How does Marlow get his job?
With the help of his aunt in Brussels, Marlow gets a job as a boat captain on the river with a Dutch trading company that deals in ivory. When Marlow arrives at the mouth of the Congo, a Swedish captain takes him to the company’s Inner Station on a smaller boat.
How does the writer depict Africa in Heart of Darkness?
Throughout Heart of Darkness Conrad uses images of darkness to represent Africa. To Conrad, Africa is the very representation of darkness. Marlow often uses the phrase, “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” (Conrad 68), to describe his progress on the Congo.
Is Heart of Darkness a racist text?
Chinua Achebe’s influential 1977 essay on the book describes it as “bloody racist”. This is the debate which continues today – was Conrad deliberately depicting the racist views of 1899 with a view to undermining them, or was he complicit in the racism? The answer is, quite possibly, both.
Who are the cannibals in Heart of Darkness?
Conrad’s natives are of two types: they are an indistinct black mass, or they are cannibals. On arrival at the Outer Station Marlow describes seeing ‘black shapes’.
What does Marlow represent in Heart of Darkness?
Marlow’s Role: Representing European Men Within the text of Heart of Darkness, Marlow finds himself commissioned to Africa as a steamboat captain.
What is the point of Heart of Darkness?
Here, “heart of darkness” is a shorthand for European stereotypes of Africa, which Conrad’s novel did its part to reinforce. Hamid’s line plays on racist anxieties about immigration: the idea that certain places and peoples are primitive, exotic, dangerous.
What do the cannibals represent to Marlow?
They work on the boat with Marlow as the boat moves towards the inner station. The cannibals exemplify the power of restraint. Marlow wonders why these men do not eat him, because they have not eaten anything but rotting hippo meat in months.
What is the meaning of Kurtz?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Kurtz or Kurz is a surname first found in Switzerland. It is mainly a German and Jewish (Ashkenazic/Yiddish) surname, meaning someone who is short in height. It comes from the German word ‘kurz’ meaning ‘short’.
What is the symbolism of darkness?
Darkness can encompass a primitive chaos, and the powers of that chaos; it is not essentially evil, yet it is largely associated with death and destruction, captivity and spiritual darkness. The gloom which preceded the Fiat Lux traditionally represents the states that give rise to chaos.
What is Kurtz’s nationality?
British people
Who wrote Heart of Darkness?
Joseph Conrad
What is the river in Heart of Darkness?
River Thames
How does Marlow describe the Congo?
Marlow describes a map image of the Congo River in Africa as being like a snake (p6) and himself as a “silly little bird.” What snake-like qualities does this reference transfer to the River, and how does the transference set us up for the rest of the novel’s events?
What is a story inside a story called?
A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes called nested stories.
Why is Marlow an unreliable narrator?
He has limited interaction with the natives and does not express their views. Marlow is a competent narrator but only for himself. His accounts do not reflect the experiences and perspectives of the other people he talks about such as the villagers of the communities he visited or the colonial communities in Africa.
What is the company in Heart of Darkness?
Marlow’s story begins in what he calls the “sepulchral city,” somewhere in Europe. There “the Company”—an unnamed organization running a colonial enterprise in the Belgian Congo—appoints him captain of a river steamer. He sets out for Africa optimistic of what he will find.
What is madness like in Heart of Darkness?
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a novel about the human psyche. It is as concerned with man’s ability to descend into madness as it is with his ability to break away from it and triumph over the dark, consuming impulses that threaten to consume his heart and mind.