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Heart of Darkness Identity Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.'…But there was one yet - the biggest, the most blank, so to speak - that I had a hankering after."(1.17)
Marlow has a fascination for blank spaces. He has the desire to fill them with all his discoveries. And so he is drawn to the "most blank" of them all – Africa.
"A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many millions." (1.23)
The Dutch head of the Company is never described as a whole human being. Instead, we see him only in parts – a head, a forefinger – and when we finally see him in person, he is described only as "an impression" like a ghost of a man. In the last sentence here, Conrad suggests that this man's greed – his "grip on the handle-end of ever so many millions" – has dehumanized him.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone." (1.41)
Marlow, like most of the white men, does not see the black Africans as complete human beings. His language here proves that. He describes the slaves as objects, ghosts, or through animal imagery: "acute angles," "phantom," "creature," "woolly head."
