As I finished the first chapter of “Heart of Darkness” everything began making sense to me. Marlow noticed a change in himself mentally the longer he spent living in these foreign countries. He was surrounded by slaved and sickly people on a daily basis, with terrible living conditions and unsanitary food. Mr. Kurtz was mentioned a lot in this part of the chapter and was spoken of very highly. Marlow could not even picture him. He said it was just like a dream and that he could not describe him to us either.
Mr. Kurtz was the head of the Company and sent in more ivory than any of the other companies together. Marlow was told multiple times that Mr. Kurtz was going to be very high up on the chain someday and run the entire Company. Marlow wanted to meet him, but he was not sure why. Part of him respected him like people do God, even though he had never met him.
Every day Marlow would speak of dying men all around him, and he would explain that he had seen slaves being beaten and shot. He spoke of this rather immaturely in my opinion, because sometimes he would relate it to something childish like aliens and such. Towards the end of the chapter Marlow started getting angry because the Company was not supplying him with rivets to fix his sunken ship. It took a long time of him asking for them to finally do anything about it.
Megan, I completely agree with you about Marlow changing as he spends more time Africa. The question that I would like to ask you is how do you thing he actually changed? Do you think it was a positive or negative change? I personally think it was negative since he starts taking on the savage characteristics on the land and his patience dwindles, along with his morals.
ReplyDeleteYou talk about how Marlow always wanted to meet with Kurtz. To me, it seemed like he didn't really bother with Kurtz as much, because at the end of the chapter, he says that he "wasn't interested in him (Kurtz). But I do feel that Marlow does have interest in Kurtz because of how the other agents revered and idolized him.