Bobby's Entry on Part I of Heart of Darkness

When I first started reading Heart of Darkness, I was a little thrown off. The book starts with an anonymous narrator telling the story. Then we are introduced to Marlow. He begins telling his story, which from the line “that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began, to hear about one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences” showed that the narrator and rest of the crew were not excited to hear. So I thought this is one of those minor characters rambling along about some insignificant past event in their lives. I expected the usually long monologue to finish soon, but to my surprise it didn’t. I finally concluded that Marlow is just going to be narrating for the rest of the book. This is a very unusual writing style and one I am not used to.

Heart of Darkness shows a lot of examples that deal with the ideas of imperialism, “white man’s burden”, and social Darwinism. Marlow is often referring to the natives as savages and other derogatory terms that really dehumanize them. A strong quote I found has when Marlow said “they had faces like grotesque masks-these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast.” This shows his true opinion of the native people, his feelings of racial superiority and a sort of amazement of their physical condition due to their “savage” lifestyle.

Even though we see that the feeling of racial superiority is present, I predict that Marlow is going to undergo a change in attitude. I had noticed that Marlow had changed his perception of the natives three times already. At first he perceived them as enemies. He then changed his view and thought of them as criminals. The third time he begins to feel pity for them when he called them “nothing earthly now- nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.” Due to that fact that his opinion can change three times in the first eighteen pages and the fact that he is the protagonist of the story, I think that there is hope for him yet.