Marlows Lack Of Restraint Essay - 1849 Words

In Joseph Conrad’s infamous novella, Heart of Darkness, the narrator listens as Marlow tells his tale of his journey in the Congo, where he comes across many different types of people, all of which he can have hugely varying opinions on. It may seem at first that he simply views the Congolese as less than himself, but his ideas of humanity are far more complex than that, and is not directly tied to race. It is not the people that he despises, but the area they inhabit. He blames their environment and gives it this eminent evil surrounding it. His is an issue with their lack of restraint to the evil and savagery of the world. Marlow’s creation of his own concept of restraint in relation to his journey informs of the major themes and ideas†¦show more content†¦As he approaches Kurtz and continues down the river and further into the Congo, Marlow accumulates around thirty native Congolese people working on his steamboat, and without a real thought he makes the ass umption and conclusion that they are all cannibals. He notes that they bring Hippo meat with them, which according to him quickly goes rotten and has to be thrown overboard. He then says, â€Å"Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn’t go for us—they were thirty to five—and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet... I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there.† This is one of the only times that Marlow describes the native Congolese people as human. Only through first basing this off several racist stereotypes, Marlow is able for a moment to view the natives as human beings, because, in his own skewed and ridiculous view of them, he believes that they have an incredible amount of restraint to the ‘darkness’ that seems to emanate from the Congo. Their self control and resistance to the savage urges is the quality Marlow believes makes them equal to himself in the sense that they are human beings like himself. This is also telling of the grand misunderstanding of Marlow with his entire experience andShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Joseph Conrad s The Heart Of Darkness 1801 Words   |  8 Pagesconduct in a restrictive way, such as views on sexual restraint and a low tolerance of crime (Sanders, 2). 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