Heart of Darkness Chapter 2 Notes

Heart of Darkness: Chapter 2

Episode 1

From: ‘One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat’….to   ‘beyond my power of meddling’.

·      Marlow overhears the manager and his uncle hoping that the climate would finally kill Kurtz off for them. ’Anything can be done in this country’  manager says there are no limits.-

·      Finally after 3 months the steamer is ready and Marlow is on his way to the inner station. He has a few ‘pilgrims’ and some cannibal natives as his crew: ’travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world’

·      Unknown territory into the wilderness// this to the philosophical comments made by “Marlow’ and the metaphor of the inner exploration of the mind

·      Marlow begins to feel that the inner truth is hidden in both nature and man

·      Nature is powerful and mysterious; the earth monstrous and free: ‘the little begrimed steamboat ‘crawling ‘like a sluggish beetle’ between ‘the high walls’ of the jungle.’ The black man is an enigma to the explorer.

·       Primitive man as seen through the natives on the shoreline; ‘Joy, fear, - sorrow, devotion, valour, rage described by Marlow as ’truth stripped of its cloak of time’.  

·      So was the prehistoric man welcoming or cursing the white explorers? Marlow questions the superiority of the white man and suggests both have their pasts in common and each are a mystery to each other.

·      Man needs inborn strength such as Marlow’s reliance on ‘efficiency of work’. Is this why Marlow does not succumb to the ‘darkness’ of colonialism?

·      The description of the fireman is another thumb-nail sketch of a character type. ‘howl and a dance’ sounds rather racist. (Chinua Achebe- Things Fall Apart’- also essay written in response to Conrad’s work

·      Cannibals: Fine fellows…men one could work with!’

·      Hut on the shoreline-pile of wood for the steamboat and sign ’approach cautiously’.

·      Book ‘An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship’ –an honest concern for the correct way to go about the work of navigation.

·      Marlow knows he is getting nearer to Kurtz and speculates about him.

Episode 2

Steamboat is attacked-black and white men capable of restraint

From: ‘Towards the evening of the second day’…to ‘Here, give me some tobacco.’

·      The manager says it is too dark and too dangerous to proceed and the bush seems frozen and night falls. Daylight brings fog…another form of darkness

·      Marlow’s efficiency keeps the boat safe and moving.

·      Pilgrims become agitated whereas the cannibals also strangers to this part of the world are extremely calm. Cries of terror and grief fill the air but cannibals want the pilgrims to catch the natives for them to eat(rotten hippo meat overboard)

·      Brass rings for money- surprised at the cannibals ‘ restraint in this atmosphere of no restraints. Whites devouring greed-exploitation of colonialism and ivory. This is juxtaposed by the hunger of the cannibals BUT their restraint.

·      Manager states he would be desolated if anything happens to Kurtz!

·      This is the man who sunk the boat, delayed the rivets and slowed down the progress of the journey

·      Natives attack the boat-pilgrims go crazy and shoot at the forest//gunboat on the coast

·      Arrows hit the helmsman who opened a shutter to fire at the natives. He dies with a questioning glance at Marlow who then blows the steam whistle and sends the natives running away in panic

·      Marlow changes his shoes, which are full of the helmsman’s blood.

·      Marlow worries the Kurtz also may be dead…disappointed

·      Quote page 79: ‘the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness’.

Episode 3: Marlow jumps forward to meeting Kurtz. At the inner station there are met by the harlequin.

From: ‘There was a pause of profound stillness to the end of Chapter 2.

·      Deep sigh from his audience stops Marlow- first narrator takes over as Marlow lights his pipe.

·      Digresses talking of the absurd nature of his tale when compared to these civilized men in the Nellie

·      Talks of the women and ‘beautiful world’ they live in Kurt’s intended

·      Bald Kurtz//ivory

·      Ivory in the hut taken on to the steamer even though the manager stated it was fossil ivory(buried!)

·      Kurtz has been consumed by the wilderness and had become a ‘chief’ of sorts.

·      He had written a report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs to write a report for its guidance. Kurtz had written this before succumbing to ‘unspeakable rites’…postscript stated ‘Exterminate all the brutes’

·      Marlow feels that Kurtz was not worth the death of the helmsman.

·      Back to the narrative

·      Marlow throws the body overboard….didn’t want the cannibals to eat it.

·      Sees the Inner Station and the posts with balls on surrounding it…these are human skulls

·      Harlequin greets them…patchwork clothes…Russian with a boyish face and a fear and fascination for Kurtz who has-‘enlarged his mind’

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