In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the narrator is obsessed with finding the meaning of everything he sees. Marlow, catapulted into a new continent, is overwhelmed by his strangeness and his inability to understand what surrounds him. The meaning he seeks he expects to find in the explanations and tries to describe it with his words, but he and the other characters in the story are often deceived by the words or are unable to understand them. Marlow's story shows how words and meaning are separate and even opposite. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Heart of Darkness is narrated primarily in the first person, by the character Charlie Marlow, and is filtered through the point of view of an anonymous third-person listener. Marlow only gradually comes to understand his experiences, and even as he tells his story he sometimes struggles to explain the meaning of what has happened. According to the narrator, a sailor ashore "generally... finds the secret [of the continent] not worth knowing. Sailors' tales have a direct simplicity... Marlow was not typical... for him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside" (7). The meaning of his story, then, will be difficult to grasp like a "halo of fog" (7). His story has no moral, no illuminating clarity; it begins with the mention of "one of the dark places on earth" (6) and ends with "it would have been too dark" (131). It starts at sunset and ends at night. The "heart of darkness" typically refers to the darkness of the human heart, or the heart of "darkest Africa", or even the secret of evil, but it also refers to the darkness of misunderstanding and ignorance. Just as the Romans in Britain, "men who go blind - as is very fitting for those who face the darkness" (9), like the Europeans in Africa, are shrouded in darkness, so too is Marlow's tale . Marlow searches for comprehensibility, only to find a mess of mystery, deception, and futility in both the continent itself and the men who work there. Africa is a great mystery; looking at its coast «is like thinking about an enigma» (19); the natives are "hidden from sight somewhere" (21); the chip captain tells Marlow that an anonymous Swede has hanged himself, "who knows" (23) why. Marlow's efforts to understand the situation by talking to his companions are in vain. The station manager's defining characteristic is his inscrutability: "it was impossible to tell what such a man could control. He never revealed that secret" (35). The other man Marlow speaks to is a spy who avoids ordering the rivets needed to repair the steamer and save the ailing Kurtz; this spy wants to let Kurtz die so he can't become the manager. Even the initial shipwreck of the steamboat is "too stupid...to be entirely natural" (33). Marlow discovers only fragments of the truth and must discover the rest on his own. The atmosphere of the camp is one of petty deception which also infects Marlow, who although he "hates, loathes, and cannot bear a lie" (44) allows the spy to believe that he is a person of great influence. Aside from this blatant deception there is another aspect of the camp that Marlow dislikes: its aimlessness. The pilgrims await, perhaps, Kurtz's death, "even if the only thing that affected them was the disease" (39). A man on a grassy path "look[s] after road maintenance" (32) although Marlow "cannot say [he] saw any road or any maintenance" (32). He condemns mine with "objectless explosions" (24) and digs holes "whose purpose [Marlow] foundimpossible to guess" (25). Marlow's love of meaning and truth explains his desire to leave the camp and listen to Kurtz. "The man presented himself as a voice... of all his gifts the one that stood out ... it was the ability to speak" (79). Kurtz's speech is the medium for all his ideas and meanings; his disciple, the Russian, "talked about everything [to Kurtz]... did [to the Russian ] see things - things" (93) - no indication of what kinds of things. Kurtz has "elevated feelings" (116), "ideas" (116), "immense plans" (111), but our only glimpse is in the his report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, which reveals nothing more concrete than the fact that "we can exercise practically unlimited power for good" (84). he has strayed so far from them that we have little idea what they are. But whatever Kurtz's ideas, his immense power matters Kurtz "would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party... any party" (123) . Its substance does not count; "there was something missing in him... that... couldn't be found." beneath his magnificent eloquence" (97-8); he is "empty to the core" (98) and can work for African as well as European ideals, just as he can write a report praising "august benevolence" (84 ) of the European government over Africa and scribble "exterminate all the brutes" (84) below describes the conquest of the land as "taking it away from those of a different complexion" (9), a thing redeemed by "only." an idea... something you can erect, before which you can bow and offer a sacrifice." a" (9). The phrase at the end of Marlow's sentence, which treats an idea as a deity, is reminiscent of Kurtz, whose example shows the emptiness of the naked idea and its immoderate power. This contrast between content and meaning is not limited to the person of Kurtz. Marlow is required to sign an agreement before leaving, promising "not to reveal any trade secrets" (15). “I will not reveal any trade