees is a final self awareness of his true condition, not as a god of ivory or Africa, but as a used mortal with a heart of darkness.
³Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him [...] whether he knew of his deficiency himself I can¶t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last ± only at the very last.´
Link to Gatsby: Daisy as a disembodied voice, as a voice of money, as an abstraction. (Kurtz as a voice of power, a voice of temptation) Kind of like the wizard of oz, the little man behind a curtain. Both voices offer so much, and in actuality can give so little.
³a voice! A voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper.´ (91)
To describe Kurtz¶s mistress Contrast with Kurtz, who is only ever truly described as a voice; she has no voice, instead is physically present, rooted to the ground, regal because of presence, not because of the idea she offers.
³a wild and gorgeous apparition of woman´ (91)
Africa as a regal, destructive woman.
³she was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress.´ (91)
As opposed to Africa, who had no choice in the colonization, as opposed to the intended, who had no choice in Kurtz¶s death.
³My hour of favour was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz [...] but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.´ (94)
NB! He didn¶t choose Kurtz, instead, ³I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr Kurtz´ (94) and he was lumped with K because his methods were unsound, that is, he said that K was a remarkable man. But what is K? K is the wilderness, the wild, untameable, regal woman of Africa, the river which swims from the depth of the land towards the ocean, like time, ebbing out never to be regained. Marlow chose the nightmare of Africa over the nightmare of colonization. For that, he is marked.
Link to Gatsby Nick is loyal to G.
³I did not betray Mr Kurtz [...] it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.´ (97)
Kurtz is floating in space with no centre of gravity, nothing to orient himself, and so he is ³utterly lost´
³He had kicked himself loose of the earth. [...] He had kicked the very earth to pieces.´ (100) Kurtz¶s soul ³a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.´ (100)
Link to Gatsby can be paired with last line of book ³the brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of to show similarities of river symbolism, similar darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with theme of time/past twice the speed of our upward progress: and Kurtz¶s life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time.´
Biblical allusion to renting of veil in temple after Jesus¶ death: reconciliation between his soul and his consciousness.
³a veil had be rent [...] the horror! The horror!´ (106)
Marlow, like Nick, is the character left over, the one left to pick up the pieces. Both show a tremendous loyalty: Nick, to Gatsby¶s dream, and Marlow, to his nightmare.
³I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end.´ (106)
TO DESCRIBE THE INTENDED
³such a look of awful desolation came up on her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time.´ (112) ³i shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade´ (115)
On his lie
³the heavens do not fall for such a trifle´ (117)
Final lines. The ship is waiting for the tide to go out (ebb) so that she can sail. In the telling of the story ± in the journey into the past ± the ship has lost the first chance to journey into the future. But what does the future hold if the future is the heart of an immense darkness?
³we have lost the first of the ebb [...] the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky ± seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness´