The author, Conrad makes it evident that the company is not what it portrays. For instance when Marlow first appears in at the company's headquarters he notices “a dead silence” much as how in the congo the towns were abandoned. Furthermore if reflected back to the story that marlow told about Forsleven the man who had Marlow's current job, before he was killed, Marlow describes his corpse in a very discrete manner by choosing to mention “grass growing through his ribs” much as in how when he describes the town the company is located he mentions “grass sprouting between the stones”. Furthermore when Marlow was recalling the story about the congo, he mentioned that the entire incident occurred because of two black hens, and when marlow first steps into the companies building he notices “Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool.” thus the two wool represents the hens. The parallels are used to create an argument stating that the congo and civilization are not so different as it seen by the civilized man. The parallels demonstrate how both the congo and the company are considered to be “dark” places. This is evident when Marlow describes the building as a “whited sepulchre”. Thus the color white represents wealth because typically when a building was white in that time period it was made out of marble, thus portraying the company's immense amount of wealth. However he does not only describes it as white but as a “whited sepulchre” which means a white tomb or in this case it can be interpreted as an expensive tomb. Thus showing that the company is a temptation, it portrays wealth but however it is truly death much as how the congo portrays an image of possible wealth but what it truly is is death.
-Leandro Ferreira 2/2/2016
The author is able to make these parallel comparisons, with not just people, but again to describe the situation of light and darkness like in his story about the Romans. Marlow makes these comparisons in order to present to the readers that the company is acting like the Romans in a way that they are the light of civilization, going into a dark uncivilized area in order to bring a societies that are built apon death. Trevor Denny 2/2/16
ReplyDeleteI wanted to point out as well a parallel between this novel and "To Kill a Mockingbird" in specific to the scene where Scout and Jim build a snowman. The snowman is made mostly of dark dirt and then simply coated with the little bit of white snow that they can find to make it look like a snowman. I believe this to be similar to the company in the sense that they are filled with the same darkness as everything else (the dirt), but just coated in a white exterior, giving off the pretense of a holy/ pure company.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to point out as well a parallel between this novel and "To Kill a Mockingbird" in specific to the scene where Scout and Jim build a snowman. The snowman is made mostly of dark dirt and then simply coated with the little bit of white snow that they can find to make it look like a snowman. I believe this to be similar to the company in the sense that they are filled with the same darkness as everything else (the dirt), but just coated in a white exterior, giving off the pretense of a holy/ pure company.
ReplyDeleteA parallel could be how successful this company is as it operates in the Congo. It can show how much power this company has over the people in the Congo.
ReplyDeleteA parallel could be how successful this company is as it operates in the Congo. It can show how much power this company has over the people in the Congo.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Conrad was trying to say you can not have good without evil in this case The Congo being evil since it is taken from the perspective of Marlow. Everything the black people do is scene as either savage or flawed while the whites are nothing less than perfect.
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