Part 2 Section 3
Things seem to shift after the death of the helmsmen. Why do you think that would happen? What is going on with Marlow here? What’s significant? Things shift so much that if you are diligent in your reading, you will miss that we again get taken out of Marlow’s story and put firmly, though briefly, into the narrator’s story.
One of the major shifts is to “the girl” or as Marlow, apparently quoting Kurtz, says, “My Intended.” He goes on to say that Kurtz refers to “My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my… everything belonged to him.” What do we know from this…what can we infer?
Why the voice?
Marlow switches back to the helmsman and the brief funeral. Pay attention to the reactions to the people on the boat. What’s the reference about “being eaten” about?
We meet the manager. He’s says he is older than he looks. Pay attention to his journey to get here as well. Also look at his interaction with Marlow and what he says his interaction with Kurtz is. It’s this guy who annotates! Marlow gives him his book back.
There is talk here about attacks. Be sure that you can sort them out.
More is said about Ivory in this section. Be sure to pay attention to that. Look at the images.
Quotations:
“The point was in his being a gifted creature and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, hi words--the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light or the deceitful flow for the heart of an impenetrable darkness.” p 48
“Mind, I am not trynig to excuse or ever explain--I am trying to account to myself for--for--Mr. Kurtz--for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England and--as he was good enough to say himself--his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz, and by and by I learned that most appropriated the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the making of a report for its future guidance.” p50
