Prompt 8

Conrad has Marlow carry a rather stereotypical sense of civilized arrogance with him. Referring to every other character, including Kurtz, as empty or "no idol" of his. He frequently describes characters as hollow, or specifically "paper-mache Mephistopheles  with "nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe." However, Marlow's description of one of the natives as "one of those creatures," when the native was crawling on all fours to give himself a drink, suggests that the character who would otherwise be considered the most sympathetic towards the natives still has a sense of superiority over these other humans. Marlow then goes on to call them "poor devils" and "savages." These descriptions that Conrad employs from the character removes all human qualities from the natives. Without human qualities, the audience cannot easily relate to them, making them all that more difficult to side with. This is a powerful tool any artist or author can use to ensure that the people they want seen as the villain or the inferior are seen as so. It is far easier to kill and enslave something that is seen as more of an animal than a human. It is far easier for Marlow to convince himself he is in the right and justify his own actions when he has convinced himself that the other characters are hollow and empty. This technique does not only apply to Marlow, Conrad's descriptions of how each character describes the others, reveals to the audience how that specific character sees them self compared to the other.