Conrad Introduces the Metaphor of Essay

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There is a fantasy-like quality to the beginning of Marlow's journey. What creates it? What is the importance of work to man? What does Marlow mean by a surface reality?

Marlowe is on a familiar 'type' of folkloric narrative: the archetypal quest narrative, where the holy innocent must go into the heart of darkness, the labyrinth, and bring back something pure to the civilized world. However, when Marlowe enters the world of the Congo, he discovers that Kurtz is just as corrupt as the supposed savages with whom Kurtz dwells. To Marlowe, the Congo is like a foreign, fantasyland because it is so different from the ordinary, constrained world of England. He portrays a place that is governed by primitive mythology, which Kurtz has used to make himself into a god who can do what he pleases. This mythological texture and the fact that even members of Kurtz's own crew seem to regard Kurtz with a strange kind of awe intensifies the unreal atmosphere of Heart of Darkness.

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Kurtz's intended back in England seems completely possessed with the man's charisma: "And you admired him,' she said. 'It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?'" she asks Marlowe.

Without the constraints of civilization on his appetites, Kurtz sickens and dies. Kurtz's specific illness is not named: like a fairytale curse he seems like a man who is dying of his inner evil rather than ill health. Adding to the surreal atmosphere is the fact his native bride seems completely unaffected physically, although she mourns his death. Kurtz's death seems like a moral death, rather than a physical one. Kurtz dies from a lack of real work, from feeding off of the true inhabitants of the land. He is thus a metaphor for colonial civilization itself......

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