Heart Of Darkness

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murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves...” (Conrad, 10).
With the unfolding of his journey Marlow starts his “enlightenment.” We can observe his evolution from “everyday European” to someone who realizes his own naiveness and begins to see the surrounding reality. This is the moment when he witnesses the shelling of the continent,
“In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-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. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the ...

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Another evidence of the Europeans’ ignorance towards the reality in Africa is shown when Marlow recounts his story on board of the Nellie. He tells his comrades,
“When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality - the reality I tell you - fades. The inner truth is
hidden - luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for - what is it? half a crown a tumble...” (Conrad, 36).
What Marlow actually says here is that while he is in Congo, and although he has ...

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