Marlow’s journey to the Central Station through the
arrival of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition.
Summary: Part 1
Marlow travels overland for two hundred miles with a caravan
of sixty men. He has one white companion who falls ill and must
be carried by the native bearers, who start to desert because of
the added burden. After fifteen days they arrive at the dilapidated
Central Station. Marlow finds that the steamer he was to command
has sunk. The general manager of the Central Station had taken the
boat out two days before under the charge of a volunteer skipper,
and they had torn the bottom out on some rocks. In light of what
he later learns, Marlow suspects the damage to the steamer may have
been intentional, to keep him from reaching Kurtz. Marlow soon meets with
the general manager, who strikes him as an altogether average man
who leads by inspiring an odd uneasiness in those around him and
whose authority derives merely from his resistance to tropical disease.
The manager tells Marlow that he took the boat out in a hurry to
relieve the inner stations, especially the one belonging to Kurtz,
who is rumored to be ill. He praises Kurtz as an exceptional agent
and takes note that Kurtz is talked about on the coast.
The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was
whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it.
See Important Quotations Explained
Marlow sets to work dredging his ship out of the river
and repairing it, which ends up taking three months. One day during
this time, a grass shed housing some trade goods burns down, and
the native laborers dance delightedly as it burns. One of the natives
is accused of causing the fire and is beaten severely; he disappears
into the forest after he recovers. Marlow overhears the manager
talking with the brickmaker about Kurtz at the site of the burned
hut. He enters into conversation with the brickmaker after the manager
leaves, and ends up accompanying the man back to his quarters, which
are noticeably more luxurious than those of the other agents. Marlow realizes
after a while that the brickmaker is pumping him for information
about the intentions of the Company’s board of directors in Europe,
about which, of course, Marlow knows nothing. Marlow notices an
unusual painting on the wall, of a blindfolded woman with a lighted
torch; when he asks about it, the brickmaker reveals that it is
Kurtz’s work.
The brickmaker tells Marlow that Kurtz is a prodigy, sent
as a special emissary of Western ideals by the Company’s directors
and bound for quick advancement. He also reveals that he has seen
confidential correspondence dealing with Marlow’s appointment, from which
he has construed that Marlow is also a favorite of the administration. They
go outside, and the brickmaker tries to get himself into Marlow’s
good graces—and Kurtz’s by proxy, since he believes Marlow is allied
with Kurtz. Marlow realizes the brickmaker had planned on being
assistant manager, and Kurtz’s arrival has upset his chances. Seeing
an opportunity to use the brickmaker’s influence to his own ends,
Marlow lets the man believe he really does have influence in Europe
and tells him that he wants a quantity of rivets from the coast
to repair his ship. The brickmaker leaves him with a veiled threat
on his life, but Marlow enjoys his obvious distress and confusion.
Marlow finds his foreman sitting on the deck of the ship
and tells him that they will have rivets in three weeks, and they
both dance around exuberantly. The rivets do not come, however.
Instead, the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, a group of white men
intent on “tear[ing] treasure out of the bowels of the land,” arrives,
led by the manager’s uncle, who spends his entire time at the station
talking conspiratorially with his nephew. Marlow gives up on ever
receiving the rivets he needs to repair his ship, and turns to wondering
disinterestedly about Kurtz and his ideals.
Read a translation of
Part 1 →
Analysis
As Marlow describes his caravan journey through the depopulated interior
of the colony, he remarks ironically that he was becoming “scientifically
interesting”—an allusion to his conversation with the company doctor
in Brussels. Given this, it is curious that Marlow talks so little
about the caravan journey itself. In part, this is because it’s
not directly relevant to his story—during this time he is neither
in contact with representatives of the Company nor moving directly toward
Kurtz. Nonetheless, something about this journey renders Marlow
a mystery even to himself; he starts to think of himself as a potential
case study. Africa appears to him to be something that happens to
a man, without his consent. One way to interpret this is that Marlow
is disowning his own responsibility (and that of his fellow employees)
for the atrocities committed by the Company on the natives. Because
of its merciless environment and savage inhabitants, Africa itself
is responsible for colonial violence. Forced to deal with his ailing
companion and a group of native porters who continually desert and
abandon their loads, Marlow finds himself at the top of the proverbial
slippery slope.
The men he finds at the Central Station allow him to regain
his perspective, however. The goings-on here are ridiculous: for
example, Marlow watches a man try to extinguish a fire using a bucket with
a hole in it. The manager and the brickmaker, the men in charge,
are repeatedly described as hollow, “papier-mâché” figures. For
Marlow, who has just experienced the surreal horrors of the continent’s
interior, the idea that a man’s exterior may conceal only a void
is disturbing. The alternative, of course, is that at the heart
of these men lies not a void but a vast, malevolent conspiracy.
The machinations of the manager and the brickmaker suggest that,
paradoxically, both ideas are correct: that these men indeed conceal bad
intentions, but that these intentions, despite the fact that they lead
to apparent evil, are meaningless in light of their context. The use
of religious language to describe the agents of the Central Station
reinforces this paradoxical idea. Marlow calls the Company’s rank
and file “pilgrims,” both for their habit of carrying staves (with which
to beat native laborers) and for their mindless worship of the wealth
to be had from ivory.