Victoria 2 A Heart Of Darkness Torrent
Milan Skidmore
Although numerous critics (including Johanna M. Smith, Peter Hyland, Herbert Klein, and Garrett Stewart) have drawn attention to how Marlow's lie to the Intended informs the whole preceding text and how that culminating scene with the Intended is connected to Marlow's initial impression of Brussels as a whited sepulchre (how appropriate in light of Belgian King Leopold II's hypocritical defense of his private company's rapacious exploitation of the ludicrously-named Congo Free State!), few have until recentlyfocussed on how the lie affects the reader's reaction to Marlow as the protagonist and narrator of Conrad's Congo tale.
The countenancing of the greater evil, the lies like rainbow colours on the \ Company's map veiling the real motives of European imperialism in Africa, is behind both the thoughtless misbehaviour of those "jolly pioneers of progress" (24) and "emissaries of light," the ironically-dubbed "pilgrims," and the calculated reign of terror that Kurtz directs against the neighbouring tribes. Enthralled by their own money-lust (which, as Lionel Trilling observes of late nineteenth-century American society, is "the father of ultimate illusion and lies" [110]), the Europeans disregard both the natives' interests and their own moral well-being as they monopolize the ivory trade. The very air seems to sigh "ivory," and the only earthly reason Europeans in the Congo can give for being out there is "To make money, of course" (35).
However, it is not corporate profits but the welfare of the natives that Kurtz's Company has used back in Europe to justify its presence and activities in central Africa. Before he came face to face with his own base passions and atavistic drives there, Kurtz the journalist espoused those same altruistic ideals (which Marlow satirizes as "the noble cause" [23] and "the cause of progress" [24]) that his employers have mouthed in order to mitigate enslaving the natives to facilitate their obsessive quest for gain.
As in Conrad's "An Outpost of Progress" (1896) the manager's lofty intentions for his work at the jungle station were quickly perverted by the Darwinian ethos of the unfamiliar climate and environment, which shattered Kurtz's shallow European principles, leaving him the mere hollow shell of a civilized, rational being. "In the wilderness Kurtz's integrity collapses; only the extremes of appetite and intellect, of savagery and idealism survive" (Lynn 22). Conrad makes plain the moral bankruptcy of the system for which Kurtz stands by connecting him with Brussels, the "city of the dead" (25) that in Marlow's reminiscence epitomizes European civilisation: "a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre" (24).
In the above description Conrad alludes to Christ's characterization of his opponents, the New Testament's Pharisees, as "whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful (i. e., virtuous, in Christ's context) outwardly, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness" (Matthew 23: 27) spiritually. What the Saviour found so objectionable in his sectarian adversaries is what Marlow finds so repulsive in the Belgian company: sheer hypocrisy. Just as the Pharisees maintained that they were solely concernedwith the spiritual health of the people of Israel but acted out of self-interest, so the Companyhides its appetite for wealth and power behind empty platitudes about advancing the light of European civilisation through the darkness of the African jungle, and "'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways'" (26).
When Marlow describes his city of departure . . . , white is immediately problematized for the reader. The color acquires not only sepulchral connotations but also moral dubiousness, Marlow's description recalling the Biblical phrase for the hypocrite, the man of inner darkness whitewashed by outer manner and conventional deed (Rosmarin 161).
Like Willa Cather's protagonist in her psychological study "Paul's Case," Kurtz and Marlow have looked into that dark place in the human psyche and know what lies there. Buddha-like, Marlow has come back from near death on the Stygian shore to tell the world (in his mind, apparently a male construct), but feels an almost boyish reticence about revealing the horror of the darkness to the woman. Does he, as Moser has suggested, allow himself to be maneuvered into lying out of an outmoded, chivalric regard for the lady's sensibility, or does he feel that she is unworthy of (or incapable of understanding) the truth as it revealed itself to him through Kurtz at the heart of darkness? Or does he believe that someone must have his or her innocence maintained in order to sustain a worthwhile ideal that animates a workable system? "If he had told the girl the simple facts," asserts Walter F. Wright, "he would have acknowledged that the pilgrims in their cynicism had the truth, that goodness and faith were the unrealities" (159). Or is the lie an affirmation of Marlow's fellowship and solidarity with Kurtz, whom Marlow feels that he has no right to condemn?
