Genocide and the Romantic: The Characterization

of Marlow in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

William Baker

Writer's comment: Although I had read "Heart of Darkness" in a previous

class, Dr. Dobbins'approach to the material reinvigorated my interest

in Conrad's tale ofsadistic imperialism.As I wrote this essay, I began to

realize the power of Conrad's novella and the necessity of his decision

to tell his story through complex fictional means. His experimental

approach towards narration allowed Conrad, like any good journalist

or non-fiction writer, to reveal the crimes he witnessed in Africa

through his detailed descriptions and haunting imagery. His storywithin-

a-story-within-a-story approach also let him subtly indict Marlow

and those like him (including many of Conrad's readers), those hypocrites

who would express perfunctory outrage while profiting from the

crimes of empire. For the critical analysis that led to this insight, I thank

Dr. Dobbins. Thanks also go to Catherine Fung, whose insightful

comments on my essays in English 137 and 146 were of the utmost help.

—William Baker

Instructor's comment: William Baker is the kind of student instructors of

literature love to have for two reasons: first, he knows how to read—

which is to say that he takes his time, lingers over the latent potentiality

of the text, entertains the ambiguity of what might be there, and comes

up with a tentative path through the contradictory labyrinth of meaning

while never fogetting that such meaning can never be absolute (at

least in the case of British Modernist literature, the subject of William's

class). Second, he is able to articulate all of this—beautifully and

forcefully—in his writing concerning that which he has read. I know

William Baker almost entirely through his writing in English 137, which

includes in addition to this essay an essay just as good about Virginia

Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway;" in both, the reader gets the thrill of watching

one think quickly, fluently, and confidently without ever losing control

of the argument. And for the instructor of literature, there can be no

greater thrill. William's essay on the duality of Conrad's narrative

approach in "Heart of Darkness" and its connection to the self-defeating

ambiguity of his characterization of Marlowe provides a sense of what

I mean more explicitly than I do here.

—Gregory Dobbins, English Department

T O DECLARE J OSEPH C ONRAD ' S H EART OF D ARKNESS a scathing indict

ment of imperialism would hardly be a revelation. Truly, one

might have difficulty finding another work of fiction which so

vividly and hauntingly captures the tragedy and brutality of the 19th

century European excursions into Africa ; although a Russian Pole by

birth and an Englishman by choice, Conrad did not shy away from

presenting his piece as a harsh condemnation of what the rulers of his

native continent were doing to their southern neighbors. Just as important,

though, was the fact that Conrad chose a genre of fiction––the

novella––to convey his message, albeit in a decidedly unconventional

fashion. Apparently, the dual-narration structure of Heart of Darkness –

–with Marlow relating his story to his friends aboard the Nellie on the

Thames , one of whom narrates the novella itself––was necessitated by

the dictates of Blackwood's Magazine , which first published the piece

(Charters 344). However, Conrad takes what could have been a limitation

on his creativity and transforms it into the very fulcrum on which

the narrative turns: namely, the ambiguousness of Marlow's nature.

Conrad, of course, could have employed his own experiences in Africa

as the basis of some journalistic exposé, something akin to subsequent

works like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle . Instead, he realized the possibilities

that only fiction could afford him, for one finds Conrad's critique

not so much (as many suppose) in what Marlow describes but in the

character of Marlow himself. Truly, the nominal protagonist of Heart of

Darkness stands in for the hypocrisy of an age. Like so many men of

Conrad's time, Marlow expresses disdain for the colonial policies

employed on the “ Dark Continent ,” yet he shows little concern for the

actual human suffering he encounters there; indeed, he does precious

little does to reform the colonial system he so despises. Ultimately,

Marlow becomes complicit in the genocide and the madness in the

Congo , choosing to conceal what he has discovered in Africa to protect

the naivete of a lady––Victorian ideals of propriety stretched to conceal

even the most heinous of crimes.

