Western Thought II
December 1, 2011
Class Notes
I. Joseph Conrad: Introduction
A. Life:
1. Born December 3, 1857 in or near Berdichev in a Ukrainian province of Poland that had long been under Tsarist rule.
2. Name: Jszef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
3. Parents were members of the landowning gentry or szlachta class and devout Catholics (Knowles, “Conrad’s Life,” Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad,
5) a. His family actively espoused soldierly and chivalric virtues, upholding a tradition of patriotic insurrection against Russians in the name of national independence and democratic reforms, and as a result, their family lands had been confiscated by the authorities b. When Conrad was three, both parents were arrested on charges of clandestine revolutionary activity and banished by the Russian authorities to a bleak internment in the Russian town of Bologda c. Conrad’s mother died when he was eight and his father when he was twelve d. Orphaned, Conrad was placed under the guardianship of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, whose practical and conservative approach to life stood in marked contrast to the revolutionary fervor of Conrad’s father.
4. Between the ages of 15-17, Conrad expressed a desire to go to sea and in 1874, he traveled on a Russian passport to Marseilles to become a seaman. a. In 1878, Conrad was unable to serve in French ships due to changes in the regulations relating to the employment of foreigners in the French merchant navy, so he made his first contact with the British Merchant Service (He increasingly associated this with the idea of home.) b. In 1890, Conrad took a trip up the Congo River ( The Congo
Diary was a record kept by Conrad during his trek from Matadi to Nselemba between
June-August 1890)
1) Conrad based his story very closely on personal experience and most of his characters can be traced to actual people (Hawkins, “Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
: Politics and History,” 207)
2) Conrad was given command of a river steamer plying among the trading stations set up by the Belgians along the Congo River
B. Literary Career: 3 periods
1. Short early period of largely Malay fiction ending in 1896
2. Major phase (1897-1911) a)
The Nigger of the “Narcissus ” (1897) b) Heart of Darkness serialized in Blackwood’s “Edinburgh
Magazine”
3. Later fiction: 1911-1917 and decline from 1918 to 1924 (his death)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 1

II. Historical context of the novel
A. Colonialism
B, David Livingstone, the celebrated missionary/explorer who believed that
Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization would work together as the counter to the slave trade.
C. Stanley – journalist turned explorer who ‘found’ Livingstone on Lake
Tanganyika in November 1871.
D. The History of the Congo Free State
1. Henry Stanley “discovered” the Congo river in 1875
2. King Leopold II of Belgium hired him to stake a claim in the region a. Leopold through shrewd diplomatic maneuvering got the Congo as his private territory (rather than a Belgian colony) at the Berlin Conference of 1885. b. Proceeded to turn his African country into a vast slave plantation for extracting ivory and raw rubber until European powers finally took it away from him in 1908. c. Between 1885-1908 in order to affect his policy of forced labor,
Leopold killed an estimated 3 million natives
III. Heart of Darkness : Discussion
A
. In light of Said’s work Orientalism, can Conrad’s Heart of Darkness be considered an “Orientalist” text?
1. The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has claimed that Heart of Darkness is an “offensive and deplorable book” that “set[s] Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.” Achebe says that Conrad does not provide enough of an outside frame of reference to enable the novel to be read as ironic or critical of imperialism.
2. “
Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where a man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.”
3. Presentation of Geography betrays “Orientalist” discourse: mapmaking a. “When I was a little chap I had a passion for maps…At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say,
“When I grow up I will go there….But there was one yet – the biggest, the most blank, so to speak – that I had a hankering after.” (HD, 22) b. “It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery – a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.” (HD,
22) c. “Blank spaces” indicates that there is nothing there, yet there are people, indigenous cultures, etc. Blankness indicates the absence of Western civilization in those areas. This designates Western culture and its denizens are the mapmakers, the designers, the creators and gives them power (to name, to create boundaries, etc.)
B.
Evaluate the character of Marlow? Is he an “Orientalist?” What motivates him to embark on his journey to Africa (the Congo?)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 2

