OK. It is time to get ourselves back to work on the blogsite. We will soon be viewing the American retelling of the Heart of Darkness narrative as presented by Francis Ford Coppola in his dramatic meditation on the misadventure that was the Vietnam War. This will give us another way of exploring the problem of the other as that other is found to lie within ourselves. But, before we get too far into this exploration, I wish to share a few comments about Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916) and his report on the savagery of the rubber trade in the Putumayo. While the record of these facts were published in 1913, it offers a window on the mistreatment of indigneous peoples vey much like what we have read about already in Heart of Darkness. In the early 1890s, Casement and Conrad were together in the Congo (The Congo Diary, 13th June, 1890--"Made the acquaintance of Mr. Roger Casement, which I should consider as a great pleasure under any circumstances and now it becomes a positive piece of luck.") and what they observed there would be explicit again in the Putumayo. Intriguing for us in this respect is Conrad's reflection on this time and the manner in which his description of Casement suggests the portrait of Kurtz from Heart of Darkness. Here is Conrad in a letter :
"Before the Congo I was just a mere animal."
Then, inflating prose on Casement, he reports,
"He was a good companion, but already in Africa I judged that he was a man, properly speaking, of no mind at all. I don't mean stupid. I mean he was all emotion. By emotional force (Congo report, Putumayo--etc) he made his way, and sheer emotionalism has undone him. A creature of sheer temperament--a truly tragic personality: all but the greatness of which he had not a trace. Only vanity. But in the Congo it was not visible yet."
Writing about his experience in the Putumayo, where he was dispatched as a British Consul to report on the treatment of "British Colonial Subjects, and Native Indians" by the government Casement reveals nothing of this tragic quality. Indeed, quite the opposite. Here, in a letter to a close friend he casts light on the circumstances of his task to represent the outrage in the region:
"I knew the Foreign Office would not understand the thing[meaning his report], for I realized that I was looking at this tragedy with the eyes of another race of people once hnted themselves, whose hearts were based on affection as the root principle of contact with their fellow men, and whose estimate of life was not something to be appraised at its market price."
Another reason why the British might have had difficulty grasping Casement's account was that its facts were appalling to the Victorian conscience, the very conscience against whcih Conrad strains in telling his narrative of Kurz at the far inner reaches of the Congo:
"The number of Indians killed by either starvation--often purposely brought about by the detsructio of crops over whole distircts or inflicted as a form of death penalty on individuals who failed to bring in their quota of rubber--or by deliberate murder by bullet, fire, beheading, of flogging to death, and accompanied by a variety of atrocious tortures, during the course of these 12 years, in order to extort these 4,000 tons of rubber, cannot have been less than 30,000, and possibly came to many more."
And yet, with the scope of this meditated slaughter, as with the irrational violence of the rubber extraction in the Congo, Conrad's portrait of this pitiable terror in the Heart of Darkness "attempted to penetrate the veil [of the deceptions of the civilizing project] and was anxious to retain its hallucinatory quality." The real and the imagined, then, were perpetually intertwined.
This week as we move deeper into the jungle of the Congo and the "epistemic murk" of the colonial rationalization of economic exploitation, let us consider how the history lived and told by Conrad differs from the terror wrought by the Conquistadores. Consider these questions from Michael Taussig's Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing: "Is there not a distinct desire in Heart of Darkness for Kurtz's greatness, horrible as it is? Is not horror made beautiful and primitivism exoticized throughout this book, which Ian Watt calls the enduring and most powerful literary indictment of imperialism."
OK, let's get to work!!
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Conrad’s decision to frame the story adds excitement and exoticism that glorifies the otherwise horrifying expedition. Rather than narrating Marlow’s tale in the present, Conrad frames the story with Marlow recounting his adventures while aboard a ship on the Thames. The choice of setting is intentional: the main port of one of the most "civilized" cities in the world provides a stark contrast with the “uncivilized” jungles of Africa. This adds to Africa's mystery and foreignness; the story is told to those in absolute safety so they can enjoy Marlow's danger vicariously. The setting also provides Marlow the opportunity to develop the parallel of the Roman's conquest of Britain to the Belgians conquest of the Congo. Marlow emphasizes that “darkness was here yesterday” (67); it was not long ago that Britain too was considered savage, and that conquerors face the “fascination of the abomination” (68) – they both abhor and surrender to the savagery around them. This portrays Kurtz as a heroic and strong man confronting the unknown, but also foreshadows his unfortunate fate.
Kurtz is an enigma in the book; he is this dynamic character that Marlow slowly approaches and the stories about him keep building, making his actual appearance highly anticipated. The manager at the Central Station qualifies Kurtz as “a prodigy […] an emissary of pity and science and progress […] a special being” (99). Before even meeting Kurtz, Marlow has high expectation – Kurtz is seen as the quintessential imperial presence in the Congo. Marlow describes his intense desire to hear Kurtz talk; he admits that “he had travelled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz” (134). Kurtz possesses “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” (135). His words are mesmerizing and inspired, yet at the same time they carry darkness and horror, but Marlow still desperately hopes to be able to hear Kurtz speak.
