Shine the light so the shadows may spread.

Marlow furthers my thoughts of him as a pseudo-Virgil figure by figuratively going deeper into the “heart of darkness”, where he is now at Central Station where his boat has already been wrecked before he got there. The wreck itself seems to be pretty significant to the story line, but what meaning could Conrad have for it? “I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once, I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure.” (Pg.18). this seems to imply that the entire experience in Africa is so dark that not even hindsight is 20/20. What could this be foreshadowing that would be so bad as to black out Marlow’s memory. Marlow is quite the intriguing figure in my opinion. Every time that I pick this book up I am more interested in his thoughts and how he perceives the land.

The wreck of the boat itself can be fleshed out to a much higher extent however there is much more to be discussed here. While Marlow is in the station itself he seems to detest the white men that are there, he describes the manager as “He had no learning or intelligence.” (18) however, he also contradicts that as saying that the manager had something shadowy about him that couldn’t completely be ascertained by simply studying the man. Many things about the manager seem almost judgmental and otherworldly. He made a round table when annoyed by a fight about precedence amongst white people. This gives hint to the idea that he believes in equality where his negro was given the task to “treat the white men, under his very own eye [the manager’s], with provoking insolence.” So is the manager a sort of Devil’s advocate? To sort of rub in the face of the whites that the black man is still equal even though still under a servitude, or even a comment on how the white people under the manager are also slaves in their own sense?