If from nothing else, one begins to sense Conrad's implicit criticism

of Marlow in the character's extreme detachment from the atrocities

around him. Indeed, at times Marlow appears so oddly unaffected by

the brutality he witnesses in the Congo that the reader tends to wonder

about his sanity. Note, most strikingly, Marlow's description of his first

extended view of Kurtz's compound. Looking through a spy-glass, the

mariner discovers that someone has decorated the area with poles

capped by human heads; his reaction to this horrifying sight, as he

explains it, was not one of shock but of mere “surprise” (57). “I had

expected to see a knob of wood there, you know,” he tells the men

aboard the Nellie (57). Marlow's matter-of-fact description (“There was

nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there”) (57) strikes one

as horrifying precisely because it leaves out the expected emotions of

such a moment––namely, pity and fear. Marlow's detachment from his

experiences comes to the fore again, and perhaps even more fully, in his

final confrontation with Kurtz. Before Marlow lies a man slipping

towards death, a man whom he has traveled hundreds of miles to meet,

whose voice and ideas have come to obsess him. And yet, Marlow views

the whole affair in an almost clinical manner; once again, human

suffering remains for him a remote concept. “Anything approaching

the change that came over his features I have never seen and hope never

to see again,” Marlow explains, but not with any real sympathy. “Oh,

I wasn't touched. I was fascinated” (68).

Throughout Heart of Darkness Conrad plays with our expectations

as readers, portraying Marlow as apparently capable of genuine emotion,

only to reveal the heartlessness beneath that exterior. Perhaps the

most striking instance of this approach comes as Marlow recounts the

aftermath of the attack on the steamer. Truly, in these passages Marlow

seems to reveal a basic humanity, sadly recalling the bloodied remains

of his native associate. “I missed my late helmsman awfully––I missed

him even while his body was still lying in the pilot house,” Marlow

admits to his friends aboard the Nellie (51). Conrad, however, quickly

undercuts the pathos of this scene, with Marlow's own words casting

doubt about the probity of the “kinship” he supposedly feels for his

African colleague:

Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who

was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara . Well, don't

you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him

at my back––a help––an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He

steered for me––I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies,

and thus a subtle bond had been created which I only became

aware of when it was suddenly broken. (51)

The life of a human reduced to the utility of a nautical tool; one wonders

if Marlow would have felt any more remorse had the ship's compass

gone missing, or if some particularly useful maps had been blown

overboard. Indeed, Marlow callously tosses the dead body of his

African “friend” into the river (“Then without more ado I tipped him

overboard”) (51), as though disposing of refuse or some defective piece

of hardware.

Of course, one might argue that Conrad, far from critiquing his

main character, only seeks to reflect the reality of men like Marlow

through such a characterization. Indeed, experience can sometimes

lead a person to seem detached from events which appear to the novice

as uniquely horrifying. However, Conrad goes on to criticize Marlow

by portraying him as not only lacking in empathy, but also as being a

hypocrite, taking part in the Victorian civilization he so vehemently

condemns. Marlow claims to be a man of experience and skill, decrying

the great criminal waste of men and material he sees upon arriving to

Belgian Africa . Note, for example, Marlow's reaction to a French manof-

war firing upon a seemingly empty coastline (“there wasn't even a

shed there”) (17), a response which seems to separate him from the

madness of the Congo– –“there was a touch of insanity in the proceeding”

(17). And yet, in later passages Marlow is only too glad to praise the

Company's nicely quaffed accountant, a man whose elegant accouterments

remain just as useless and incongruous as the French bombardment.

“I respected his collars, his vast cuffs his brushed hair,” Marlow

recalls. “His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy,

but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance.

That's backbone” (21). Similarly, Marlow reveals his naivete in his more

general condemnations of colonialism, making specific delineations

between the Belgian methods (“aggravated murder on a great scale”)

(10) and the British approaches (“one knows some real work is done

there”) (13), as though the English are somehow blameless in the realm

of imperial crimes.

It might be argued, of course, that Marlow himself makes these

comments with a keen sense of sarcasm or irony. Indeed, one could

claim the “double-narration” structure of the text obscures such a

playful tone, thereby making this aspect of Marlow's personality unclear.

