Heart of DarknessPart I

Prelude to the Journey

• Maps and restlessness• The Women:

[Conversation with the Aunt: Workers and Laborers and Ideals]

• Fresleven remembered: “Fresleven—that was the fellow's name, a Dane—thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. “ (9)

The Gateway/The Threshold“A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows

with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. “ (10)

The Journey Begins: the outer edge

• The French Steamer: A Closer Reading

• “The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform somberness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion.” (13)

Questions

• Why mention Fresleven’s death?• What is the role of women in civilized society?

The Mouth of the Congo

• 30 days Steamer (The big Swede) to • The Company Station• The chain gang (MC passage)• The Chief Accountant, 18• Caravan arrives• P. 19, Mr. Kurtz• Leaves for the Central Station, 200 miles

upriver – the journey

• Natives – Enemies -- to be destroyed by shells– Criminals – to be destroyed by laws

“All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill.” (16)

• 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 men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.” (16)

• “That’s backbone.” (18)

Question

• What image of Kurtz emerges?• What impressions are created by the intrusion

of the narrator?

The Central Station

• The Manager“Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint

expression of his lips, something stealthy-a smile- not a smile- I remember it, but I can’t explain.” (21)

“There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget.” (26)

• Kurtz -- • The Work and Rivets• The Eldorado Expedition

Questions