In 's
, 's character sees the natives as a race of people who are being exploited
by the white race.
When King Leopold II of Belgium established a colony in
the African Congo, he proclaimed it was for humanitarian reasonshe wanted to enlighten the
natives. While there was mention of bringing Christianity to themand he even allowed Protestant
missionaries to travel and live in the CongoLeopold was motivated only by sheer greed.
When Marlow travels into the Congo, the Company has hired him to retrieve , one of
their best agents in securing ivoryin fact, there is some jealousy expressed toward Kurtz by
others because no one can compete with the amount of ivory he exports from
the Inner Station.
For Marlow, this begins simply as an assignment. He has
never traveled to this part of the world before. Though there is someby the captain that takes
Marlow to the Lower Station, nothing could prepare him for the way the white men are treating
the indigenous people of what was then called the Congo.
Revulsion grows within him over the white man's dehumanizing colonization of the
Congo.
Marlow hears the natives described by the whites
as "enemies" and "criminals," but he sees men who have
been enslaved. They walk like they are zombieseven though their bodies live, their spirits are
dead. Marlow is horrified. The men are "...connected together with a chain..." Their
eyes "...stare stonily..." They walk past Marlow "with that complete, deathlike
indifference..."
Marlow leaves the sight of the chain gang behind,
trying to put them out of his mind. We can infer in the reading that he is struggling to
maintain a semblance of self-control.
You know I am not
particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack
sometimesthat's only one way of resistingwithout counting the exact cost, according to the
demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the
devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty,
red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove menmen, I tell you.
This passage reveals that Marlow is struggling to maintain his composure in
circumstances that make no sense. When he sees men...
...scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of massacre or
pestilence...I stood horror-struck...
Marlow is not an
innocent, untried youth. He has had to face hard times in his life, fighting "devils"
of many kinds. This experience, however, has taken its toll.
Marlow cannot
look at the natives as the violent Europeans do; he cannot abide how atrociously they are
treated. Marlow does not see them as criminals, or lesser creatures. He recognizes not
only that they are men, but that those who are driving themenslaving themare demons:
"red-eyed devils."
Marlow's job is to bring Kurtz back. Had he
needed the help of the natives, there is nothing to indicate that he would have treated them
badly. Because Marlow is a man of some moral standing (demonstrated by his reaction), the
treatment of the natives affects him deeply. This foreshadows the horror that still awaits him
on the remainder of his journey. Unlike the Company men, the natives are not a means to Marlow's
success or material wealth. They are flesh and blood as he is. And he is mortified not just by
seeing what is happening to them, but in realizing there is little he can do about
it.
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