Marlow Shows Admiration for Kurtz - Essay Example

? There are many instances where Marlow shows admiration for Kurtz. This is not openly expressed save at one point in the story, but Conrad takes great pains to establish the character of Marlow as a lover of Truth and what is real. This love of truth and hate for a lie makes the untruth spoken by Marlow at the end of the story even more shocking. Marlow’s character is expressed early in the story as he contemplates the Roman citizen surveying the banks of the Thames. All he would have seen was darkness and savagery compared to mother Rome. Yet at the same time, Marlow says that the Roman would have a difficult time rejecting the barbarians of Britain outright. He says: He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate. This quote serves as pre-emptive explanation for why Marlow could not deny the power Kurtz held over other humans, despite his barbarity. Marlow then goes on to establish his love of reason and things that are real. In describing the appearance of several natives along the shore, Marlow relates: It was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks—these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. The love of the real and tangible, of work, effort and improvement are themes Conrad returns to again and again through Marlow. The character Marlow likes belonging to a world where things really are as they appear. He does not like intrigues, rumors, or deviousness. He likes steel plates and rivets, honest emotion and truthfulness. The honest work, the seat and effort of the natives was solace to Marlow as he was surrounded by plotting privateers. Marlow’s distain for intrigues and falsehood is embodied by the station manager. Of him, Marlow says: He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—nothing more. This character is so loathsome to Marlow that he doesn’t even inspire a single honest emotion. The manager is held in contempt in every way by Marlow. The only possible complement that can be said of the man is that he survives, but even that is not attributed to any sort of effort on his part. It is simply a result of his constitution. In fact, the whole of the station is repugnant to Marlow. He states: There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. The station was a mash of plots and intrigues that were so contrived as to never even come to any account. The inhabitants of the station held titles but acted in no manner to accomplish the work associated with the title given. Work, and the importance of it is mentioned by Marlow on several occasions in telling his story. This is important because it is a vital link between himself and Kurtz. Marlow reveals his feelings towards work when he stated: I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means. The Russian makes much of Kurtz and his efforts to extract ivory from the natives. Kurtz is shown to be a man of effort, industry and action. All of this resonates with Marlow, despite the fact that Kurtz employed such brutal and despicable means to gather the ivory. Even when he saw the display created by Kurtz and his minions of the heads mounted on staves, Marlow has to acknowledge the brutal honesty of Kurtz’s methods when he states: Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist—obviously—in the sunshine. Marlow at no time condones Kurtz, nor even shows affection for him. But he is not repulsed by him either. Their brief time together inspired Marlow to be loyal to Kurtz by delivering his personal affects to the woman waiting in Europe. She knew Kurtz in context of her culture and society, but Marlow was able to see into the darkness of Kurtz’s soul, where removal from earthly and cultural confines allowed him to follow the dictates of his own dark heart. He acknowledges the terror and greatness of Kurtz when he stated: And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head—though I had a very lively sense of that danger too—but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him—himself his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. By stating that he had kicked the earth to pieces, Marlow was saying that he had taken something that is within all of us, the resistance we have to restriction, to morals and codes of conduct, and demolished it. He had risen above morality and found nothing but darkness within himself. Finally, Marlow clearly states, at the end of the story: This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up—he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth—the strange commingling of desire and hate. By rising above the confines of society, Kurtz had become the truest form of himself. This is something that Marlow understood and could admire. Like the sweating natives paddling their canoes, it took honest effort, work to arrive at this condition. The tragedy of this for Kurtz lies in the fact that when all of the cultural coverings were stripped away all that was revealed was his dark heart. Even though, the honesty of this revelation was something Marlow admired. Read More