1. Marlow embarks on the journey in order to explore, escape, earn $, gain adventure. He was hired by the Company to secure Kurtz’ ivory.
2 . The reader’s first image of Marlow : a. “Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol.” (HD, 16) b. “…He had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes, and without a lotus-flower.” (HD, 20) c. “I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.” (HD, 33) d. These descriptions elevate Marlow, bestowing upon him a sort of wisdom
3. Descriptions of the African natives through Marlow’s eyes : a. “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.” (HD, 34-35) b. “They were dying slowly – it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.” (HD, 35) c. “Creatures” “Phantoms” (HD, 36) d. No understanding of time: “I don’t think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time – had no inherited experience to teach them, as it were…” (HD,
69)
1) “We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil…The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us –who could tell?” (HD, 62) e. Cannibals:
1) “More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these caps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows – cannibals – in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. “ (HD, 61)
2) “Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn’t go for us – they were thirty to five – and have a good tuck – in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard.” (HD, 70)
3) “What he should have realized was that cannibals do not eat human flesh out of greed or lust or even as a dietary staple, but to commemorate an important occasion connected with the well being of their society. That is, a society in which cannibalism has ritual significance cannot possibly be a symbol for a lawless and bestial lone.” (Singh, 46)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 3

f. Dehumanization:
1) “No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it – this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one.
They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; 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….” (HD, 62-63)
2) “I missed my late helmsman awfully, - I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black
Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered, for months I had him at my back – a help- an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me
– I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken.” (HD, 84) g. Language: Clearly there is a language barrier, but Marlow barely refers to this
1) “It is clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the ‘rudimentary souls’ of Africa. They only “exchanged short grunting phrases” even among themselves, but mostly they were too busy with their frenzy.”
(Achebe, 786)
2) “I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.” (HD, 63)
3) “I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing…The man presented himself as a voice….The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, hi words – the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.” (HD 79)
C.
Why is Marlow’s narrative framed within another narrative, in which one of the listeners to the story explains the circumstances in which Marlow tells it?
1. “It might be contended that the attitude to the African in
Heart of
Darkness is not Conrad’s but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it, Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and criticism.” (Achebe, 787)
2) Narrator behind the narrator (Marlow=primary narrator)
3) The narrator who begins Heart of Darkness is unnamed, as are the other three listeners, who are identified only by their professional occupations. Moreover, the narrator usually speaks in the first-person plural, describing what all four of Marlow’s listeners think and feel. The unanimity and anonymity of Marlow’s listeners combine to create the impression that they represent conventional perspectives and values of the
British establishment.
4) The anonymous narrator states that Marlow is unconventional in his ideas, and his listeners’ derisive grunts and murmurs suggest that they are less inclined to question colonialism or to view Africans as human beings than he is\.
5) The framing narrative puts a certain amount of distance between
Marlow’s narrative and Conrad himself. This framework suggests that the reader should
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 4

regard Marlow ironically, but there are few cues within the text to suggest an alternative to Marlow’s point of view.
D. Is Heart of Darkness a critique or an endorsement of imperialism/colonialism? How are Africa and the African natives depicted?
1. Straightfoward- Roman colonization of ancient Britain described in negative terms. “I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago…But darkness was here yesterday.” (HD, 19)
2. Irony: Is there any irony in the manner in which the description of colonization is delivered? What is the noble cause ? Is Conrad being ironic when he describes it? a. Ref. to Fresleven: No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self respect in some way.” (HD, 23) b. “There was a vast amount of red – good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and one the East Coast, a purple patch to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer.” (HD, 25) c. “After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.” (HD, 33) d. Painting: “Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped, and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch.” (HD, 46)
1) Alstraea, goddess of justice, is foten depicted blindfolded to signify the impartiality of justice…Earlier the primary narrator had referred to English explorers and adventurers as bearers of ‘the torch,’ ‘bearers of a spark from the sacred fire’ e. “He is an emissary of pit, and science, and progress and devil knows what else. We want for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.” (HD, 47) f. “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs
(Exerts power for the good) (HD, 83)
1) “He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings – we approach them with the might as of a deity.’ and so on, and so on. “By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded.” (HD, 83)
3. Hawkins argues that Conrad distinguished between British and
Belgium colonialism: For the intended audience of Conrad, imperialism is accepted. a. Efficiency and the ‘idea’ not joining the natives, but improving them b. In Conrad’s novella, the inefficiency of what is representative of Leopold’s Congo colony is depicted:
1) Inefficiency & lack of foresight: “But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted 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 and a thousand miles farther.” (HD, 34)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 5