secrets” (97) he promises, as he describes the shrunken heads surrounding Mr. Kurtz's house, showing how little his real and entirely uninteresting trade secrets have in common with Kurtz's secrets, which involve but they go much deeper than I trade. Likewise, a book called An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship that Marlow finds in an empty cabin is "unmistakably real" (63) to him, and his relationship with it as "an old and solid friendship" (63), because of his concrete, banal “talk about chains and purchases” (63). The author is "simple" (63), not eloquent Kurtz, but thanks to this the book contains more information. What interests Marlow most about the book, however, are the marginal notes, which appear to be in code, and turn the tome into a "whimsical mystery" (63). Marlow is more concerned with the context of this mysterious book, a relic of English civilization in the middle of Africa and containing strange markings, than with the text, which is "...not very compelling" (63). The simple, literal meaning of the book is eclipsed by its possible meanings. When Marlow discovers that the "cipher" is actually Russian, because the owner of the book, who accidentally forgot the work, is Russian, we are slightly disappointed. A solved mystery is much less impressive than an unsolved one; the more one knows, the more possible meanings are excluded. Marlow is aware that his understanding is incomplete; he cannot really hope to understand Kurtz or the foreign culture that surrounds him, the mystery of the jungle, because to do so would mean becoming a part of it, as Kurtz did. Lines of misunderstanding clearly divide the two worlds. The fireman on Marlow's steamer keeps the boiler full of water, "and what he knew wasthis: that if the water in that transparent thing disappeared, the evil spirit inside the boiler would become angry at the magnitude of its thirst, and would take a blow. "terrible revenge" (61). The native is able to use the boiler, but his ideas about how it works are mired in his own culture, just as Europeans can exploit native Africans to take their ivory without understanding their culture. The Africans whom Marlow sees "howl[ing]," "jump[ing]," and "sp[inning]" (59) "cursed us, prayed to us, welcomed us—who could say?" (59). Marlow watching the Africans, can, like those who watch him repair a ship, "see only the mere spectacle, and can never tell what it really means" (47). The meaning of his surroundings is accessible to him only because of the common humanity he shares with the natives: "what moved you was precisely the thought of their humanity - like yours... there was in you... a I have a vague suspicion that there was some meaning [in the natives' cries] that you…could understand" (60). Marlow never goes native, never "goes to earth for a howl and a dance" (60), and so is saved by the understanding of the mystery. It is Kurtz alone among Europeans who understands Africa. He can control the natives and speak their language, he can "tell them the right thing" (100) to prevent them from attacking, while even the Russian, Kurtz's disciple, "do[es] not understand the dialect of [that] tribe" (104). Where Marlow sees mystery, Kurtz understands his surroundings; as they watch a native ritual, Marlow asks Kurtz if he understands; Kurtz smiles and replies, "isn't it?" (114). He understands the "whisper" (98) of the jungle. Kurtz's final understanding, whatever causes him to scream, "how horrible!" (118) goes completely beyond Marlow. Kurtz cries out to "some vision" (118) Marlow does not see and can only wonder, "did he live his life again... during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?" (118). This “complete knowledge” is denied by Marlow, who thinks the reason might be that “all truth…[is] compressed into that…time when we pass the threshold of the invisible” (120). It refers to death, but the threshold that Kurtz crossed is also the one that separates Africa and Europe. He can say something on his deathbed just because he did this. Marlow's hypothesis regarding the moment of truth is clarified by his own encounter with death; he would probably "have nothing to say" (119) if he were dead, no judgment or revelation like Kurtz's. Likewise, the helmsman killed by Kurtz's followers "died without uttering a sound" (78), and in response to whatever meaning one might derive from the death, "as if in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper that we couldn't listen, he frowned" (78). Kurtz is not the only one who is granted a vision upon his death, but he alone is able to put the plain truth into words, to bring together meaning and language, because it understands both African mystery and European language and possesses the powerful gift of eloquence. Keep in mind: this is just one example. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. This connection between language and meaning does not harsh; Marlow does not have the strength to do so. Throughout the conversation with Kurtz's aspirant, they constantly interrupt each other, replacing each other's words with sentences that are true but which the speaker and the addressee do not understand in the same light. . "We will always remember [Kurtz]" Marlow, unable to forget Kurtz's last words, tells the Expected; “you know what great plans he had” (129) she replies, unaware of how useless they were. Marlow finally moves from deceptive words to completely false ones when he says to the.