Through conveying the exotic experience of entering the unknown African interior, Conrad fails to completely provide an "indictment of imperialism." He depicts Africa's "hallucinatory quality" through paradoxical descriptions of a wreaked European train and a grounded steam ship as animal "carcasses" (82, 101). Further, Marlow stops his entire narrative to plead with his friends to recognize how he felt the “commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment […] that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams” (102). But rather than trying to penetrate that mystery and expose and condemn the European exploitation of Africans, Conrad uses that mystery to tell an adventure story. Rather than treating Africans as human beings equal to the Europeans, Marlow describes the Africans as "black shapes," "phantoms," and "creatures" (85, 86). Even when Marlow does admit to feeling somewhat sympathetic towards the Africans, he sees in the Africans only a "remote kinship" in an environment which he describes as "the night of the first ages" (117). According to the narration, the Africans are at best primitive ancestors of the Europeans.
The Mavericks
Jeff, Jeff, Hannah, Rachel, Carl
To start with a comparison of the conquistadors and the events in the Heart of Darkness, the similarities are most apparent. In both cases, the conquering forces worked under a cover of ideals: spreading Christian values, civilizing the people, and bringing general enlightenment to a people. But underneath, the real driving forces were personal ambitions, economic interests, and search of power and resources. The leaders are set above the general populations: the conquistadors were physically set above on horses and Kurtz was portrayed as a genius or great thinker.
At the same time, a key was that imperialism in the Americas was driven by governments and nationalism and a key goal of the conquistadores who went to the Americas was to conquer those lands. The conquest of Africa was more driven by completely unrestrained private enterprise who exploited the natives for economic benefit and the violence that resulted was a side effect of the exploitation.
In either case, the success of those who hold power is undeniable and alluring. The styling of Kurtz as a Renaissance man dominating the primitive landscape of Africa by his sheer will acts as a driving force for Marlow’s descent down the river; even when the truth behind such an ideal is discovered, one cannot deny how Kurtz remains a compelling figure of primitive authority among savagery, of adaptation to the sheer horror of the life of the ‘other’, of an ascendant godhood made possible by force of personality. The realm of Kurtz is one which we would hardly cross into by choice, but, at the same time, one which we desire nonetheless.
The Blue Marlins
Dacey, Brendan^2, Mike
The conquistadores’ missions in America were similar to Kurtz’s expedition into the Congo because both encountered the natives with at least an outward intention of bringing civilization and Christianity to the “savages.” Both the conquistadores and the Belgian company members use the façade of religion to justify economic exploitation of the natives. They are different, however, in that the conquistadores remained completely on the outside of the native culture and used force to achieve their ends, while Kurtz incorporates himself into the native culture, becoming one of them, and then pits them against each other in order to pillage the land. He contrasts also with Cabeza de Vaca in that Cabeza integrates himself as an equal of the natives, but Kurtz integrates himself while still maintaining a sense of dominance over the “savages.”
Kurtz is built up throughout the novel, especially through Marlow. The story is framed in a Chinese box narrative, with Marlow as a mouthpiece for Conrad where Conrad’s opinions are expressed by Marlow. Throughout the novel, Marlow expresses a reverence for Kurtz that borders on worship. The closer he gets to Kurtz, the more he feels he needs to talk to him. Even after he finds Kurtz and the state of moral corruption he has fallen into, Marlow’s descriptions still portray him as a mighty ruler and marvels at his eloquence and high-minded intentions, seeming to hold up Kurtz as a lesser of two evils when compared with the imperialistic powers of Europe.
~Skillz that Killz
(Kathryn LaBelle, Alan Yanchak, Kerry Brennan, Will Hoey)
Conrad wants to put a positive spin upon the darkness and mystery of the wilderness. Throughout the majority of the work Conrad, through the character of Marlow, praises Kurtz and his work. Marlow is fascinated during his whole story with the person of Kurtz; he is obsessed with meeting Kurtz pretty much from the beginning. As bad as Kurtz’s behavior seems to us, Conrad does not convey a feeling of terror or horror on Marlow’s part at what Kurtz has done. He still is anxious to meet Kurtz despite Kurtz’s obvious divergence from what he knows as civilized behavior. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz becomes almost a mythological figure because he is only the subject of legend because no one has talked to him in so long. He is known for immense capacity for obtaining ivory, but nobody knows how he does it.
In the Americas, the Conquistadores played to the natives’ beliefs in them as gods and then turned on them to annihilate the natives. In the case of Cortes, the Aztecs believe him to be Quetzalcoatl and welcomed him. However, he betrayed them, united other tribes against them and destroyed the empire very quickly. The same happened with Pizarro in Peru. He was invited to dine with the king, brought soldiers and assassinated him at the meal. In Conrad, Kurtz takes advantage of the natives viewing him as a god as well, but with different results. The diseases which racked the Americas did not devastate the Africans. Furthermore, Kurtz’s purpose was to use the natives in order to obtain more ivory. He exploited the tribes to get them to find more ivory. The Europeans didn’t want to kill the Africans; they wanted to enslave them and use them for their own purposes.
-The Gangstas
Michael C, Melissa, Tim, Kyle, Jacqueline
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