Whited Sepulcher
Throughout the excerpt from, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad uses many forms of imagery and figurative language to reveal the mood. The imagery used is a key factor to get the reader involved in the novella and truly understand the excerpt. The figurative language used demonstrates an ominous and uneasy mood through the metaphors, similes etc.
The imagery Conrad uses is essential in revealing the ominous mood. Marlow is in the Company's office and as he arrives, he is greeted by two women: "[One who] wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose." The detailed descriptions construct the image of a woman who represents darkness and projects
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As Marlow continues on to observe the two women who are "knitting black wool"(11) It is being suggested that the black wool represents darkness so since these women are knitting it, it can only mean that they are evil, waiting to determine the destiny of Marlow as he walks through that door. Conrad suggests that these women decide the fate of those who enter through the doors of darkness. The two women allude to the three fates in Greek Mythology who decide whether someone gets to live or die. They are the women "guarding the door of Darkness" it then can be implied that the people who enter the Company's office will likely not return after their hazardous venture. So when it is stated "MORITURI TE SALUTANT" its saying that those who are about to die salute you. They are showing a sense of respect but are also expecting you to die soon. It, therefore, is haunting the reader as to what may occur. As Marlow encroaches upon the Company's office he begins to describe the area as " A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow... a dead silence, grass sprouting right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar"(11). This imagery is contributing to an …show more content…
He uses this simile to develop the idea of what the stairs looked like. Comparing the stairs to a desert shows how empty and eerie the place is because a desert is bare, dirty and plain. Additionally Marlow notices that "[he] arrived in a city that always makes [him] think of a whited sepulcher."(11). A sepulcher is a tomb for the dead, which carries an ominous or morbid connotation. In the bible a "white sepulchre" is someone who appears beautiful on the outside "but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."(Matthew 23:27). This comparison gives the reader an uneasy feeling about the offices and assuming the people who work there are malicious. Marlow sees the Belgian town, where the Company is and compares it to a tomb. While it is light and bright on the outside, within it contains horrors and darkness. Marlow has negative and death-like memories in the Belgian city so seeing this building gives Marlow a sense of uneasiness. The combination of "whited" and "sepulcher" demonstrates the hypocritical connotations that Conrad is trying to suggest, and he explains here his dislike of the Belgian companies that operated in the Congo. So it can be inferred that this will be one of those companies that are shady. So, therefore, this excerpt gives an ominous and uneasy
In the passage of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad utilizes syntax that captures Marlow’s conscience with his mental process of perception filled with contradiction and uncertainty. Because Marlow expressed his perspective of the bond with the natives, he pointed out that every men on earth has similar characteristics of prehistorics traits. Conrad employs imagery which can permits his reader to visualize how Marlow is feeling when he took the opportunity in seeing the natives and their lifestyle. Because of viewing their natives lifestyle, Marlow has stirred his emotion in being overwhelmed and terrified. A rhetorical question was used at the end of the passage to show how Marlow is dealing with his trouble with what he sees in his surroundings.
Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, is told in a narrative frame, which is one of the contributions to the complexity of the novel. Conrad employs an unknown narrator who tells the outside picture and Marlo, who tells the inside picture of the novel. Marlow narrates the darkness of the novel as he ventures of into the Congo River as an employee for “The Company” where he collects ivory and meets Kurtz. Upon Marlo’s adventure Conrad employs an extension of incredibly ambiguous, as well as blatantly obvious symbols. Conrad’s usage of symbols exemplifies the pervasiveness of darkness, ambiguity, and a destructive factor of colonization.
At the beginning of the protagonist’s journey it seemed as though the "two women . . . knitting black wool" (Conrad 13) in the trading center office were there to foreshadow the mortal death of Marlow. One may have drawn this conclusion because this is an obvious reference to the women who knitted while watching aristocrats executed by the guillotine during the French Revolution. I believe it meant something much more deep. A good writer, one of Conrad’s caliber, does not place superfluous scenes, words, or phrases in his or her book. He writes only what he needs to write. With that in mind, because Marlow did not die at the end of his journey, therefore the women then had to represent something else. They foreshadowed the death of Marlow’s soul. They knew he was without a spirit guide because they were aware the Trading Company had not offered him one. They also knew Kurtz hadn’t had a guide either.
Many features of the setting, a winter's day at a home for elderly women, suggests coldness, neglect, and dehumanization. Instead of evergreens or other vegetation that might lend softness or beauty to the place, the city has landscaped it with "prickly dark shrubs."1 Behind the shrubs the whitewashed walls of the Old Ladies' Home reflect "the winter sunlight like a block of ice."2 Welty also implies that the cold appearance of the nurse is due to the coolness in the building as well as to the stark, impersonal, white uniform she is wearing. In the inner parts of the building, the "loose, bulging linoleum on the floor"3 indicates that the place is cheaply built and poorly cared for. The halls that "smell like the interior of a clock"4 suggest a used, unfeeling machine. Perhaps the clearest evidence of dehumanization is the small, crowded rooms, each inhabited by two older women. The room that Marian visits is dark,...
