In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the narrator is obsessed with finding the meaning of everything he sees. Marlow, immersed in a new continent, is overwhelmed by its foreignness and his inability to understand his environment. The meaning he seeks he expects to find in the explanations and tries to tell it with his words, but he and the other characters in the story are often deceived by the words or unable to understand them. Marlow's story shows how words and meaning are divorced, even opposed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayHeart of Darkness is told primarily in the first person, by the character Charlie Marlow, and is filtered through point of view from a third anonymous person. listener. Marlow only gradually understands his experiences, and although he tells his story, he sometimes struggles to explain the significance of what happened. According to the narrator, a sailor on land “generally…finds [the continent’s] secret not worth knowing.” The sailors' stories have a direct simplicity…Marlow was not typical…for him the meaning of an episode was not within as a core but outside” (7). The meaning of its history will then be as difficult to grasp as a “misty halo” (7). His story has no moral, no enlightening clarity; it begins with the mention of “one of the dark places on earth” (6) and ends with “it would have been too dark” (131). It starts at sunset and ends at night. The "heart of darkness" usually refers to the darkness of the human heart, or the heart of "darkest Africa", or even the secret of evil, but it also refers to the darkness of incomprehension and ignorance. Just like the Romans in Britain, "men go about it blind - which is quite appropriate for those who attack darkness" (9), like Europeans in Africa, are enveloped in darkness, Marlow's story is too. Marlow searches for intelligibility, but discovers a mess of mystery, deception, and futility both in the continent itself and in the men who work there. Africa is a great mystery; observing one’s ribs “is like thinking about a riddle” (19); the natives are “hidden somewhere, out of sight” (21); the flea captain tells Marlow that an unnamed Swede hanged himself, "who knows" (23) why. Marlow's efforts to understand the situation by talking to his companions are in vain. The station manager's defining characteristic is his inscrutability: "it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never revealed this secret" (35). The other man Marlow speaks to is a spy who avoids ordering the rivets needed to repair the steamboat and save the ailing Kurtz; this spy wants to let Kurtz die so he can't become the manager. Even the initial wreck of the steamboat is “too stupid…to be entirely natural” (33). Marlow only gets bits of the truth and must discover the rest himself. The atmosphere of the camp is one of petty deception that infects even Marlow, who, although he "hates, loathes, and cannot stand lies" (44), allows the spy to believe that he is a person. of great influence. Besides this sheer deception, there is another side of Marlow's unsympathetic camp: uselessness. The pilgrims wait, perhaps, for Kurtz's death, "although the only thing that happened to them was illness" (39). A man on a grass path "takes care of the maintenance of the road" (32), although Marlow "cannot say that he hasseen a road or an interview” (32). Condemns mine with “pointless shots” (24) and digs holes “the aim of which [Marlow] could not guess” (25). Marlow's love of meaning and truth explains his desire to leave the camp and hear Kurtz. “The man presented himself as a voice…of all his gifts, the one that stood out…was his ability to speak” (79). Kurtz's speech is the support for all his ideas and meanings; his disciple, the Russian, "talks everything [with Kurtz]... he made [the Russian] see things - things" (93) - no indication of what kind of things. Kurtz has "high feelings" ( 116), “ideas” (116), “huge projects” (111), but we only have a glimpse of them in his report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, which reveals nothing of more concrete than "we can exercise virtually unlimited power for good" (84). Kurtz's attachment to his ideas becomes slightly ridiculous, given that he has moved away from them and we have little conception of what But whatever Kurtz's ideas are, they are important. Kurtz "would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party... any party" (123). importance; "he lacked something...that could not be found beneath his magnificent eloquence" (97-8); he is "hollow at heart" (98) and can work for African ideals as well; than Europeans, just as he can write a report praising the “august benevolence” (84) of European domination. on Africa and write "exterminate all the brutes!" (84) at the bottom. Marlow describes the conquest of land as "taking it away from those of a different complexion" (9), something redeemed by an "idea alone...something you can set up, bow down to, and offer a sacrifice. to » (9). The formulation at the end of Marlow's sentence, treating an idea as a divinity, recalls Kurtz, whose example shows the emptiness of the bare idea and its