What Specific Practices and Attitudes Does Marlow Criticize or Condemn - Essay Example

What Specific Practices And Attitudes Does Marlow Criticize Or Condemn What Practices And Attitudes Does He Approve Of Marlow, in the of his narration of an adventure into the heart of the dark continent of Africa, makes several comments and statements which throw light on his own personal attitudes. From his criticisms it is quite apparent that there are several specific practices and attitudes that he condemns and others that he approves of. The story is about a Company set up in a European nation (read Belgium) which has a vested interest in Africa, in particular the trade in ivory, one in which they would like to lay their hands upon more and more ivory as also the best ivory available. It is this "taint of imbecile rapacity" (166) that blows through the novel like "a whiff from some corpse"(166). Even at the very beginning Marlow makes his distaste for colonialism known when he says, "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much"(140). From here it is a natural progression to the comparison he makes between the pompousness and the laziness of the colonists and the exploitation and hard labour inflicted upon the native people. His scathing sarcasm begins with the idleness of the passengers on board the French steamer and goes on to those at the Company Station who have their sights set on getting appointed "to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages" (168). Having reached the Company Station, Marlow discovered that the steamer which he was to command was damaged and in need of repairs. The others who were to accompany him into the dense unexplored parts of the continent in search of Kurtz had nothing better to do and the intervening time was spent by these same persons in "back-biting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that Station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else.. as their talk, as their government, as their show of work"(168). Meanwhile the malnourished and underpaid natives were literally yoked together and these chain gangs were forced at gun point to undertake different types of hard manual work in the blazing sun. In one particular instance an enormous hole had been dug up on the hill side with no earthly purpose other than "the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do"(155). On the one hand he narrates images of weary, dying natives who have become living phantoms, and decries the insidious ways of the Company as a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. A bunch of European adventures calling themselves the Eldorado Expedition turn up at the Company Station. They are described as men "without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage" (177). The purpose of their expedition is to "tear treasure out of the bowels of the land" and we are told that they had "no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe" (177). It is not just that Marlow has no patience with those who shirk their job, but he gets rubbed up the wrong way when he has to put up with people who work only under supervision. The helmsman on whom he would have to rely heavily as they sailed through the river full of snags turned out to be "the most unstable kind of fool" who "steered with no end of a swagger" when Marlow was around. But the minute his back was turned the helmsman "became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute" (199). Being a straightforward person himself, Marlow's temperament cannot stand a lie. He is the first to declare that he "can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do"(172). And things rotten too do irk him no end. When the hired band of Negroes came aboard the steamer armed with their hippo meat as iron rations, the meat soon turned rotten and he makes a tongue in cheek comment that the meat "made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now"(184). Soon, the other passengers, who had the luxury of consuming tinned food, could not suffer the stench and ensured that the meat was thrown overboard. Marlow defends their action saying, "It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defence" (193). The Negroes were cannibals at heart and when Marlow's helmsman is killed, he unceremoniously dumps him into the swirling waters as feed for the fish for although he was "a very second-rate helmsman while alive now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation" (210). A civilized gentleman at heart Marlow seems to have cause enough to dislike the Manager of the Company Station. Weary, irritable, hungry and almost savage after his long twenty-mile walk that morning, this ambitious Manager does not show Marlow any of the common courtesies to the extent that he does not even condescend to invite Marlow to take a seat. Marlow feels himself justified when he refers to him as a person with "no learning, and no intelligence" and one who had probably acquired the present position merely "because he was never ill" (164). An Englishman to the core, Marlow does not take kindly to the country in Europe, where the Company is located. He refers to the place as a "whited sepulchre" (145) and the atmosphere of gloom in the waiting room as an uneasy one which gives him an eerie feeling. "There was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy I don't know something not quite right; and I was glad to get out."(146). He likens the two women in the office to persons guarding the doors of darkness and knitting with black wool for a warm pall. At the end of the story when he returns again to the same city, there is no love lost and he resents the sight of the people hurrying through the streets to "filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams"(242). At the start of the story Marlow admits that as a child he had dreamt of sailing to Africa. When he found that there was no other way to land a job he was reduced to using the good offices of an aunt to further his career ambitions. Sheepishly he confesses, "I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said 'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then-would you believe it-I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--to get a job" (143). It may be true that Marlow did indeed stoop to make use of the fairer sex to get on in life. But it would not be possible to find a person more gallant and chivalrous than him. For nothing in the world, would he destroy the rosy notions women hold and after his meeting with his aunt states "It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether" (149). On another occasion when Marlow finds himself deep in the forests during his search for Kurtz, he meets up with the young Russian who has been the companion, nursemaid and admirer of Kurtz. There is some mention of a 'girl' which the Russian hastens to cover up. Marlow extends his chivalry to this unknown girl saying 'They--the women, I mean--are out of it--should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse" (205). Both the women besotted with Kurtz - the wild eyed and savage beauty as also the dainty sepulchral 'Intended' are referred to and thought of in an equally gentlemanly fashion. The 'Intended' lives a dream and Marlow is loath to shatter her illusions. When she repeatedly asks to be told the last words uttered by Kurtz who is a 'genius' to her, Marlow cannot bring himself to repeat the words "The Horror! The Horror!" (246) Instead he, who finds lying an abominable act, tells her "The last word he pronounced was--your name" (251). Even the savage beauty in the dark and gloomy continent is to him a "wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman" (225). To him, she is the personification of the wilderness itself, an "image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul" (226). Although Marlow says "I don't like work - no man does", he qualifies it by adding, "But I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself" (175). At the Company office he is put off by the oppressive atmosphere but cheers up when he sees "a vast amount of red-good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there"(145). Speaking of the Romans who had come to conquer Britain, he declares that in comparison to them what saves the English is "efficiency-the devotion to efficiency" (140). Marlow is a born sailor and to him the "voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother" (151). He takes his job seriously and earnestly goes about the business of obtaining rivets and getting the steamer in working condition. He is quick to give praise where it is due and compliments the foreman saying -"a boiler-maker by trade--a good worker" (175). The demands on his professional skills soar as they sail through the treacherous river in search of Kurtz, for "to scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin" (184). Over and above all else he is an Englishman to the core and one who approves of all that is English. With his aunt he has his last decent cup of tea for many days and finds solace in smoking his pipe quietly by the dismantled steamer. Although he refers to the Accountant at the Station as a "hairdresser's dummy" (158), he appreciates the unexpected elegance and approves of the torn and tattered clothes of the harlequin which made him look extremely gay as "you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done "(212). Kurtz was half English and "had been partly educated in England" (207) and Marlow is quick to declare that "his sympathies were in the right place" (207). In the midst of the untamed wilderness, Marlow has to fall back upon his own innate strength and his capacity for faithfulness. In this he is helped by holding on to the redeeming features of his surroundings. The moon spreads over everything "a thin layer of silver-over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation" (171). The land goes home to his very heart with its mystery and its greatness and he compares it to something "great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion" (166). Works cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness And Other Tales Oxford World's Classics Paperback: Oxford New York, 1998 Read More