Thesis: This passage between pages 125 and 129 summarizes the idea that language is incredibly important, influential, and provides insight but is still capable of failure, which, to some degree, makes the narrator an example of an unreliable narrator because he cannot properly express his thoughts.
- The passage begins with a period of silence, which is important since almost the entirety of the book is the dialogue of Marlow telling a story. This period of silence shows that words cannot express what Marlow is feeling, so he must take time to compose himself and find the proper words needed to continue his story.
- The first section of the main paragraph in this passage deals with the girl. Marlow unknowingly mentions a girl in a previous line and is questioned by his listeners about her. He did not mean to mention her, so he dismisses her. He was so caught up in the story and finding the right words that he began to drift off topic. He wants the subject to remain as Kurtz and mankind in general, but he says more than is needed, which distracts his listeners, as they stop him in his story to question him.
- Marlow continues on to discuss Kurtz’s own words. When Kurtz talks about the intended, the sattion, the river, etc., he repeatedly uses the adjective “my,” stating that these things that cannot truly be possessed are indeed his own. This assertion shows that one simple adjective can completely change the meaning of the noun.
- Marlow then goes on to question if his listeners can understand what he is talking about. They have never experienced or seen anything like what Marlow is discussing. Although Marlow is describing the scene to the best of his abilities, language fails him. The purpose of language is to communicate properly, especially things an individual might not be familiar with. However, because his listeners are not familiar with the subject, they cannot completely understand the story, no matter how well Marlow describes it, showing that language has failed Marlow and his listeners.
- Marlow tends to repeat words throughout the passage. Because he struggles to find words to properly express his thoughts, memories, and feelings, he latches on to a few select words and does not attempt to find a more accurate description.
- At one point, Marlow talks about a paper written by Kurtz. He repeats the word “eloquent” when describing it. Although at this point he knows all the horrendous acts Kurtz has commited, he still cannot help but to be moved by Kurtz’s words. In a way, Marlow also envies him. Kurtz is referred to as a charming voice several times in the story, while Marlow struggles to tell his story. Marlow both respects and envies Kurtz’s way with words and wishes he could also be so eloquent.
- One of the ideas touched upon is how language is affected by the speaker and his or her personality. Kurtz wrote seventeen eloquent and charming pages of pleading for help for the people of Africa before he travelled to the country. After his time there and his complete internal change, he scribbles a very extreme, brash, and commending phrase: “Exterminate all the brutes!” This shows that language depends on the speaker, in this case being pre-Africa Kurtz and post-Africa Kurtz.
- Marlow concludes his thoughts about Kurtz in this passage by confirming that he was an uncommon man. Kurtz, though not physically powerful or intimidating, was incredibly gifted with words and used them to charm and manipulate those around him. Marlow states that this ability to exploit language is not a common skill, which allows Kurtz to become the monster that he is in the end. Even as Marlow describes this, he struggles with using words how he would like to, emphasizing the contrast between Kurtz and an ordinary person in regards to language.
- Throughout the entire passage, Conrad uses numerous dashes to break up sentences and phrases. The purpose of this is to mimic how actual dialogue is somewhat unreliable. When people speak, especially to tell a story, they backtrack to add forgotten information, they veer off topic to mention unnecessary details, and they stutter for words. Marlow does all of these things in this passage and the rest of the story because he is speaking, so his words are trying to keep up with his thoughts, and he must constantly readjust his mannerisms based off of the listeners’ responses. All of this adds up to a very nonlinear and confusing description, showing that Marlow is a unreliable narrator because of the natural failures of languages in discourse.
Passage (pages 125-129)
He was silent for a long time.
“I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie,” he began, suddenly. “Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely. They—the women, I mean—are out of it—should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, ‘My Intended.’ You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this—ah—specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. ‘Mostly fossil,’ the manager had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes—but evidently they couldn’t bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—’ everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible—it was not good for one either—trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—I mean literally. You can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong—too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove!—breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don’t you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in—your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that’s difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account to myself for—for—Mr. Kurtz—for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as he was good enough to say himself—his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I’ve seen it. I’ve read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which—as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times—were offered up to him—do you understand?—to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of ‘my pamphlet’ (he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I’ve done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I can’t choose. He won’t be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can’t forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully—I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me—I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory—like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. (125-129).
