Verbal Expectence In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

An interpretation of Marlow's changing feelings towards Kurtz is that he ends up being disgusted and

The protagonist Marlow believes that: “the mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future” (109). The basis of Heart of Darkness is Marlow's physical journey up the congo river to meet Kurtz. The main character Marlow goes through many physical and psycological changes from the beginning to the end of the story. In the beginning, Marlow is fairly innocent as he goes up the river, he gets closer and closer to Kurtz, and he moves closer and closer he learns more and more about the hearts of men and the darkness. When he eventually reaches Kurtz, Marlow's perception is obstructed and he physically and psychologically, does not know where he is.

Both Kingsolver and Conrad use similar story construction and point of view in these texts. The truly pivotal characters in each text, rather than the narrators, are the mostly unspoken antagonists of the story. In Heart of Darkness, the story is centered on Kurtz and his actions involving the Congo. The true focus of the novella lies not with Marlow, but rather Conrad uses Marlow as a medium in order to examine Kurtz. In the novella, Marlow is an outside observer. The story follows Marlow’s ever-changing perception of Kurtz in order to characterize the unseen character. When Marlow first learns of Kurtz, he is told that he is “a remarkable person…a prodigy” (Conrad 69), but as the story progresses, both Marlow and the reader delve into Kurtz’s true character and discover a tyrant of imperialism.

At the beginning of Marlow’s journey his aggressively states he hate of liars and hypocrites, yet at the end Marlow lies to Mr. Kurtz fiancé, “But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark- too dark altogether… (Page 72).” The journey changed this aspect of Marlow’s personality. As Marlow faces the horrors of the Congo River he learns that some lies are necessary to spare others. In How To Read Literature Like a Professor, the author Thomas C. Foster states, “Okay so here’s the general rule: whether it’s Italy or Greece or Africa or Malaysia or Vietnam, when writers send characters south, its so they can run amok… if we’re being generous, that they can run amok because they are having direct, raw encounters with the subconscious (Foster, 179).” As Marlow travels down the Congo River he continues to here about Mr. Kurtz and he begins to relate himself to Kurtz. As Marlow’s journey continues he begins to realize that Kurtz is crazy. As marlow begins to realize that As that happens Marlow begins to connect himself to Mr. Kurtz but as he continues to relate to Kurtz he begins to realize hat Kurtz is not the man Marlow believed him to be. This realization of how Mr. Kurtz is subconsciously hurts Marlow because Marlow saw himself and Kurtz as kindred spirits and no that Marlow sees that Kurtz is a horrible person

Kurtz’s lack of restraint and hunger for ivory consumes not only his soul but drains all of his physical existence. Upon seeing him, Marlow states, “I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving (126)”. Conrad focuses on the physical features of Kurtz to display the madness that has consumed him. However, though Kurtz’s body is deteriorating, Kurtz’s mind continues to thrive. Conrad shows this in Marlow’s shock of witnessing a flame of passion that remains in Kurtz’s eyes as he converses without signs of exhaustion (126). Conrad continues to describe Kurtz as a shadow composed of tranquility and satisfaction. Conrad’s incorporation of this detail signifies the evil and greed that consumes Kurtz and is reflected through his physique. However, the power of Kurtz’s presence is personified through the action of his words. As the strength in his voice captures Marlow’s attention, it merely reflects his influence upon his followers. The power reflected through his voice displayed his confidence as well as his position as a leader for the natives. Hi demeanor displays an air of arrogance that makes others feel less equal to him. Those who follow him fear him, but also continue to respect him.

    Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is full of oppositions.  The most obvious is the juxtaposition of darkness and light, which are both present from the very beginning, in imagery and in metaphor.  The novella is a puzzling mixture of anti-imperialism and racism, civilization and savagery, idealism and nihilism.  How can they be reconciled?  The final scene, in which Marlow confronts Kurtz's Intended, might be expected to provide resolution.  However, it seems, instead, merely to focus the dilemmas in the book, rather than solving them.

     Each character has a special role in the novel; Kurtz and Marlow are the most important, through these two characters we are able to see how good and evil balance each other out. Marlow?s journey into the heart of darkness can also be seen as a journey into his own soul. He was in search of the darkest of objects, the ivory. Unlike Kurtz, Marlow was able to withstand the darkness from controlling him. Kurtz soul became the darkness and caused him to forget everything else there was to life. His last words were not that of love but rather of hate, ?The horrors the horrors.?

