Heart of Darkness Page 14-20: Athena, Maria, Jennifer
Storyboard Text
- Marlow ponders and gains perspective
- Marlow's ship sinks
- your ship sank
- Marlow meets the manager.
- "It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot' (Conrad 15). Marlow is becoming less prejudiced as he sees the pointless, exploitative work that Europeans are doing in the Africa. In other words, he realizes the absurdity of the imperialist settlement around him.
- The native man is beat.
- Marlow is in the Central Station. An “excitable chap with black moustaches” informs Marlow that his steamer sank to the bottom of the river. He thinks of it as a “confounded nuisance.”
- Marlow talks to the manager's agent
- He says his smile was like he was hiding a secret. “He sealed the utterance with that smile of his as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping” (16). This hints at will most likely happen to the Congolese. The manager smiles as if he thinks what he and his Company are doing is right. They think they are going to civilize the natives; in reality, they want to make money off of what they are taking from the Africans. He makes Marlow feel uneasy.
- Marlow thinks about Kurtz
- Who is Kurtz??
- The fields catch on fire as “a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads…burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash” (17). A native man gets accused of starting the fire and is beat up badly.
- The manager’s agent talks to Marlow and wants him to extract any useful information from him but Marlow only talks about his boat. The agent gets “angry [but] to conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he yawns” (19). A little after, the agent continues to rant to Marlow and he lets him talk.
- yawn
- “[Kurtz] was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt” (20). Marlow realizes the absurdity of imperialism in the Congo - so much so that he cannot even convey it in his story to his shipmates on the Nellie. Although he first arrives in the Congo with great aspirations, these are dampened as he notices the pointless work that Europeans are doing there. Once blinded by prejudice, Marlow is now aware that the “pinnacle of civilization” is a facade and is, in actuality, meaningless and inefficient.
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