I swear, this book is bringing out such a variety of undesired, negative emotions in me. Just to list a few: frustration, confusion, disgust, pity, boredom, anger, annoyance. The majority of characters that have been introduced so far are greedy, pathetic, and indifferent snobs. Particularly the fleshy “white companion” Marlow traveled with over hill and dale for two hundred miles really tugged at my last nerve. I would never be able to endure an arduous journey like that with such a wuss of a man that required you to “hold your own coat like a parasol” over his needy, flaccid body. His proud admission to having been driven to the extreme wilderness of Africa by the insatiable desire “to make money, of course” paired with his superfluous weight caused me to mentally place him as a shade in the Third Circle of Hell as depicted in Dante’s Inferno; the level at which gluttons are punished with eternal foul, slushy rain.
Further reading and discovery of equally as revolting new characters encouraged my connection of the various characters to the shades representative of certain sins encountered in Inferno. For example, the manager is obviously not the most cunning of people but “inspired uneasiness” and seems generally corrupt. He would fit perfectly as a shade of falseness and treachery in the Eighth Circle.
As for this mystery man Mr. Kurtz, he could be compared to as Satan, who in the Inferno, seemed ever present, the awaited grand finale. Mr. Kurtz has so far been described in legendary vagueness but apparent greatness. He is the brains behind the whole operation occurring in the Congo and it is my assumption that like Satan, he will be none other than an egotistical swindler.
Sierra-
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'd like to address the whole issue of the squishy-bellied white man with whom Marlow is traveling. He bothers me, too, to the point where I wish I could jump into the book and smack him across the face for being such a stick-in-the-mud. I also truly enjoy the connections you make to his gluttony--as gluttony is not only a hunger for food, but it is a hunger for money or material objects, too. The fact that he is a glutton for food (as made apparent by his squishiness and inability to travel long distances without collapsing) and for money would make his time in the Inferno twice as unpleasant.
Second and also lastly, I really like your connecting of Mr. Kurtz to Satan/Lucifer/The Devil. Mostly I enjoy this connection because I had thought the exact same thing, but then thought that I was wrong (as most of my connections are just a little off from the truth), but since you are far more intelligent than I, I firmly believe now that I was correct in my connections. All of them. Ever.
But I was curious as to if you noticed one of the lines that I think...the manager (?) said. It was something like, "anyone who comes into here should have no entrails," or a statement along those lines. It reminded me of how certain people in one of the Cantos (I forget who had it) would be cut open and their guts spilled repeatedly because they were theives, so is the manager man saying that everyone who comes in to Africa under the whim of the company is a theif? And if so, what exactly are they stealing?