The answers to Marlow's motivation are to be discovered in the nature of thelie itself and in the nature of the liar. Lies, of course, have proven indispensable to fabulists ever since Cain lied to God in Genesis and Odysseus slipped out of one disguise into another in The Odyssey . But Marlow's lie is neither as wicked as Cain's (especially since it acknowledges his need to be the keeper of his spiritual brother's memory) nor as self-serving but justifiable as Odysseus's. At first glance there is neither gain to be achieved nor pain to be avoided in Marlow's lying to the Intended. Marlow's lie is neither the cowardly evasion of Cain, whose conduct evokes the reader's scorn, nor the cunning imposture of Odysseus, whose studied impersonations and self-control call forth the reader's admiration. Marlow's lie we judge as neither premeditated nor wilful. Rather, readers never doubt for a moment that, in Marlow's place, they would likewise have spared the Intended's feelings and made her a present of Kurtz's final words. And that is precisely the effect for which Conrad is striving: we would do just what Marlow did, even though, as moral, decent people, we too abhor lying and deceit. And yet we would be wrong, for in shielding her from the truth about her fianc Marlow is also insulating her from the Darwinian reality behind not only the African jungle, but also behind Brussels' impassive faade. If Kurtz's Intended represents bourgeois European society, then Marlow has just joined those devious political and commercial interests who are keeping the middle-class consciousness from apprehending the European exploitation of Africa for what it is: a cultural, economic, and geographical rape. "The Intended [and, by implication, European society as a whole] remains as unknowing of the truth as she always has, and remains a part of the foreboding darkness with which the story ends" (Montag 97). As a gentleman, Marlow feels that women are to be protected and insulated from any unpleasantness; as a closet misogynist, he states that "the women are out of touch with truth" (27), that they are an intellectually inferior, impractical species incapable of dealing with any reality, let alone the brutal reality of the Belgian fiasco in Africa. Through keeping Kurtz's Intended from the truth of his death Marlow reinforces his own chivalric image of himself: he would rather be chivalrous and lie than be cruel and tell the truth, recognizing how sustaining for her will be the illusion of a noble, sane, humane Kurtz. While Homer's epic voyager never has to lie to himself, even though he lies out of self-defense many times to others, Conrad's reflective mariner has trapped himself into doing and being what he detests, and, in doing so, has also lied to himself about his motives.
It seems an innocent, benignly-motivated deception, a mere 'white lie', but, as Rosmarin points out, in Heart of Darkness white is the "the most explicit confusion" (161) for the reader, since it is an "off-color," the hue of ivory (upon which the whole European economic venture rests) and of Kurtz's complexion, a muddied, sullied white that, again to quote Rosmarin, "bespeaks contamination, a mutual transference between the spheres of morality and vision, between the self one is and the self one seems to be" (162).
But that is the main theme of this book, that Thomas Rathburn is bigger and stronger and hotter and more cunning than anything else the world has ever seen, including you. He could cut through you like a knife, dominating you through the power of his mind alone, scorching the earth with his majesty and presence and flawless use of hair care products. Rathburn thinks that you suck. That is a thing that you need to understand about Rathburn.
So it turns out that somebody (Angelique) has been reaching out through strands of power that run like conduits through a many-spoked mandala to contact a darkness within darkness, hearing the fuguelike music emanating from its onyx heart, and this right here is what all of that malarkey accomplished.
As so often happens, the heartless Union soldiers shot the boy in the head, took turns raping Elaine, killed her with a bayonet, and then stole a bunch of stuff, including her wedding ring and some corn. They even slammed the door on their way out. Union soldiers are dicks; everyone knows that.
So it turns out this story is from the Paperback Library after all; the gothics focus almost exclusively on how awful it is when guests arrive at a spooky old castle. Some are told from the perspective of a nice person arriving at a castle owned by terrible people; some from the perspective of a nice person living in a castle that is afflicted with terrible guests. The innovation here is that Dreams of the Dark is told from both perspectives at the same time; Rathburn is the dreadful intruder coming to stay, and Vicki is the dreadful employee welcoming that guest.
They arrive at the house, where Rathburn does a quick check of the set: high ceiling, chandelier, coatrack by the entry, table, grandfather clock, stairs to the right, stained-glass window over the balcony, all present and correct. Then he starts in on the family.
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