inordinate power. This contrast between content and meaning is not limited to the person of Kurtz. Marlow is required to sign an agreement before he leaves, promising “not to divulge any trade secrets” (15). “I don't give away any trade secrets” (97), he promises, describing the shrunken heads that surround Mr. Kurtz's house, showing how little his factual and completely uninteresting trade secrets have in common with Kurtz's secrets , which involve but go much further than commerce. Similarly, a book called An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship that Marlow finds in an empty cabin is "unquestionably real" (63) to him, and his relationship with it resembles "an old and strong friendship" (63), in because of its concrete content. , banal “discourse on chains and purchases” (63). The author is "simple" (63), not an eloquent Kurtz, but the book contains more information because of that. What interests Marlow most about the book, however, are the marginalia, which appear to be ciphered, and transform the tome into an “extravagant mystery” (63). Marlow is more concerned with the context of this mysterious book, a relic of English civilization in the middle of Africa and containing strange inscriptions, than with the text, which is "not... very exciting" (63). The simple, literal meaning of the book is overshadowed by its possible meanings. When Marlow learns that the "cipher" is actually Russian, because the owner of the book, who accidentally left the work behind, is Russian, we are slightly disappointed. A solved mystery is much less atmospheric than an unsolved mystery; the more you know, the more possible meanings are cut off. Marlow is aware that his understanding is incomplete; he can't really hope to understand Kurtz or the foreign culture around him, themystery of the jungle, because that would mean becoming part of it, as Kurtz did. Lines of incomprehension clearly divide the two worlds. The fireman on Marlow's steamboat keeps the boiler full of water, "and what he knew was that if the water in this transparent thing disappeared, the evil spirit inside the boiler would would become angry because of the greatness of his thirst and would take terrible revenge” (61) The native is able to use the boiler, but his ideas about how it works are mired in his own culture, as are the boilers. the Europeans can exploit the natives of Africa to take their ivory without understanding their culture The Africans whom Marlow sees "screaming," "jumping," and "turning" (59) "cursed us, prayed to us, welcomed us – who welcomed us." could say? (59). Marlow observing the Africans can, like those watching him repair a ship, "see only the mere spectacle, and can never tell what it really means" (47). environment is only accessible to him because of the common humanity he shares with the natives: "what excited you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours... there was in you... a vaguely suspect that there is some meaning in [the natives' cries] that you might understand” (60). Marlow never goes native, never "goes ashore for a howl and a dance" (60), and is thus saved from understanding the mystery. Kurtz is the only one among Europeans who understands Africa. He can control the natives and speak their language, can “tell them what is necessary” (100) to prevent them from attacking, while even the Russian, Kurtz’s disciple, “does not understand the dialect of [that] ". ] tribe" (104). Where Marlow sees mystery, Kurtz understands his surroundings; as they watch a native ritual, Marlow asks Kurtz if he understands it; Kurtz smiles and replies, "don't you ?' (114). “a vision” (118). Marlow does not see and can only wonder: “did he relive his life… during this supreme moment of complete knowledge” (118). denied to Marlow, who thinks the reason may be that "all truth... [is] compressed into this... time during which we cross the threshold of the invisible" (120). , but the threshold crossed by Kurtz is also the one which separates Africa from Europe He cannot say anything on his deathbed because he made it Marlow's assumption about the moment of. truth is clarified by one's own contact with death; he would probably have "nothing to say" (119) if he were dead, no judgment or revelation like Kurtz's. Likewise, the helmsman killed by Kurtz's partisans "died without emitting a sound" (78), and in response to the meaning that we can draw from death, "as in response to some sign that we could not see, to some whisper that we could not see.” Listen, he frowned” (78). Kurtz is not the only one to have a vision when he dies, but he alone is capable of putting the pure truth into words, of putting together meaning and language, because he understands both the African mystery and the European language and possesses the powerful gift of eloquence.Keep in mind: this is just a sample.Get a custom paper now from our expert writers.Get a custom essayThis connection between language and meaning does not last ; Marlow doesn't have the strength to do it. Throughout his conversation with Kurtz's Intended, they constantly cut each other off, replacing each other's words with phrases that are true but that.