2) Broken boiler (32)
3) Railway (objectless blasting) (33)
4) Vast artificial hole (34)
5) Eldorado Expedition (54)
E.
What is the significance of the story about Fresleven’s death in Chapter 1?
What is the importance of the city that reminds him of a “white sepulchre” to which
Marlow travels in order to sign his employment contract?
1. Fresleven (Marlow’s predecessor) was killed in a scuffle over some hens: after striking the village chief, he was stabbed by the chief’s son. He was left there to die, and the superstitious natives immediately abandoned the village. Marlow notes that he never did find out what became of the hens. (HD, 23) a. builds suspense b. This anecdote helps to suggest that the African wilderness changes people: As the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs”, there is question as to why Fresleven he “whacked the old nigger mercilessly”
2. White Sepulchre refers to Brussels, Belgium & hypocrisy of the
Belgians in their brutal brand of colonialism: The Belgian king, Leopold, treated the
Congo as his private treasury, and the Belgians had the reputation of being far and away the most cruel and rapacious of the colonial powers. The reference to Brussels as a
“whited sepulchre” is meant to bring to mind a passage from the Book of Matthew concerning hypocrisy. The Belgian monarch spoke rhetorically about the civilizing benefits of colonialism, but the Belgian version of the practice was the bloodiest and most inhumane. a. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27-8)
F.
Discuss Conrad’s depiction of women throughout his novella. Heart of
Darkness has often been attacked by critics as a misogynistic work. Is this a correct assessment?
1. Description of Marlow’s aunt: “She talked about ‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways…” It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had 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.” (HD, 28)
2. This section of the book also introduces another set of concerns, this time regarding women. Heart of Darkness has been attacked by critics as misogynistic, and there is some justification for this point of view. Marlow’s aunt does express a naïvely idealistic view of the Company’s mission, and Marlow is thus right to fault her for being “out of touch with truth.” However, he phrases his criticism so as to make it applicable to all women, suggesting that women do not even live in the same world as men and that they must be protected from reality.
3. Moreover, the female characters in Marlow’s story are extremely flat and stylized. In part this may be because Marlow uses women symbolically as representatives of “home.” Marlow associates home with ideas gotten from books and religion rather than from experience. Home is the seat of naïveté, prejudice, confinement,
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 6

and oppression. It is the place of people who have not gone out into the world and experienced, and who therefore cannot understand.
G. What is the purpose of the journey up the Congo River? How can we read this journey as an allegorical quest for selfhood or self-knowledge?
1. “The question raised by Conrad is how far man can control his primitive impulses without sinking back into a primitive savage state where all that mysterious life of the wilderness stirs in the forest, in the jungle, in the hearts of wild men.” The voyage becomes a voyage into the self, since Marlow learns about his own feelings and thoughts through response to Kurtz and what he represents.” (Pitt, 142)
2. “The novel can be interpreted in a Freudian manner as a journey into the wilderness of sex, a fantasy shaped by Conrad’s own divided impulses. The pilgrims penetrate down a narrow channel to fin, in the darkness a violent orgiastic experience.
Kurt, the outlaw figure, has dared to transgress the restraints imposed by civilization. He represents Marlow’s shadow self, the secret sharer, and the voyage of exploration is a night journey into the unconscious, or discovery of Freudian id.” (Pitt, “The Exploration of Self in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ,” p. 143) a. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me – and into my thoughts. (HD, 21) b. “I felt as though, instead of going to the centre of a continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the earth.” (HD, 29) c. “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.” (HD, 59)
3. Avoidance of proper names except for Marlow and Kurtz a. “The Company Station” (32) b. “Central Station (38), (40) c. “Inner Station” (49) , primeval mud d. response to that passionate uproar (62-63)
H. Discuss the conflict between the interior and the exterior as presented in
Conrad’s work.
1. Comparisons between interiors and exteriors pervade Heart of
Darkness.
As the narrator states at the beginning of the text, Marlow is more interested in surfaces, in the surrounding aura of a thing rather than in any hidden nugget of meaning deep within the thing itself. This inverts the usual hierarchy of meaning: normally one seeks the deep message or hidden truth. The priority placed on observation demonstrates that penetrating to the interior of an idea or a person is impossible in this world. Thus,
Marlow is confronted with a series of exteriors and surfaces—the river’s banks, the forest walls around the station, Kurtz’s broad forehead—that he must interpret. These exteriors are all the material he is given, and they provide him with perhaps a more profound source of knowledge than any falsely constructed interior “kernel.” a. “Marlow was not typical, and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.” (HD, 18)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 7

