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Heart Of Darkness Rhetorical Analysis

Decent Essays

Passage A’s commencement with the conjunction ‘and’ makes readers aware of the eternal presence of the Thames River that transcends even the limits of time, claiming men as inescapable victim, thus exposing the pettiness of men amid the overpowering presence of nature. The anonymous narrator alludes to famous explorers, some “whom the nation is proud” of, some akin to “Sir John Franklin”, who instilled fear on the ocean, yet the repetition of the preposition “from” before the different origins, undermines the distinction between those who are deemed of noble cause, and those deemed as corrupt, and denouncing these labels as man-made constructs that nature looks upon indifferently, while giving prominence to the places themselves. This belittling …show more content…

Throughout the novel, Kurtz’s voice has been the sole manifestation of project, however, the sentence “a cry that was no more than a breath” signals the crumbling of this ideology, whereby what was once a loud and prominent voice is merely a whimpering inaudible voice that has no life to it. Marlow’s awkward incomplete sentence “Mistah-Kurtz-he dead”, in itself is analogous with the character of Kurtz, one that is also devoid of any action or doing, but a being that finds expression solely in the form of a voice that is implanted in people’s minds. After Kurtz has died, Marlow refers to him only ambiguously with the objectified pronoun “something” that is being buried in a muddy hole”, thus lacking any indication of having ever been acquainted with Kurtz as a human, and rendering him a lifeless vessel that without a voice serves no ulterior purpose. Kurtz disturbing cry “The horror! The horror!” is a moment of supreme enlightenment, having come to understand the nature of the deeds he has committed in true perspective, with “horror” directly referencing the to the blind ideology, this noble idea that has misguided them to evil and darkness with the empty promise of good intent. This moment denotes the complete knowledge that has overcome Kurtz and enabled him to realise that the colonial project was really in fact a project of exploitation with illusions of hope and understanding that was undertaken under the guise of

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