The sailor's own actions, however, suggest that his comments are

of a serious nature, and that he ultimately accepts the decadent “civilization”

he claims to oppose. As the narrative comes to a close, Marlow

visits Kurtz's fianceé, perhaps intending to reveal to her the truth about

her beloved, the “justice which was [Kurtz's] due” (76). Yet, when

confronted by the young woman (“I want[...]something to live with”)

(75), Marlow's chivalric tendencies take over, and he offers her a

comforting lie rather than a harsh but potentially illuminating truth––

“The last word he pronounced was––your name” (75). Initially, this

romanticism would seem to be at odds with Marlow's nature (“You

know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie”) (29), and yet Conrad has

carefully revealed the sailor's idealized but demeaning attitudes towards

women earlier in the text. “We must help them to stay in the

beautiful world of their own lest ours get worse,” Marlow explains

aboard the Nellie , and in this throw-away remark Conrad reveals

Marlow as incapable of offering with any kind of authority the final

condemnation of this society and its ill-conceived exploits (49). He is a

romantic disguised as a cynic––scratch a little and his hard-bitten

exterior, his emphasis on the truth and his willingness to reveal the

crimes in Africa , crumbles beneath a love of country and the need to

protect that most important of commodities: a young woman's virtue.

In a more fundamental sense, that Marlow even finds himself able

to convey his story at such length to the men aboard the Nellie stands as

perhaps the clearest expression of his Victorian ideals and his overriding

romanticism. If the mariner were truly affected or disturbed by his

time in the Congo , the experience would seem to him beyond communication:

only one who had seen and felt “the horror” of Belgian African

firsthand (as Marlow has) could even hope to wrestle with its disturbing

realities. “I had––for my sins, I suppose––to go through the ordeal

of looking into myself,” Marlow notes, yet this is nothing more than an

instance of self-deception (65): such an “ordeal” would be a highly

personal experience, not a parlor-story to be shared with one's friends.

Far from “looking into himself,” Marlow seems intent on making more

sweeping (and banal) pronouncements regarding the state of the world

around him. Particularly revealing is Marlow's subtle assertion that the

rape of Africa by European “civilization”––which he, of course, claims

to abhor––in time may stand as a necessary hiccup on the road of

progress, much as England had to be conquered and cultured by the

Romans. “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth,”

Marlow reminds his compatriots aboard the Nellie as they look out

upon the Thames at sunset; he justifies murder in the larger scheme of

historical evolution (9). Again, the dual-narration structure becomes

important in Conrad's conception of the story, allowing the author to

conveniently limit how much he chooses to disclose about Marlow's

true nature. After all, if Marlow were the sole narrator, his hypocritical

comments about imperialism (made directly to the reader) would be

too much, a too facile revelation about his personality and beliefs.

However, because Marlow tells the story to his colleagues––colleagues

none too taken with his “inconclusive experiences” (11)––one must

continually wonder what part of these remarks functions as deeply

held conviction, and what part stands merely as embellishment for the

sake of good storytelling.

And yet, either possibility remains for Conrad an indictment of

Marlow. On the one hand, if the sailor's story is wholly true, he emerges

as a delusional romantic, putting the worst of human experiences into

the conventions of the 19th century “travel narrative” and preferring to

observe Victorian social niceties rather than to reveal what he has

discovered while on the Company's business. On the other hand, if his

story is laced with invention, he becomes little more than a fool, turning

tragedy of the highest order into (paradoxically) a night's good fun. By

the end of Heart of Darkness , Marlow supposes Kurtz to have gone

insane, yet before his death the doomed ivory trader came to a moment

of understanding about his experiences in the Congo . Contrastingly, in

an evening of rambling and purple prose, Marlow cannot capture the

same simple clarity Kurtz achieved in his final moments. “The horror!

The horror!” Kurtz exclaims as he slips away (68), and the truth of

European colonialism lies in those words for Marlow to discover, if he

so desires. But for all his talk of hating lies, Marlow remains only too

willing to deceive Kurtz's beloved––the truth of imperialism and its

madness are less important than maintaining a woman's blissful ignorance.

There, then, one finds Marlow's failure––he remains, after all,

just as complicit in the Company as any other agent, perhaps more so.

For men like the Manager admit to being interested in Africa solely “[t]o

make money, of course” (23). Marlow, however, claims higher ideals,

only to betray these ideals for meager rewards: a woman's innocence,

a good story to tell one's sailing chums.

Works Cited

Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction . Boston :

Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. 343–405.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness . Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York : W.W.

Norton and Company, Inc., 1988 (first ed. 1899).