2. The doctor is perhaps the ultimate symbol of futility: he uses external measurements to try to decipher what he admits are internal changes.
3. Marlow’s description of his journey on the French steamer makes use of an interior/exterior motif that continues throughout the rest of the book. Marlow frequently encounters inscrutable surfaces that tempt him to try to penetrate into the interior of situations and places. The most prominent example of this is the French manof-war, which shells a forested wall of coastline. To Marlow’s mind, the entire coastline of the African continent presents a solid green facade, and the spectacle of European guns firing blindly into that facade seems to be a futile and uncomprehending way of addressing the continent.
I. What is the significance of the rivers (ie. the Thames and the Congo) in the narrative?
1. The Congo River is the key to Africa for Europeans. It allows them access to the center of the continent without having to physically cross it; in other words, it allows the white man to remain always separate or outside.
2. Africa is thus reduced to a series of two-dimensional scenes that flash by Marlow’s steamer as he travels upriver. a. The river also seems to want to expel Europeans from Africa altogether: its current makes travel upriver slow and difficult, b. But the flow of water makes travel downriver, back toward
“civilization,” rapid and seemingly inevitable. Marlow’s struggles with the river as he travels upstream toward Kurtz reflect his struggles to understand the situation in which he has found himself. The ease with which he journeys back downstream, on the other hand, mirrors his acquiescence to Kurtz and his “choice of nightmares.”
J. What is the significance of the title of the novella? What does “darkness” represent?
1. Darkness is important enough conceptually to be part of the book’s title.
However, it is difficult to discern exactly what it might mean, given that absolutely everything in the book is cloaked in darkness. Africa, England, and Brussels are all described as gloomy and somehow dark, even if the sun is shining brightly. Darkness thus seems to operate metaphorically and existentially rather than specifically. Darkness is the inability to see: this may sound simple, but as a description of the human condition it has profound implications. Failing to see another human being means failing to understand that individual and failing to establish any sort of sympathetic communion with him or her.
2. Darkness=man’s capacity for evil and the moral abyss which lies under the thin veneer of civilization” (Pitt, 147)
3. Moral anarchy, instinctual primitive aggression (Freudian)
4. “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.”
(HD, 62)
5.
“It refers to the evil practices of the colonizers of the Congo, their sordid exploitation of the natives, and suggests that the real darkness is not in Africa but in Europe, and that its heart is not in the breasts o the black Africans, but in all whites who countenance and engage in colonialistic enterprise.” (Singh, 42)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 8

