The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there – there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were… No, they were not inhuman. 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 your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar”. Extract from “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad (Chapter 2, page 32).
In the above extract from Concord’s book, Marrow states that the Africans are indeed human. This is an interesting statement coming from a man employed by the Company, who are doing everything possible to exploit and even kill the Africans, to satisfy their Insatiable greed for Ivory. The slaughter and exploitation of these innocent people is all being done In the name of “colonization”, under the guise of civilizing and helping the people of the Congo. “The book is set in the Congo, at a time when the Congo Free State was a possession of the King of the Belgians, Leopold II.
Leopold spoke in the most exalted terms about civilizing the Africans, yet the exploitation, massacre and enslavement of the natives to worse with each year of his reign”. Extract taken from http:// . Plainspoken. Corn/banknotes/barons/hardheartedness. Asp Marrow is employed by the company as a river-boat Captain and through-out the book, remains horrified by the Europeans treatment of the Africans. Early on in the story, when Marrow first arrives at the Company’s Outer Station, he comes across a chain-gang, carrying stones up a hill.
He Is disgusted by this sight, not only because of the treatment of these people, but because he realizes that they are criminals In the eyes of the Europeans and because they have been punished according to a set f rules they could never hope to understand. He also comes across a group of Africans under a tree, too sick and too exhausted to work. “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. ” (Chapter 1, page 14).
They are left to die, no longer any use to their employers. He takes a bullet out of his pocket and gives It to one of the men. Here Marrow shows great humanity, in a place where there appears to be no feeling or other people whatsoever. The Outer Station is a place where Marrow can indeed view “the shackled form of a conquered monster”. Horrified by what he sees. But this time it is the sheer lack of values the men in the camp display. There is a total lack of organization and no work is being done. Something the West would frown upon. The Manager is a man Marrow takes an instant dislike to.
He says “He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. (Chapter 1, page 18). He describes the man as being “common trader”. (Chapter 1, page 18) He also meets a brick maker, who is unable to make any bricks because of some material that is required and that for some reason he is unable to lay his hands on. He is the man who the other agents suspect is a company spy. Marrow describes him as “this paper- much© Mephistopheles” (Chapter 1, page 23).
This is meant to convey Marrows belief that the man is of little or no substance. It is these people that he meets and these first horrors that he witnesses, that makes Marrow realize that all is not as it seems. Marrow is a man of values. He believes in Nor and he hates lies. He believes that when a lie is told “there is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what want to forget” (Chapter 1, page 23). This may well be the reason he so dislikes the Manager and the brick maker.
He feels, quite rightly, that they both lack values. Ere word reconcile means “to make compatible; to make contentedly submissive to something disagreeable or unwelcome” – The Concise Oxford Dictionary,1990. Yet Marrow, I think, does very little to reconcile the West with Africa. Although he often displays feelings of horror and disgust at the behavior of the Europeans around him, towards the Africans, he does very little to change things. Instead he seems more concerned with keeping himself sane, as though he knows he will be home soon, and therefore he does not have to worry.
Even so, he does sometimes, show benevolence to others, such as when he gives the dying man a biscuit, but again, no real effort is made to help anyone. “hen he finally leaves the Central Station, on a supposed mercy mission to save Kurt (a central figure in the story and a man of great importance), there are several instances where his reaction to a situation can be seen as ambivalent. The Africans they meet along the way break into greeting on the banks of the river. Marrow says ‘they howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces” (Chapter 2, page 32).
He goes on to say “Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you Mould admit to yourself that there was in you Just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise” (Chapter 2, page 32). I think he discovers within himself a feeling of ‘savagery, something within himself that makes him want to let go. He values restraint though, as he does work and says Mimi wonder I didn’t go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no-I didn’t. Fine sentiments you say? Fine sentiments be hanged! I had no time. ” (Chapter 2, page 32) boiler.
These people are cannibals and Marrow seems to accept this quite easily. The cannibals bring a lump of rotten hippo meat with them on the voyage and when the pilgrims throw it overboard because of the stench, “Pooh! I can smell it now’ (Chapter , page 31), the cannibals are left with nothing to eat. Nothing but “a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender color, they kept wrapped in leaves” (Chapter 2, page 37). Marrow is respectful of the obvious restraint the cannibals show, but he is not concerned enough about their welfare to make a stop for them to get meat.
The Company pays the cannibals in wire and beads and they are meant to buy food for themselves from the villagers on the river bank. Yet the boat never stops for them. Everyone else on board has plenty of tinned food of course. As the party draws nearer to Quartz’s station, they are attacked by a tribe of wild looking Africans, who are using bows, arrows and spears. The pilgrims on board the lessee open fire with guns and are very proud of each other afterwards because they think they have killed a vast number of their attackers.
One of the pilgrims says “Say! Nee must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? ” (Chapter 2, page 47). Marrow remarks on their poor marksmanship though, saying ” I had seen, from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the shots had gone o high” (Chapter 2, page 47), but never shows any concern for the Africans who may have died. Their attackers however, have managed to kill the helmsman with a large spear and Marrow expresses an almost childlike dismay that his hardworking helmsman has been killed.
He says “l missed my late helmsman awfully-I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot house” (Chapter 2, page 46). He commits the body of the helmsman to the river, something the pilgrims find disgraceful. It seems the cannibals would most likely have eaten him otherwise and Marrow felt that was going too far. He says “l had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him. ” (Chapter 2, page 47). It is alright to accept their beliefs and customs, but not to actually go as far as feeding them.
Nat Marrow discovers when he meets Kurt, is that the man is in fact evil personified. He has turned a tribe of Africans into his own personal army and will stop at nothing to get his hands on the ivory that the Company pays him for. So once again nothing is as it seems. Kurt has been described as “an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and the devil knows what else. ” (Chapter 1, page 22). Yet here the man is, albeit on his death bed, and he turns out to be a monster of the worst kind.
When Marrow first arrives at Quartz’s station, he sees what he thinks are decorations on top of six fence poles. In fact these are human heads and this both astonishes Marrow and gives us a greater insight into the darkness of Mr. Kurt. As Marrow says “These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic;” “They would have been even more impressive, those heads on stakes, if their faces had not been runner to the house. ” (Chapter 3, page 52). Kurt has done nothing to bring about Civilization and nothing to help the people of the district. He has simply used them madness.
When Kurt dies, he makes the decision for the second time in the book, to lie for Kurt and protect him from his employers. He withholds certain documents that the Company feels are valuable and only hands over the stash of ivory, before turning his back on Africa and returning home to Europe. It is in the final scene that Marrow tells his third lie and it is such an outright lie, that How know it must have cost him dearly. He decides that in order to lay his mind at rest, he must visit Quartz’s fiance© and return a parcel of papers and a portrait to the girl in question.
The fiance© wants to know what Quartz’s final words were and instead of telling her that his final words were “The horror! The horror! ” (Chapter 3, page 64), Marrow, instead tells her that Kurt uttered her name. Nat he does in the final scene of the story, is Marrows defining moment. It is in the final moments of the book that I realizes that Marrow is perhaps more compassionate Han he has been given credit for and that his compassion lies within reach of all those he comes into contact with.
Although Marrow may well have felt twinges of compassion for the Africans, he couldn’t really be expected to speak out against the atrocities he witnessed, since he too was dependent on the company. In the same sense, he felt that even though Kurt had turned out to be a man with a dark soul, his fiance© could not really be expected to live with that truth, as her final memory of the man she loved.