"Restraint! I would have just as soon expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battle," comments Marlow as he questions why the hungry cannibals aboard his steamer hadn't gone for the white crew members (Conrad 43). "The glimpse of the steamboat . . . filled those savages with unrestrained grief," Marlow explains after recalling the cries of the natives seeing the steamer amidst a brief fog lift (Conrad 44). "Poor fool! He had no restraint, no restraint . . .a tree swayed by the wind," speaks Marlow of a slain helmsman amidst an attack by tribal savages (Conrad 52). "Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts," says Marlow a few moments after he tells of his first glimpse of

     The film also depicts the character of Kurtz in a very different light. Conrad builds up the appearance of Kurtz so much that his first scene is intentionally anti-climactic. He is discovered to be an ailing, elderly gentlemen, malnourished and on the verge of death. Marlow himself is simultaneously impressed with and disappointed by Kurtz. He enjoys listening to the old man’s philosophies, but he is let down by Kurtz’s lack of realistic thinking. He has clearly lost his mind, and with it, some of his credibility and mysticism.

The constant change in scenery throughout the Heart of Darkness contributes heavily to the meaning of the novel as a whole, for it allows the novel’s author, Joseph Conrad, to expand on the effects the physical journey of travelling through the Congo has on the inner mentailites of the characters- Marlow and Kurtz- in the novel. Conrad’s continuous comparisons between characters, their surroundings, and the plot, create the genuine progression of the novel, while the physical journey that is taken allows the characters to make their own discovery of humankind. As Kurtz’s destiny and the struggles he overcomes go on to deeply affect the two characters’ journey through the story’s plot, as everything in the Heart of Darkness is linked or comes back to Kurtz and all the wrongful actions he has committed in the Congo- as he was the perpetrator of all the darkness in the novel to begin with.

Kurtz, more than anyone, was a signal of human potential to Marlow, the 'universal genius', the 'extraordinary man' found the limits of his potential much more easily in his isolation: "Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear - concentrated, it is true, upon himself with a horrible intensity, yet clear..."(Conrad 65). Kurtz's abilities had nothing to work on

Conrad opens Heart of Darkness showing the narrator listening to Marlow as they wait for the tide to come back up on the Thames as the sun sets on the clear sky. By the time Marlow finishes his story, there are black clouds as the tide rises, suggesting rain to soon fall on the crewmates, representing how Marlow’s story shows how Marlow himself has changed in his story about living on the water. In the beginning of his story, Marlow was completely against lying, but after his time on the Congo River, Marlow eventually lies to Kurtz’s Intended in the end because the Intended represents civilization, and while it may seem as if Marlow is lying to spare her feelings, he actually lies because he cannot deal with the idea that civilization will fall even if it is based on evil

In the book Heart of Darkness, a story within a story is being told. The character, Marlow, is telling the story of Kurtz to legitimize his role in the events that are taking place. A downside to this approach is that the reader only hears rumors and accounts about this mysterious figure, Kurtz, before actually meeting him. Kurtz remains an unknown and enigmatic character in Marlow's mind.

As Kurtz’s title grows, he is able to work his way into the natives’ minds. He becomes their leader, even though he is an outsider. Little does Marlow know, Kurtz’s corruptness and his imperialistic and colonialist efforts to rule the African land would become his demise. In the end, Marlow understands that Kurtz is not all he is made out to be, and finds that his practices are harsher than necessary as he reads in Kurtz’s book his plans to “Exterminate all the brutes!” (50). Kurtz is referring to the natives he befriends and uses to his advantage. While Marlow and Kurtz move throughout the Congo as foreigners of a “First World” country, the Natives of the Congo are forces reconcile with Kurtz’s colonization and rule of their land and over their people. What Conrad presents in Heart of Darkness are the dangers of naiveté regarding “First World” practices of imperialism and colonialism, and then becoming aware, as Marlow gradually does, of their implications.

Marlow’s attempt at recreating his subjective past is met with unease on the part of the narrator and like a litmus paper he brings out the intellectual and emotional effect the author is seeking. When the effect has been so affirmed, the author proceeds to manipulate it. When, for example, we see Marlow’s desperation for having missed the chance to speak to Kurtz as absurd, Conrad makes the listeners sigh with the same reaction. Marlow reacts heatedly- “Why do you react in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? … This is the worst of trying to tell… Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another.” Pp 53 This chastisement by Conrad gets displaced from Marlow’s companions to the reader. Marlow is trying to prevent us from judging Kurtz and by doing so highlights his importance in the tale’s critical discourse.