6.
But according to Marlow “The colonizers became psychologically depraved because being cut off from the norms of civilization, they turned to the lawless jungle. Marlow implies that his trip upriver into the geographical heart of ethnographically darkest Africa represents a similar experience: that his voyage is a voyage through the dark backward, and abysm of time into the inner heart of darkness, the utterly savage state of being that existed before civilization tamed the unconscious with its absolute desire for egotistic self fulfillment by means of moral restraints.” (Singh, 43)
7.
Unknown, remote, and primitive Africa is a symbol for an evil and primeval force, the evil which the title refers to is associated with
K.
Africans, their customs, and their rites
Examine the purpose of all the minor company characters in the novella.
What commentary do they make on the company and the Western presence in the
Congo?
1. Minor characters help to emphasize the futility of the Western presence in the Congo.
2. Doctor – no one ever visits him again after they return from Africa
3. Pilgrims- The bumbling, greedy agents of the Central Station. They carry long wooden staves with them everywhere, reminding Marlow of traditional religious travelers. They all want to be appointed to a station so that they can trade for ivory and earn a commission, but none of them actually takes any effective steps toward achieving this goal. They are obsessed with keeping up a veneer of civilization and proper conduct, and are motivated entirely by self-interest. They hate the natives and treat them like animals, although in their greed and ridiculousness they appear less than human themselves
4. General manager - The chief agent of the Company in its African territory, who runs the Central Station. He owes his success to a hardy constitution that allows him to outlive all his competitors. He is average in appearance and unremarkable in abilities, but he possesses a strange capacity to produce uneasiness in those around him, keeping everyone sufficiently unsettled for him to exert his control over them.
5. Brickmaker - The brickmaker, whom Marlow also meets at the
Central Station, is a favorite of the manager and seems to be a kind of corporate spy. He never actually produces any bricks, as he is supposedly waiting for some essential element that is never delivered. He is petty and conniving and assumes that other people are too.
6. Chief accountant - An efficient worker with an incredible habit of dressing up in spotless whites and keeping himself absolutely tidy despite the squalor and heat of the Outer Station, where he lives and works. He is one of the few colonials who seems to have accomplished anything: he has trained a native woman to care for his wardrobe.
L. Why does Heart of Darkness have two competing heroes? Can either
Marlow or Kurtz be considered the true “hero” of the novella?
1. Marlow and Kurtz – literary foils or master and apprentice?
2. Kurtz takes on an almost symbolic role in the novella, whereas Marlow as one of the narrators seems to speak to the reader
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 9

3. Marlow a. He is in many ways a traditional hero: tough, honest, an independent thinker, a capable man. Yet he is also “broken” or “damaged,” like T. S.
Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock or William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson. The world has defeated him in some fundamental way, and he is weary, skeptical, and cynical. b. Intermediary - Marlow can also be read as an intermediary between the two extremes of Kurtz and the Company.
1) He is moderate enough to allow the reader to identify with him, yet open-minded enough to identify at least partially with either extreme. Thus, he acts as a guide for the reader.
2) Marlow’s intermediary position can be seen in his eventual illness and recovery. Unlike those who truly confront or at least acknowledge
Africa and the darkness within themselves, Marlow does not die, but unlike the Company men, who focus only on money and advancement, Marlow suffers horribly. He is thus
“contaminated” by his experiences and memories, and, destined, as purgation or penance, to repeat his story to all who will listen.
M. Evaluate the character of Kurtz? How do other people in the novella regard him? What does he symbolize for others? for Marlow? for his Intended?
1. Kurtz resembles the archetypal “evil genius”: the highly gifted but ultimately degenerate individual whose fall is the stuff of legend
2. Kurtz is the object of the quest and yet we have no direct perception of him: He is lacking in substance, hollow at the core. a. “He was just a word for me.” (HD, 50) b. “He was very little more than a voice” (HD, 80) c. Unrestrained - The heads on sticks: “They only showed that
Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him – some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.” d. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude – and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.” (HD, 94) e. Kurtz means “short” (HD, f. Refers to Kurtz as a shadow, a voice g. Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! (HD, 110) h. I am unable to say what was Kurtz’s profession, whether he ever had any- which was the greatest of his talents.” (HD, 116)
3. Kurtz is not so much a fully realized individual as a series of images constructed by others for their own use. As Marlow’s visits with Kurtz’s cousin, the
Belgian journalist, and Kurtz’s fiancée demonstrate, there seems to be no true Kurtz. To his cousin, he was a great musician; to the journalist, a brilliant politician and leader of men; to his fiancée, a great humanitarian and genius.
N. What is the importance of ivory in the narrative?
1. The unsound method by which Kurtz obtained ivory (HD, 101)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 10

