Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

A difference between the quests of Marlow and Jack is the kind of knowledge they seek. Jack desires knowledge about taboo topics, such as death, and traditional knowledge. He seems to value these types over the knowledge that can be gained from experience. This is due to the fact Jack believes “all plots tend to move deathward” (Delillo 26). Jack is not allowed to act due to his fear of death. Marlow seems to value intellectual knowledge as well. Marlow has “street smarts” and a experiential knowledge, to a certain extent, but desires to attain higher thinking. He is also the same as Jack in the respect that he is not an action taker and is portrayed as a cowardly man. Additionally, he does not seem to want to gain knowledge acquired through

The way Marlow uses in this description of Kurtz, his language does not include human attributes, helps paint Kurtz as a physical embodiment of a voice, not a true human being. This displays how Marlow sees Kurtz as a figure and a voice that exists outside of the human realm. In short, to Marlow Kurtz is not human. Throughout the novel, Kurtz is described by other characters in a way that paints him as a god. However, when Marlow meets Kurtz, and discovers he is not the strong and powerful man who was described to him, he was not disappointed. This reinforces how Marlow was not seeking out Kurtz because he believed him to be a “strong” and “forceful” man. Instead, Marlow was looking for the intellectual knowledge he believed Kurtz would bestow upon him. Marlow is not disappointed in Kurtz, Marlow wanted a voice and he got it. Another example which displays how Marlow did not view Kurtz as a person but as something different was when Kurtz died and Marlow said “The voice was gone… the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole” (Conrad 87). By saying the “voice” was gone, and not “Kurtz” was gone, Marlow shows readers that Kurtz’s body was not important but rather his mind and his knowledge were what left the Earth when Kurtz passed. Furthermore, by describing Kurtz’s burial as “something” put into a hole, Marlow reinforces how Kurtz was something