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's tale of one man's journey, both mental and physical, into the depths of the wild African jungle and the human soul. The seaman, Marlow, tells his crew a startling tale of a man named Kurtz and his expedition that culminates in his encounter with the "voice" of Kurtz and ultimately, Kurtz's demise. The passage from Part I of the novel consists of Marlow's initial encounter with the natives of this place of immense darkness, directly relating to Conrad's use of imagery and metaphor to illustrate to the reader the contrast between light and dark. The passage, although occurring earlier on in the novel, is interspersed with Marlow's two opposing points of view: one of naïveté, which comes before Marlow's eventual epiphany after having met Kurtz, and the matured perspective he takes on after all of the events leading up to his and Kurtz's encounter.
It is indisputable that Heart of Darkness is a book including symbolism and metaphors intensely. Especially the word “dark and darkness” are the most frequently used metaphors in the book. When Marlow goes to see the doctor he sees two knitting ladies. The feeling that he gets from them is really strong that Marlow refers to them back in the following part of the story. Apart from the one in the boat, Marlow uses the terms dark and darkness for the first time when he sees the ladies. He sees them as guarding the door of “Darkness”, knitting black wool as for a warm pall. Trying to analyze why he feels that way would be very long thus, here I will point out the effect of the ladies on Marlow. The ladies barely speak and show up in the story for a small amount of time, but the image they give him is enough for them to make their existence perceptible and persistent throughout the story. They are the indicators of what kind of things Marlow will experience during his journey and no doubt that it also shows the effects of women on Marlow, not physically but mentally, making him notice the affairs he will
Conrad uses light and dark imagery to help create the setting for the story; light represents civilization while darkness suggests the uncivilized. The novel opens on the deck of a boat called the Nellie, as we are introduced to the passengers we are told how the sun is slowly fading, and soon darkness will engulf the area. This image is Conrad?s first use of light and darkness; he uses it to foreshadow the ultimate darkness Marlow will face. Conrad is warning his readers to be careful, lest they let down their guard and allow the darkness to come them. The other character in the book, Kurtz, is taken over by the evil embodied in the darkness. During Kurtz?s journey into the heart of darkness the isolation, darkness and power all made him lose control of himself and allowed the darkness to take over.
As Marlow assists the reader in understanding the story he tells, many inversions and contrasts are utilized in order to increase apperception of the true meaning it holds. One of the most commonly occurring divergences is the un orthodox implications that light and dark embody. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness brims with paradoxes and symbolism throughout its entirety, with the intent of assisting the reader in comprehending the truth of not only human nature, but of the world.
...o, while the novella’s archetypal structure glorifies Marlow’s domination of Kurtz. These two analyses taken together provide a much fuller and more comprehensive interpretation of the work. Conrad presents the idea that there is some darkness within each person. The darkness is is inherited and instinctual, but because it is natural does not make it right. He celebrates – and thereby almost advises – the turn from instinct. By telling Marlow’s tale, Joseph Conrad stresses to his audience the importance of self-knowledge and the unnecessity of instinct in civilization.
Literature is never interpreted in exactly the same way by two different readers. A prime example of a work of literature that is very ambiguous is Joseph Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness". The Ambiguities that exist in this book are Marlow's relationship to colonialism, Marlow's changing feelings toward Kurtz, and Marlow's lie to the Intended at the end of the story.
When read at face value, Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, is a portrayal of white, imperial, oppression of the African natives of the Congo. However, when we view the writing through the lenses of psychoanalysis and feminism, a story focused on one character, Marlow, emerges. Each theory presents a new way of interpreting and understanding the character development and imagery within the story. Psychoanalysis provides a look into the mind and dreamlike setting of Marlow. Feminism examines the binary gender roles of the characters, Marlow and Kurtz. Both theories examine how these two characters are in some way the same person.
In the beginning of Marlow’s story he tells how he, "Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--to get a job." He tells this in the context that he was so desperate to travel in the trade industry that he did what was unthinkable in those times: he asked a woman for financial assistance. The woman, his aunt, also transcended the traditional role of women in those times by telling Marlow that she would be delighted to help him and to ask her for help whenever he needed it. This incident did not have much to do with the symbolic theme of the story; it simply served to tell the reader how Marlow managed to be able to travel to the Congo. On a higher level, it was intended by Conrad to illustrate Marlow’s opinion of women’s inferior role in society, which embodied traditional 19th century society.
Joseph Conrad created a character called Marlow. Marlow narrates the journey that he was taking. However, it is through this journey that the entire story of Heart of Darkness is narrated to us. This book is not entirely a fictitious story because the reader partly gets to know the authors own experiences. This book mainly talks about colonization and is often taken as a voice against colonization. However, the book is on many levels a story about ambiguity because of the words used, the incidents, narration and the mixed feeling of Marlow.
From the very beginning of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad traps us in a complex play of language, where eloquence is little more than a tool to obscure horrific moral shortcomings. Hazy, absurd descriptions, frame narratives, and a surreal sense of Saussurean structural linguistics create distance from an ever-elusive center, to show that language is incapable of adequately or directly revealing truth. Understanding instead occurs in the margins and along the edges of the narrative; the meaning of a story “is not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze” (105).
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a great example of a Modernist novel because of its general obscurity. The language is thick and opaque. The novel is littered with words such as: inconceivable, inscrutable, gloom. Rather than defining characters in black and white terms, like good and bad, they entire novel is in different shades of gray. The unfolding of events takes the reader between many a foggy bank; the action in the book and not just the language echoes tones of gray.