Conrad degrades
the natives throughout the novel, although when Marlow
first arrives in this "jungle," Conrad does not show how
Marlow sees the inhumanity of these natives. Marlow as he walks up the hill to
a "hut" where the accountant is, Marlow moves to the shade where he
finds sick natives. Out of a show of compassion he gives a biscuit to one of
them, showing how at first he does not see them as inhuman or unearthly. As the
novel develops, though, one sees how Conrad illustrates Marlow's
change in view of these natives. The station workers showed immoral
treatment of these natives changing Marlow's view because of the way
they illustrate these people to be inhuman and unearthly. Conrad
continues to shape Marlow's views to the opposite of what it was before, but
not to the degree of many of the other English and Frenchmen in this
jungle.
Conrad
characterizes these natives by describing their actions. He has Marlow explain
the howling and inhuman noises these natives make.
The rudimentary weapons they use also cause these natives to seem
more inhuman and unearthly to the visitors because they are used to
their firearms. The drums they play, the pounding of their feet, and looks with
"rags covering their loins" again make them seem inhuman and
unearthly. Conrad creates this sense to show the darkness of this area around
the river, but the "darkness" itself is never defined.
There is darkness on both ends; the imperialist Europeans taking advantage of the natives for their own profit and the beastliness of the natives. You say the “darkness” is undefined, and I believe this was intentional; Conrad wants the reader to personally decide who was "darker" or truly dark, or all human darkness is equally negative. This book, as many, wants to push our moral limits and question them. We must remember, too, that this was spoken by a European sailor; his degrading view of the natives shows his growing ethnocentricity as the story progressed. Many of the story’s themes lie in Marlow’s struggle to understand this darkness in the natives and Europeans.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that, after a handful of months in that environment, Marlow degraded from wanting to help the natives with offerings of food to considering them as savages and cannibals and as primitive humans is a sign of bigotry masked in objectivity. Marlow himself was not a bad person as can maybe be perceived by Conrad's writing, but rather he was desensitized to the hardships of the life of a native African in the "jungle."
ReplyDeleteI agree with you when you say that Marlow’s behavior is a sing of bigotry and that his lack of emotion, as Molly Lydick had called it at one point, is proof of his desensitizing towards the harm of the natives. Marlow can’t see the humanity in these people but part of humanity is understand physical conditions. By becoming desensitized it shows that the jungle is making Marlow lose his humanity himself. His soul becomes dark with disregard for the people. The center of the wild and the greed there, had brought out the a Darkness in the hearts of all of those who filled the area.
ReplyDeleteAs suggested by Marlow's perceptual transformation, the company's demand for ivory drives an omni-essence of darkness, inducing wickedness into the kind. Can someone ever be sufficiently steadfast to resist insuperable environmental pressures? Humans naturally have both sympathetic and vengeful tendencies. Societal pressures to conform may ultimately take the upper-hand in this balancing act between intrinsic motives and tempted attitudes, but to what extent can one's moral position withstand external forces? Remember, we are nearly equally wicked as we are morally secure, it is opportunity and external pressures that ultimately expose specific levels of each persona.
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