Marlow’s overhearing of the conversation between the
manager and his uncle through the beginning of his voyage up the
river.
Summary: Part 2
One evening, as Marlow lies on the deck of his wrecked
steamer, the manager and his uncle appear within earshot and discuss
Kurtz. The manager complains that Kurtz has come to the Congo with
plans to turn the stations into beacons of civilization and moral
improvement, and that Kurtz wants to take over the manager’s position.
He recalls that about a year earlier Kurtz sent down a huge load
of ivory of the highest quality by canoe with his clerk, but that
Kurtz himself had turned back to his station after coming 300 miles
down the river. The clerk, after turning over the ivory and a letter
from Kurtz instructing the manager to stop sending him incompetent
men, informs the manager that Kurtz has been very ill and has not
completely recovered.
Continuing to converse with his uncle, the manager mentions another
man whom he finds troublesome, a wandering trader. The manager’s
uncle tells him to go ahead and have the trader hanged, because
no one will challenge his authority here. The manager’s uncle also
suggests that the climate may take care of all of his difficulties
for him, implying that Kurtz simply may die of tropical disease.
Marlow is alarmed by the apparent conspiracy between the two men
and leaps to his feet, revealing himself to them. They are visibly
startled but move off without acknowledging his presence. Not long
after this incident, the Eldorado Expedition, led by the manager’s
uncle, disappears into the wilderness.
In a few days the Eldorado Expedition
went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea
closes over a diver.
See Important Quotations Explained
Much later, the cryptic message arrives that all the expedition’s
donkeys have died. By that time, the repairs on Marlow’s steamer
are nearly complete, and Marlow is preparing to leave on a two-month trip
up the river to Kurtz, along with the manager and several “pilgrims.”
The river is treacherous and the trip is difficult; the ship proceeds
only with the help of a crew of natives the Europeans call cannibals,
who actually prove to be quite reasonable people. The men aboard
the ship hear drums at night along the riverbanks and occasionally
catch glimpses of native settlements during the day, but they can
only guess at what lies further inland. Marlow feels a sense of
kinship between himself and the savages along the riverbanks, but
his work in keeping the ship afloat and steaming keeps him safely
occupied and prevents him from brooding too much.
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Analysis
Marlow’s work ethic and professional skills
are contrasted, throughout this section, with the incompetence and
laziness of the Company’s employees. Working to repair his ship
and then piloting it up the river provides a much-needed distraction
for Marlow, preventing him from brooding upon the folly of his fellow
Europeans and the savagery of the natives. To Marlow’s mind, work
represents the fulfillment of a contract between two independent
human beings. Repairing the steamer and then piloting it, he convinces
himself, has little to do with the exploitation and horror he sees
all around him.
Nevertheless, Marlow is continually forced
to interpret the surrounding world. The description of his journey
upriver is strange and disturbing. Marlow describes the trip as
a journey back in time, to a “prehistoric earth.” This remark reflects
the European inclination to view colonized peoples as primitive,
further back on the evolutionary scale than Europeans, and it recalls Marlow’s
comment at the beginning of his narrative about England’s own past.
What disturbs Marlow most about the native peoples he sees along
the river, in his words, is “this suspicion of their not being inhuman”:
in some deep way these “savages” are like Europeans, perhaps just
like the English were when Britain was colonized by Rome. Marlow’s
self-imposed isolation from the manager and the rest of the pilgrims
forces him to consider the African members of his crew, and he is
confused about what he sees. He wonders, for example, how his native
fireman (the crewman who keeps the boiler going) is any different
from a poorly educated, ignorant European doing the same job.
It was unearthly, and the men were—No,
they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion
of their not being inhuman.
See Important Quotations Explained
The mysterious figure of Kurtz is at the heart
of Marlow’s confusion. The manager seems to suggest that his own
resistance against the consequences of the tropical climate reflects
not just physical constitution but a moral fitness, or the approval
of some higher power. That this could be the case is terrifying
to Marlow, and in his shock he exposes his disdain of the manager
to the man himself. Yet Marlow has a difficult time analyzing what
he has overheard about Kurtz: if the manager’s story contains any
truth, then Kurtz must be a monomaniacal if not psychotic individual. Next
to the petty ambitions and sycophantic maneuverings of the manager,
however, Kurtz’s grandiose gestures and morally ambiguous successes
are appealing.