Heart of Darkness Part II
One evening, as Marlow rests on his ship, he overhears the leader of an expedition, who also happens to be the General Manager’s uncle, conversing about Kurtz with his nephew. They seem to be disturbed by the fact that Kurtz has been rejecting their attempts to communicate. Kurtz has an immense influence on the company and sends a massive amount of ivory. They have heard rumors that Kurtz is sick and he has been out of communication for the last nine months. He was supposed to return to the central station with ivory but he suddenly turned back to his station after coming halfway to the Centre Station. Marlow fails to comprehend the diabolical plan of both men as he hears just a few snatches of their conversation. After a few days, General Manger’s uncle and the members of the Eldorado Expedition leave the camp. Marlow later hears the news that all their donkeys have died, and never hears of them again. Marlow pities the poor asses for he felt that the men were less valuable than the donkeys.
After working strenuously for three months, Marlow completes repairing the ship. He sails upriver with the General Manager, pilgrims, and thirty cannibals who bring along a large amount of stinking Hippopotamus meat. Their route is famed for being torturously long, tiring, and challenging. The steamboat sails an empty stream surrounded by extreme silence all along its banks. The forest around appears to be unending. Marlow describes the jungle as monstrous and free and the natives as weird people who howl and make horrid faces during their brief glimpses. He focuses on studying the surface of the notoriously dangerous river to prevent the ship from being damaged any further. Some members of his crew, like the locals and the company men, are recruited along the way. They come across European camps and villages of the natives along their voyage. They also hear the sounds of drums and chants but rarely see anyone. Marlow has a local man trained under him who can work with the steam engine. He talks to one of the men about the mysterious stillness he feels surrounds their boat as it passes through the dark recesses of the forest. Fifty miles into their journey, they reach a hut of reeds with a tattered flag and stacks of wood piles. This seems unexpected to Marlow; he sees a faint pencil writing on the leading board that asks them to approach Kurtz’s station with caution. The message is signed, but it isn’t legible enough to be read. Marlow picks up a book in the shelter. The book is an inquiry into seamanship with diagrams and figures dating several years back. He finds symbols marked on the pages of the book and believes them to be a cipher. He is amazed and astounded at the book and considers it unmistakably authentic. The manager thinks that the hut belongs to a trader that they want to bring to justice.
The boat departs, and Marlow wonders about his first meeting with the legendary Kurtz. They reach a difficult section of the river and decide to halt eight miles from the inner station. They are also concerned about the warning that had been left for them with the wood pile. They feel it would be safer for them to reach the station in daylight, the following morning. Marlow is eager to cover the rest of the journey, but after listening to the manager he thinks that halting would be wise.
Marlow wakes up the following morning from a mostly sleepless night and notices the steamship surrounded by a blinding white fog. The invisible natives shatter the silence with hair-raising screams that are followed by an eerie silence. The crew fetches their guns, ready to kill. One African crew member tells Marlow to kill whoever they find so that the cannibals can feed on it, as the stock of hippo flesh that they had brought along has long been finished. He realizes their incredible power to restrain not cannibalizing the white men aboard.
Marlow overhears a disagreement between the crew members as they are unable to identify the correct river banks. The manager gives Marlow full authority in taking whatever risks he deems necessary for their journey upstream, but he decides to wait a little longer for the mist to lift as he does not wish to risk engagement with an unseen enemy. The fog lifts after two hours and they continue upstream. Marlow chooses the narrow western fork of the river when he comes across a tiny island a mile from the inner station. Suddenly, arrows come shooting toward the steamship from the jungle. Marlow worries about the ship’s safety and orders his helmsman to steer straight as he orders the crew to take cover. The pilgrims open fire on the bush, which creates a cloud of smoke that blocks Marlowe’s vision of the river and makes navigation more dangerous. A gun blasts behind Marlow, and the helmsman starts to shoot in the direction of the explosion. Marlow takes charge of the wheel to protect the ship from the snags.
Suddenly, a spear hits the helmsman, and blood begins to spill everywhere in the pilothouse. Marlow’s shoes and socks become soaked with blood. The natives run away in debilitating fear when they hear Marlow sounding the ship’s whistle. General Manager sends a pilgrim with a message, who is horrified by the sight of the dead helmsman. Marlow asks the man to steer while he throws away his bloodied shoes. The hostile demeanor of the natives causes Marlow to fear that Kurtz may be no longer alive. One of the men on the Nellie accuses Marlow of telling them an absurd story. He attempts explains his obsession with Kurtz as he had been journeying toward the agent’s station. He talks about Kurtz’s education and family background. He further explains that Kurtz transformed from an enlightened European man to a beast who accepts sacrifices made in his honor. He recalls Kurtz's beautifully detailed treatise on the suppression of savage customs. Kurtz argued that white men must bear the responsibility to help the natives as they appear supernatural to the natives of Africa. The treatise ends with the order to exterminate all brutes.
Marlow returns to the helmsman and mourns him deeply, acknowledging him to be a remarkable man. He dumps the man’s body into the river rather than allowing the cannibals to eat him, and takes charge of the wheel again. Everyone aboard the ships seems to believe that the station has been burnt and Kurtz killed. Some of the pilgrims are happy that they killed many natives but Marlow is confident that no native is killed. They reach Kurtz’s inner station and find the boat in perfect shape. There they meet a white fellow wearing clothes with bright patches of blue, red, and yellow on the back and front. The way patching has been done makes him look extremely neat. The man tells Marlow to be careful of the snag that came in the river the previous night. The man comes on board and talks to Marlow, and he seems to despise the natives. The man assures him that the natives are simple people. He introduces himself as a twenty-five-year-old Russian sailor who worked for the English men and then later deserted them. He has been wandering through the river Congo for the last two years.
When the Russian says that he has met Kurtz, Marlow holds his tongue. The Russian man was the one who had lived in the abandoned hut where they had found the wood. Marlow returns his book and learns that the coded message is not a cipher but rather annotations in Russian. The Russian is overjoyed at receiving his book. He also tells Marlow that the natives attacked them because they didn’t want Kurtz to leave. The conversation with the Russian makes Marlow realize that even he has come to admire Kurtz. The Russian further adds that Kurtz has enlarged his mind with his rhetoric.
Analysis
Marlow presents a dismal portrait of the European administrators of colonies. Nearly all of them are shown to be either lazy, incompetent, or downright cruel. Marlow’s encounter with the brick maker who has never made any bricks, and the seeming inability of the administration to provide the rivets that are so essential for the repair of the ship reveal the rank corruption within the company. The author uses these characters to indicate that practices like imperialistic colonialism caused humans to indulge their worst character traits. On the contrary, Marlow is depicted to be a lot more dedicated to his objective, both in how he repairs the craft as well as the caution with which he operates it. He derives his motivation from his growing obsession with the legendary Kurtz.
He hears several conflicting accounts of Kurtz. The Brickmaker tells him that he is a brilliant agent who has worked out a means of supplying great amounts of Ivory to the company. He has heard rumors of the man’s character and believes that he will soon join the leadership of the company. Others tell Marlow of brutal tactics that the agents utilize in their infinite greed for ivory and those that believe Kurtz to be the cruelest among them all. Kurtz’s essay about the nature of colonization seems to suggest that he believes in spreading European wisdom among the natives due to their belief that they are supernatural beings. On top of that, General Manager considers him to be a rogue, whose continued operation poses a threat to the continued practice of the company. All of these stories create a compelling and mysterious persona for the man, and it begins to serve as Marlow’s primary objective.
