Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

1. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ENGL 203 Dr. Fike

2. Handout on Modernism • Be sure to read the handout I sent on Modernism. • Note: Heart Of Darkness is NOT stream of consciousness!

3. Modernism in HoD What principles of modernism are at work in Conrad’s novel? • Primitivism: • 1643/135: “‘Going up that river….” • 1645/137: “…we were traveling….” • 1655-56/147-78: “…how can you imagine….”

4. Another Principle of Modernism • The unconscious mind: • 1645/137: The collective unconscious (Jung): “The mind of man is capable of anything….” • 1638/130, top par.: Reference to dreams: “It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream….” • Dramatization of the psyche (Freud): • Superego: Europe • Ego: Marlow • Id: Africa • Points: • Marlow has to mediate between competing extremes. • The trip enacts this psychomachia, as well as a descent into the unconscious mind. • Experiences become more dream-like as the voyage progresses.

5. Ways of Responding to the Unconscious • Ignore darkness of the unconscious mind: • 1630/122: Accountant (oblivious) • 1633/125: Manager (hollow) • Be overcome by the unconscious mind: • 1673/165: “True, he had made that last stride….” • Be aware of it but resist it with the help of work: • 1673/165: “Since I had peeped over the edge myself….” • Melville, Moby Dick: “Look not too long into the fire, O man!”—but do look!

6. Conrad’s Inversion of Freud’s Triad Here is what one assumes: • Superego: Europe (self-restraint) • Ego: Marlow (attracted to both) • Id: Africa (barbarity)

7. Deconstruction • Key Characteristics: • Contradiction, not paradox • Separating a word from its referent • Conflating or reversing binary oppositions

8. Key Details • 1656/148: “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz….” • 1657/149: “He had no restraint….” • 1662-63/154-55: “…Mr. Kurtz’s methods had ruined the district.” • 1649/141: “Why in the name of all the gnawing devils….” What point emerges (next slide)?

9. Here’s the Point • Superego: Africa (self-restraint) • Ego: Marlow (attracted to both) • Id: Europe (barbarity) The primitive people are more self-restrained than the Europeans. Conrad’s novel deconstructs Freud’s triad.

10. Deconstruction = Contradiction • 1623/115: “whited sepulchre” (cf. Matthew 23:27); tombs should be dark • 1634/126: “faithless pilgrims”; pilgrims should have faith • Kurtz: tall guy with a name that means “short” • “He was just a word for me” (1638/130): signification is arbitrary. • Kurtz: German, short (1664/156). • “He looked at least seven feet long” (next line).

11. Setting and Narration • On a yawl in the Thames estuary (“interminable waterway,” 1618/110; “a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth,” 1619/111). • We have an accountant and a manager on the yacht in anticipation of the accountant and manager we meet later on. • Sense of human solidarity. • The narrator is one of Marlow’s listeners: “one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences” (1621/113). • Marlow looks yellow on 1618/110—cf. 1624/116: “I was going into the yellow” (on a map).

12. Question • What details suggest that this will be a tale of darkness? • Take a few minutes and work with a partner to locate suggestive details on the novel’s first 3 pages. What things suggest literal or moral darkness?

13. A Tale of Darkness • Gravesend (1618/110) • “the sun sank low” (1619/111) • Erebus and Terror • “the monstrous town” (1619/111) • “a brooding gloom” (1619/111) • “‘And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth’” (1619/111). • Romans (1620/112): Although civilization makes progress, the human heart stays the same. “But darkness was here yesterday.”

14. Next Activity 5 minutes: • Discuss the end of paragraph 1 on page 1620/112: “The yarns of seamen” to “the spectral illumination of moonshine.” • Do this in connection with 1638/130: “It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream….” • What points emerge?

15. Points • Two types of tales: • Manifest content (“nut”) vs. latent content (“moonshine”) • The difficulty of communicating the experience • As regards the unconscious and the primitive, Marlow journeys into a nonverbal realm. • Fog: image of obfuscation (1650/142): “the blind whiteness of the fog”

16. Marlow’s Stops on His Voyage • He visits his aunt and then crosses the English channel (1623/115). • First stop: the sepulchral city (1623/115ff.): • Visits company office (1623/115-1624/116) • Sees the two knitting women (1624/116) • The three fates: Clotho spins, Lachesis measures, and Atropos cuts. • We know that Marlow will survive because Atropos is not there. The journey will not cut short his life. • Visits the doctor/phrenologist (1625/117): “‘the changes take place inside’”—i.e., a psychological journey

17. Marlow’s Journey • He returns to say goodbye to his aunt (1625-26/117-18) • Says negative stuff about women on 1626/118: “It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are.”

18. Man-of-war • 1627/119: Marlow sees a man-of-war firing into a continent—“shelling the bush.” • This is an image of futility parallel to the following things: • “a hole in the bottom of his pail” (1633/127) • Making bricks without straw (1633/127) • The so-called “faithless pilgrims” (1634/126) fire into the bush on 1652/144.

19. Outer Station • 30 miles up the river, he meets the accountant on 1630/122.

20. Central Station • Marlow meets the manager and brick maker (1633/125). • 1637/129: “this papier-mâché Mephistopheles” • This is also where Marlow gets his boat. • 1640/132: The Eldorado Exploring Expedition passes through. • What is the significance of the EEE?

21. En Route • Marlow • Finds Towson’s book (1646/138) • Loses his helmsman (1653/145) • Remembers Kurtz’s report (1656/148) • And meets the Russian, who “looked like a harlequin” (1658/150).

22. Inner Station • Marlow meets Kurtz.

23. Key Details • 1624/116: “Dead in the centre.” • 1626/118: “the centre of the earth” • 1627/119: “catacomb” • 1629/121: “the gloomy circle of some Inferno” • 1631/123: “the very bottom of there” • 1653/145: death of the helmsman • 1655/147: “He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—I mean literally.” What is the point of these details?

24. Answer • Marlow’s journey is like a descent into hell. • Aeneas loses his helmsman on the way to the underworld. • In the Inferno, Satan is frozen in the ice at the bottom. If Kurtz is at “the very bottom of there,” then Kurtz = Satan. • The difficulty of returning: 1641-42/133-34: hell is easy to enter but difficult to return from. • Hell in literature is both a physical place and a psychological state—and so it is in Conrad’s novel as well. • The farther Marlow goes up the river, the more intense the experience becomes: parallel to descending into the Inferno.

25. Dante’s Hell • http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1595/1595.diag.175dpi.jpeg • http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/images/tp1515/1515.wc1.150dpi.jpeg • http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/WorldLitI2332/Dante/OverviewofHell.jpg

26. Questions for Day 2 • References to women appear on 1623, 1624, 1626, 1630, 1655, 1665, 1671, and 1675ff.  Do you agree with Johanna M. Smith that "the whole of his [Marlow's] story is seen to be a manful effort to shore up imperialism through patriarchy, through the nineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres"?  (The quotation is from her essay "'Too Beautiful Altogether':  Patriarchal Ideology in Heart of Darkness.“) • According to Marlow, how does one overcome darkness?  • What do you make of Kurtz's report on 1656-57? • What does the presence of the Russian add in section III (1658ff.)?  • What do you make of "The horror!" on 1672?  What does Kurtz mean?  Is Marlow right to call it "a moral victory“ on 1673? • Marlow lies to Kurtz's fiancée, the Intended.  What do you make of this? • What has Marlow learned from his experience?