2. “He was its (darkness) spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country.” (HD, 81)
3. “My ivory…Everything belonged to him.” (HD, 81)
4. The colonialists’ greed
5. “Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of – what shall
I say? – less material aspirations.” (HD, 93)
O.
Contrast Kurtz’s African mistress with his Intended. Are both negative portrayals of women? Describe how each functions in the narrative. Does it make any difference in your interpretation to know that Conrad supported the women’s suffrage movement?
1. Both Kurtz’s Intended and his African mistress function as blank slates upon which the values and the wealth of their respective societies can be displayed.
Marlow frequently claims that women are the keepers of naïve illusions; although this sounds condemnatory, such a role is in fact crucial, as these naïve illusions are at the root of the social fictions that justify economic enterprise and colonial expansion. In return, the women are the beneficiaries of much of the resulting wealth, and they become objects upon which men can display their own success and status.
2. Mistress: “And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a women…She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brasswire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, unnumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witchmen, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wildeyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress.” (HD, 99)
3. Intended: “She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a year since his death..She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering.” (HD, 119) a. “We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse.” (HD, 80)
P . Evaluate Heart of Darkness as a post modernist work in light of the following statement: “It (Heart of Darkness) displays an acute self consciousness about the organizing features of traditional narrative, working with them still but suspiciously with constant reference to the inadequacy of the inherited orders of meaning.”
1. Attempts are made during the journey to impose order upon the
“chaos” a. The Company/The Idea:
1. “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is no a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it…” (HD, 20)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 11

b. The accountant: “In the steady buzz of flies the homeward bound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree tops of the grove of death.” (HD, 38)
1) While the Westerners are trying to balance their books, the natives are dying, dehumanized. c. Report to the International Society for the Suppression of
Savage Customs (benevolent cause) vs. Kurtz’s postscript, “Exterminate the brutes” (HD,
84) superiority)
1) Surface cause, vs. reality (fear, disgust, feelings of d. The building of the railroad, with its objectless blasting of a path to nowhere. (33) e. “There is an absurd disproportion between the ordering systems deployed and the triviality of their effect.” (Brooks, 242)
1) “The text appears to speak of a repeated ‘trying out’ of orders, all of which distort what they claim to organize, all of which may indeed cover up a very lack of possibility of order.” (Brooks, 242) f. The readable report (HD. 100-101): “That fellow what’s his name? the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you.”
1) Question of ordering is articulated in the exchange between Marlow and the manager on the question of Kurtz’s methods in the acquisition of ivory – using the concept of disorder to conceal the radical condition of orderlessness.
The readable report which Marlow notes to be the usual order for dealing with such deviations as Kurtz’s would represent the ultimate system of false ordering, read made discourse.” (Brooks, 242)
2. Difficulty in reading the novella: Why is Heart of Darkness so difficult to read? a. We want “reports” to explain to us “the horror” and make it intelligible so it doesn’t seem so threatening b. “You can’t understand. How could you w/ solid pavement under your feet. (HD, 81) c. illusion of perfect safety (HD, 114)
3. Marlow’s journey in relation to Kurtz’s journey: a. Marlow’s journey is a repetitionk, which gains its meaning from its attachment to the prior (Kurtz’s ) journey. Marlow’s plot (sjuzet) repeats Kurtz’ story
(fibula) takes this as its motivating force and then will seek also to know and to incorporate Kurtz;s own plot for his story. It is that Marlow’s inquest, in the manner of the detective’s becomes the retracing of a precursor. b. “The detective story may in this manner lay bare the structure of any narrative, particularly its claim to be a retracing of events that have already occurred. The detective retracing the trace of his predecessor and thus uncovering and constructing the meaning and the authority of the narrative represents the very process of narrative representation.”
4. Marlow’s journey as quest for knowledge:
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 12

