While I have many difficulties in life, just functioning normally, I think it will come to no surprise that I also had a challenge analyzing some of the passages from Heart of Darkness. So without further ado, my passage that I had difficulty with was the meaning of the following quote:
" We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign- and no memories" (108).
I can understand that the passage is referencing the jungle and the prehistoric times, or the "night of first ages".It is foreign to him and his men. The part I am troubled with is more what exactly they can not understand. I speculated that there was no one to pass down the stories and information so there is no understanding of (at least for Marlow) the history of the jungle and the way of life there.
I don't think there's an actual "what" to understand. The men are in uncharted territory in a land, which is, in their opinion, uncivilized and reminiscent of the dawn of time. He's referring the the Congo and the Congolese as prehistoric, backwards people. Marlow and the other Europeans feel out of place and unable to understand the situation and their surroundings. I think the preceding quote is very interesting as well "we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anna, were in the Congo here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anna as well. I think it is ironic he claims they were "leaving hardly a sign- and no memories" when the Congolese seemed to be dying so frequently.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anna in the sense that I don't think there is any specific thing the Europeans don't understand, it is more of a disconnect between them and the unknown territory they have entered in the Congo. The Europeans' lack of understanding results from the fact that they view themselves as superior beings, immersed in a foreign, primitive setting.
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