Heart of Darkness Part 2

Rapert/AP Lit

Significant Events/analysis

• Overheard conversation between manager and manager’s uncle: fervent hope that Kurtz is destroyed by wilderness-he is competition

• Manager tasked with returning Kurtz, but keeps obstructing

• “Anything can be done in this country” Uncle= Euros can do ANYTHING here-no checks on power

– Marlow=emphasizes w/fear—what does man become when there are “no external checks”?

– “…lurking death, profound darkness””=is it heart of land or man?

Significant Events/analysis

• Journey down Congo– “travelling back to earliest beginnings of the

world”/ penetrating unknown and untouched (by “civilized man” wilderness/overwhelming silence, size, “brooding” nature= “we were accustomed to look upon the form of a shackled monster, but there…monstrous and free”/timeless and eternal

– Man is tiny/ “a sluggish bug between the walls of trees”

• M is appalled, awe struck, entranced, terrified, fascinated– Kurtz is “it had taken him, loved him, embraced

him…consumed him… [he was] its spoiled and pampered favorite”

Significant Events/analysis

• Cries of natives/sightings– Inhuman to some…to M disturbingly haunting,

awakened an ancient and instinctive kinship. • Longs to join—whites are terrified• Finds TRUTH in cries—the varnish of civilization is thin

• Cannibals– Possess restraint, inborn strength– M has great respect– Dead hippo symbolizes wilderness (whites deny

but can’t escape it)

Significant Events/analysis

• Fog and Attack– Fog = moral and intellectual confusion—

note men are DEAF and BLIND– Attacked from forest-to keep them away

• Arrows vs guns randomly shot• Note: helmsman is “improved” African-

civilized, thus killed by spear. Blood on whites who “improved” him

– Marlow immediately rids self of blood (responsibility) in “merry dance of death and trade”

Significant Events/analysis• The Report

– “Burning noble words” of idealistic motives to enlighten

– Eloquent expression of man’s highest capacity– Whites must be as gods to blacks

• Kurtz in forest’s “utter solitude”– “Exterminate all the brutes”– Kurtz sets himself up as a god among the natives– Isolation and lack of restraint leads him to

become “highest devil” presiding over “unspeakable rites”

– Note: similarity to Lucifer (highest angel…desire to be god)

Significant Events/analysis

• Comparison– Euros have butcher and police

• Shield us from horrors of real life• Do our dirty work• Protect us from ourselves and our base desires

– Kurtz had only solitude• All Europe made Kurtz, therefore does he

represent us?

Significant Events/analysis

• Russian– Harlequin means demon or clown– Smiles/frowns. He is nervous.– Terrified and worshipful towards Kurtz

• K enlightened him

• Marlow– Disgusted by Kurtz yet transfixed by him