But this is for Heart of Darkness, not how much I despise Modernists and Postmodernists.
If I had not read King Leopold's Ghost before reading Heart of Darkness, I do not think I would have understood Heart of Darkness at all. I did not understand Marlow's character at all; I could not decide if I wanted to feel sorry for him or hit him on the head for calling all the Africans and niggers and portraying them all as cannibals. I also could not understand his contradictory hate and reverence for Mr. Kurtz; sometimes he speaks of him as an excellent, learned man who brought in more ivory than all the other posts combined, other times Marlow speaks of Kurtz as an abominable character who has done no good to the Company.
There were several lines in the book that stood out to me, both as larger, profound thoughts, and examples of the characters' ignorance:
"Drums... with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country." This shows that Marlow at least understands there might be more than the "savage" appearance of the Africans.
"Fine fellows, cannibals." When talking about the Africans on his steamship, Marlow just shows his ignorance in this line, contrasting his hope of understanding in the previous quote.
"All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz." Even though this quote is explaing Kurtz's mixed heritage, it jumped out at me as an explanation that all Europe created the Congo and all sorts of European men took part in the "rape of the Congo," as Hothschild described it.
Finally, Marlow's description of his deceased helmsman as "a grain of sand in a black Sahara" was where I finally just decided to stay frusterated with Marlow's character. At first, I could see some hope in his character, his chances at understanding the Africans beyond the cannibalism, especially when he interpreted the cries from the forest before the attack as cries of sorrow rather than of anger.
At the end of this Hear of Darkness, I am just frusterated. Hothschild made this book sound like it was the single most shocking thing the Western world saw from the Congo, but I am just frusterated at how contradictory the characters are, and unable to understand how the Western world would want to sympathize with people who are portrayed as cannibals and polygamists and wild warriors.
3 comments:
I too liked the drums line. I read this book before King Leopold's on my own and I agree it makes a lot more sense after all this background knowledge.
Haha, I appreciate the comment about your high school teachers, I had those classes too, could you imagine if our class was like that??
It's hard to square away Marlow's (and Conrad's?) simultaneous disgust at the treatment of Africans in the Congo with his seemingly inherent racism. Of course, many people in this country were against slavery but didn't exactly want to hold hands and sing songs with freed slaves, or have them move in next door. But that doesn't make the cognitive dissonance any easier to swallow.
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