HEART OF DARKNESS - SUMMARY, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica HEART OF DARKNESS - SUMMARY e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! HEART OF DARKNESS PAGES 2-8 The novel starts with the representation of a quiet evening on the river Thames where a boat called Nelly is waiting for the tide. There are five people on board: the captain of the ship, a lawyer, an accountant, the narrator and Marlow. As the sun sets, the narrator thinks about the glorious men who had sailed along the Thames, while Marlow defines London as "one of the dark places of the earth". In this way, Marlow says that the British empire, in general, can be considered as the heart of darkness because Britain is the centre of Imperialism and because in the past it was the centre of the wilderness. Therefore Conrad, through Marlow's words, criticizes imperialism. However, through the expression "Heart of Darkness", Conrad could refer to the heart of wild people, who are free, but also to a general condition of the human soul, which is the presence of an evil part in people's hearts. In this way, Conrad, who has understood how the unconscious works, shows that people think that they are good, but it isn't true. At the very beginning, we don't see Marlow physically but we hear only what he says, so he is only a voice. However, there is a description of what kind of man he is: he is a seaman but also a wanderer, while most seamen lead a sedentary life. So he is atypical. The other seamen don't really travel because they are superficial about lands they go to, while Marlow really wants to explore. His journey is a metaphorical one: it is a journey of exploration, of discovering. For this aspect, Heart of Darkness can be linked to The Canterbury Tales and the representation given by Dante of Ulysses’ figure, who wants to discover. For these reasons when we talk about Marlow, we can talk about the Quest, i.e. the search for the sacred, the mystery and the knowledge. According to this, Marlow wants to discover himself. Marlow speaks about ancient times when the Romans conquered British territories and defines them as conquerors who were probably scared and at the same time fascinated by the wilderness of the local populations. In fact, for Romans, England was very far, the border of the Empire. Here the inhabitants were the Celts, who are savage and uncivilized. So the Romans found in them the wilderness, which is a very important theme associated with darkness in the novel. According to this point of view, the civilized men were the Romans and the uncivilized were the ancestors of the British people. So Conrad reverses the perspective of Jingoism. Then Conrad shows us that also when Britain became civilized, it wasn't very good because the explorers were bad people and there were people such as Francis Drake, who was a pirate. In addition, talking about the ancient populations and the Romans, Marlow anticipates what he would have found in Congo, and in particular, he anticipates Kurtz. In fact, Marlow talks about "the fascination of the abomination", which is strongly linked to Imperialism and the character of Kurtz. In this way, Conrad underlines that Imperialism spreads because of the fascination of wilderness and because people become intoxicated with power. Conrad understood that power aims to control other people's destiny, doing a very interesting psychological analysis of imperialism. For these reasons, lots of scholars define "Heart of Darkness" as the first novel so linked to Freud's psychoanalysis. PAGES 14-15 In this passage, Marlow arrives at the company office, in Brussels, and he meets the doctor. This company is a Belgian one dealing with ivory in Congo. Marlow obtains the job because the company needs a captain. In fact, the former captain died in Congo because he was trading for two hens with a tribe’s chief but they started to argue and the captain killed him. Therefore, the tribe’s chief’s son kills the captain for revenge. For these reasons, Conrad anticipates the theme of craziness: confronted with the wilderness, the former captain gets crazy. So there is the idea that “normal” people become wild, evil and crazy confronted with the wilderness. As a result, Conrad shows us that also good people have a dark side in their hearts, especially in certain situations. The office is described as a sanctuary because it contains secret information. In fact, Marlow is obliged to sign documents that are so important because the weapons used to trade are illegal. In the outer room, Marlow sees two women, who are the secretaries, who are knitting black wool. This image links the two secretaries to the Parcae, mythological creatures that knitted people’s lives. Like the Parcae, also the secretaries decide people’s lives because the ones who go to Congo are on the threshold to death or, if they don’t die, they will work with a company that commits atrocities. Coherently with what I said, Conrad defines them as the ones “guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cherry and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes” and then he uses the expression “MORITURI TE SALUTANT” which is a common Latin expression used by roman gladiators before the battle when they are close to death. In this passage, the wool knitted by the secretaries is black. So the colour black is associated with both London and Belgium and thus with Imperialism because black represents the negative aspects of imperialism such as evil and death (and then also the victims of imperialism → see next passage). ON THE BOOK: PAGES 223-224 (IN THE WHOLE NOVEL PAGES 22-26) The first time that Marlow goes to Congo, he arrives at the company station where he sees natives at work. In this passage, we understand the conditions of these natives who are slaves who work for long hours under the sun. When Marlow passes in front of them, they don’t notice him. For this, Marlow uses the expression “deathlike indifference” because they feel indifference towards life. This is due to the fact that they have lost all their expectations for the future. They are suffering, they are abandoned to life. From this description, we understand that they don’t belong to the world anymore, now they are more similar to ghosts, bodies left to death, mere objects “in the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair”. Marlow, who represents Conrad’s attitude, says that “these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies” and then he adds that “they were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now - nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom”. So for the first time, the symbolism of black and white has a different meaning because here black symbolizes the victims, so it has a positive connotation, while white symbolizes evil because, in such an exhausting situation for the natives, there is “a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity”. PAGES 95-98 Once in Congo, Marlow has to look for Mr Kurtz, the most brilliant company agent that is now lost in the jungle. In this passage, he arrives in the place where he lives. In the house, Marlow doesn’t see any “signs of life” but he sees round knobs, which are the heads of Kurtz’s enemies, so rebels not for the company but only for Kurtz. When Marlow sees them, he isn’t shocked because he is used to violence and horror (cfr. last monologue of Macbeth). Marlow understands that “these round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing - food for thought” so they make you think about Kurtz’s attitude. In fact, the heads look to the house so they are not meant to scare people but they symbolize a reminder of Kurtz’s power for himself. Coherently with what I said, Conrad, through Marlow’s words, says that these heads “only showed that Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts (...) some small matter which, when the pressing need