interpretation a. “The adventure story exists only to allow the unfolding of a tale of knowledge. The action is insignificant because the story is directed toward a search for being.” (Todorov, 163) b. Predominance of knowing over doing c. Events are of little importance, what counts is their d. Words require interpretation, even more so do non-verbal symbols e. As chief navigator, Marlow’s central duty is to interpret signs
1) “I had to guess at the channel” (HD, 60)
2) Manager’s smile (HD, 41) secretive, mysterious f. Human relations are part of the hermeneutic search:
1) The Russian (HD, 90): His existence is improbable, inexplicable
2) The two women at the company suggest that interpretation of symbols is the predominant task (HD, 25) a. “One of them passively searches for knowledge, the other points to knowledge which escapes her.” (Todorov)
5. Kurtz’s relationship to the system of orderings and the quest for knowledge: Language is the ultimate ordering system a.
“Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice!
It ran deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart.” (HD, 110) b. “He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath.” “The horror! The horror!” (HD, 112) c. “I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny. Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late –a crop of unextinguishable regrets.
This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. He had summed up. He had judged. “The horror” But it was a victory!
That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me form a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.” (HD, 114) d. Expression, voice, articulation, or “wisdom” are the goals of the narrative: “The definition of Kurtz through his “gift of expression” and as a “voice” and
Marlow’s postulation of this definition of Kurtz as the motivating goal of his own journey serve to conceptualize the narrative end as expression, voice, articulation, or what Walter
Benjamin terms “wisdom”. (The goal of all storytelling has come to be defined as the meaning of an individual life, the meaning of life cannot be known until the moment of death. It is at death that a life first assumes transmissible form and becomes a completed and significant statement, so that it is death that provides the authority or sanction of narrative.” (Brooks, 246) e. The Lie (“The last word he pronounced was – your name): The final passage (HD, 123) epitomizes all our difficulties with Marlow as a narrator, for the resonance of its ethical pronouncements seems somehow to get in the way of the
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 13

designation of a starker and possibly contradictory truth: the moral rhetoric appears in some measure a cover up . (Brooks, 248)
6. “The horror, the horror” is more accurately characterized when Marlow calls it a “cry.” It comes about as close as articulated speech can come to the primal cry…to present the horror as articulation of that wisdom lying in wait at the end of the tale, at journey’s end and life’s end, is to make a mockery of storytelling and ethics.
Marlow seems to realize this when he cannot repeat Kurtz’s last words to the Intended, but must rather cover them up by a conventional ending…”The last word he pronounced was your name.” (Brooks, 250) a. The cry leaves so many questions unanswered. Is the horror within Kurtz or without? Is it experience or reaction to experience? Is it minimal language, language on the verge of reversion to savagery? What stands at the heart of darkness at journey’s end and at the core of this tale is unsayable, extralinguistic.
(Brooks, 251). b. Language is a system of police, incorporated with polic, language forms the basis of social organization as a system of distinction and restraint, which polices individuality by making it part of a transindividual, intersubjective system: what we call society.
1) “He (Kurtz) had kicked himself loose of the earth.” (HD,
107) suggests that Kurtz has removed himself from the social realm
2) Language as a system of social communication, and transmission as the medium of official biographies and readable reports, has no place for the unspeakable; it is used rather to cover up the unnamable, to reweave the seamless web of signification. The cover up is accomplished by Marlow’s substituting “your name” the name of the Intended to ward off the threat of a fall from language.”
7. The novella is self conscious of the inadequacy of inherited orders of meaning. a. “Droll thing life is, that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.” (HD, 112) b. “Nothing remains, nothing but a memory.” (HD, 121)
1) This memory is false. The center doesn’t exist, anymore than ultimate meaning. Is Conrad trying to say that there is no ultimate meaning? or knowledge.
2) The very process of knowledge is brought into questions.
3) “No, it is impossible to convey life sensation of any given epoch’s of one’s existence.” (HD, 50) c. IF language cannot convey the ultimate truth then why does
Conrad bother writing the story, why does Marlow tell his tale? d . Language can never be the core, the heart of darkness, ti can only point to or gesture to the darkness .
Q. Why does the novella cut off after Marlow’s encounter with the Intended?
1. HD does not “end” it is potentially interminable analysis that simply breaks off. Meaning will never lie in the summing up but only in the transmission, in the passing on of the “horror.” Meaning is located in the interstices of story and frame, born of the relationship between tellers and listeners. (Brooks, 260)
WTII 12/1 Class Notes 14

WTII 12/1 Class Notes 15