Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fic - Joseph Conrad [134]
17 (p. 28) the sparks flew upwards, as man is born to trouble: This language is taken from the Bible, Job 5:7 (KJV), a resonant intertext given Marlow’s description of the relentless sufferings of the crew of the Judea.
18 (p. 32) the heat of life in the handful of dust: This is another allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures; in this case Marlow refers to the account in Genesis 2:7 (KJV) of God’s creation of human life from dust.
Heart of Darkness
1 (p. 37) We four: Marlow’s unnamed listeners are based on a group of Conrad’s friends: G. F. W. Hope, W B. Keen, and C. H. Mears, who, like their fictional counterparts, were, respectively, a company director, an accountant, and a lawyer. The unnamed primary narrator does not appear to be based on an actual person. The group met for social outings on the Thames estuary on a yacht that was, in fact, named the Nellie and was owned by Hope.
2 (p. 39) all the men.... never returned: Sir Francis Drake (c.1540-1596) commanded the Golden Hind, with which he circumnavigated the globe from 1577 to 1580. Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) commanded an expedition, with the ships Erebus and Terror, in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage (a route that would allow direct travel between the north Atlantic and the north Pacific). The ships became trapped in the Arctic ice, and all members of the expedition died. Conrad’s late essay “Geography and Some Explorers” praises Franklin’s accomplishments as an explorer.
3 (p.40) The yarns of seamen ... illumination of moonshine: The contrast between these two approaches to storytelling is central to Conrad’s literary method. See the introductory essay to this volume for a discussion of this passage.
4 (p. 40) when the Romans first came here: In 55 and 54 B.C., Julius Caesar led two Roman military expeditions into Britain, but it would not be until A.D. 43 that the actual Roman conquest of Britain would begin.
5 (p.44) whited sepulchre: In the Gospel of Matthew (23:27) Jesus says, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (KJV). The fact that Brussels, the capital of Belgium, reminds Marlow of Jesus’ simile is intended to evoke the hypocrisy of King Leopold II’s claims that his agents in the Congo were engaged in a humanitarian mission.
6 (p.45) a large shining map.... into the yellow: Maps during this era often represented imperial territories according to this color-coded system: red for British, blue for French, green for Italian, orange for Portuguese, purple for German, and yellow for Belgian. See the introductory essay to this volume for a discussion of this passage.
7 (p.46) Ave! ... Morituri te salutant: The quotation translates as “Hail! ... Those who are about to die salute you” (Latin). Roman gladiators prefaced their matches with this salutation.
8 (p.46) measure my head: The doctor is practicing craniology, which was a pseudoscience premised on the belief that head sizes and shapes were indicative of differences between the races, particularly with regard to intelligence.
9 (p.48) “the labourer is worthy of his hire”: This phrase, piously uttered by Marlow’s naive aunt, is a quotation from a section of the Gospel of Luke (10:7, KJV) in which Jesus instructs his followers to engage in selfless missionary work. Marlow views her pronouncement with irony, given his knowledge of the material motives that actually drive imperialism.
10 (p.51) one of the reclaimed: Marlow uses this phrase to denote the rifle-bearing African overseeing the chain gang for the same reason he refers to the white imperialists as “pilgrims”—to underscore the fraudulence of the benevolent rhetoric that legitimizes their ruthless activities. African collaborators such as the one depicted here were commonplace in Leopold’s Congo. As Adam Hochschild points out, “a class of foremen [was created]