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Heart Of Darkness

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The Man that is Partially Enlightened Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad explains the process and details of enlightenment. The novel is a retelling of the main character's journey into the depths of Africa and humanity. This symbolic journey begins on a boat in which he is the captain on a river in Africa. As Marlow’s crew move closer to the central Africa and the greatest employee of his company,Kurtz, he realizes the truth about humanity. Additionally, Marlow believes Kurtz is a wondrous man and he eventually encounters him. Soon after finding Kurtz, he dies and Charles must devise a way to explain this to Kurtz’s wife ,The Intended. At the end of the novel, Marlow lies to The Intended about the death her husband to protect her view of …show more content…

For example, Marlow’s reaction to Kurtz’s “Suppression of Savage Customs” : while reading the report, he was swept away by the sheer eloquence of Kurtz’s “beautiful piece of writing” (95). The “peroration,” especially, was magnificently persuasive:It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence - of words - of burning noble words” (95).(Skouen 2) Although elevated writing is often associated with greater knowledge or intelligence, it can be used to trick readers to be swayed without truly understand the meaning of the writing. As a result, to look at a piece of writing solely about how it is written is a fallacy of the reader and shows the lack of maturity Kurtz twists, these noble words, and tricks the foolish Marlow. His immaturity is further developed through Marlow’s ignorance on writing: the sole purpose of writing is to relay an idea, not to focus on the language, which Marlow forgets as he lets the eloquence of the writing sway his better judgment. However, Marlow does not always remain ignorant; he develops his viewpoints by truly digging deeper into writing. This idea presents itself through, “The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous”.(Conrad 117). Unlike his earlier self, he no longer just views Kurtz’s paper as beautifully written instead he judges the meaning of the paper as ominous. Based on the previous statement, one can see that Marlow grows more mature and truly understands the heaviness of Kurtz’s inhumane

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