Exerpt From my RR

What I first realized directly after reading these first two parts was the ambiguity of the character of Marlow. Marlow is a character that has travelled around the world, but I have no idea what his job entails, and I don’t know why he decides to embark on these trips, other than to satisfy his desire to fill out the blank spots on maps. Other than Marlow’s motive to travel, I’m drawn to Marlow’s view on colonization, which remains extremely ambiguous. I’m sure Marlow is a character who is critical of the way the Belgian Congo is run because of his repeated use of irony. Throughout the first part of the novel, Marlow relies heavily on showing the inefficiency of the way the colonies are run. The opposition of the colonizers to the vastness of the African continent is described in order to show the futility of dominating and colonizing efficiently the entire continent. When Marlow encounters the French battleship off the coast of Africa, he is surprised by their inefficiency. They hope to simply eliminate a small “enemy” village (savages) by destroying the entire environment surrounding them, and shooting blindly onto the African continent thought the hope of destroying a small village. The French warship is describe in a semi-humorous way, using the diction of small and insignificance, compared to the immensity of the African landscape stretched in front of it: “Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech- and nothing happened”. Through this, Marlow provides an indirect criticism of the ways of colonization. Its as if this small French vessel was fighting against the entire continent, hoping to destroy it. Marlow takes a more direct approach quickly after: “There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery (…)”. Marlow remains critical of the process of colonization throughout this part, and the means by which colonization is carried out.

However, if Marlow is actually critical of colonization, he never offers any sort of alternative way of governing, or never puts into question the European presence in Africa in the first place. He talks indirectly about every thing he is critical of, and I’m not sure what side he is on. Personally, I don’t think Marlow is a fervent racist but he doesn’t take into account the effects of colonization on colonized people. For example, when he see’s the group of African prisoners chained together, and being guarded by another African, he feel’s uneasy. He is critical of the treatment of the African workers, when their masters beat for the slightest wrongs. However, Marlow is more concerned by the effects of Africa on the colonizers than the effects of the colonizers on Africa. Marlow hears the story of Freslevin, the man who held his position before him. He was always described as a tender man, yet he was “changed” by Africa, and died in a conflict with local people. In truth, Freslevin died because he killed a local villager over hens, and the local village revolted. Freslevin wasn’t as tender and gentle a person as one could have believed.