Exploration

So far I have found reading heart of darkness a bit more challenging than I once thought. The way it’s written is a bit confusing because when there is dialogue in the book the person speaks so long and in 3rd person that when the book says someone stopped talking I have to go back in the book to see when they even started. The one part of the book I did understand however is this quote: “now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at south America, or Africa or Australia and lose myself in all the glories of exploration… true by this time it was not a blank space anymore. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery- a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness”. I agree with Marlow. Everything in life is amazing when you don’t quite know what it is yet, when you can let your imagination run wild. However once someone else has found the land or item you imagined and exposed all its glories and flaws you no longer want the land or item you imagined because it’s no longer yours to call your own. It’s now someone else’s reality. I can understand why Marlow likes to explore. He wants to find something for his own while out on the sea because the sea has no owner. It represents freedom, imagination and an unpredictable finding. I can identify with Marlow in that way because I think we (as people) are always searching for something to call our own.
posted by Nateil O.