Narrator of Heart of Darkness

Marlow, deeply attracted to the notion of exploring Africa, signs up to pilot a steam boat up the Kissai River, taking the place of a murdered company agent. Marlow's narrative is a story stripped of names and details, focussing on the physical journey as a metaphor for spiritual confrontation of man's ultimate depravity, symbolized by Kurtz' "monstrous passions" (Conrad 57). Early on Marlow hears about Kurtz' remarkable character, eloquence, and productivity. Yet when Marlow's boat finally reaches Kurtz' outpost, Marlow sees that Kurtz has himself become the heart of darkness: he has bowed down to depravity, to power, and to lust, ruling over the native population and accepting their sacrifices to him as if he were a god himself. When Kurtz dies, however, he realizes what he has become

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Knitters guard the entrance to the office of the Director of the Trading Company, and they are significant not just for the intensity with which they are described, but for the number of references to them that Marlow makes throughout his narrative. In a "dead silence" in the city of the "whited sepulchre," Marlow finds a door which is "ponderously ajar" (Conrad 13). This is how he first describes the Knitters: Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw- bottomed chairs knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me--still knitting with downcast eyes--and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was an plain as un umbrella cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into the waiting room (Conrad 13). The gist of this is repeated when Marlow emerges from his interview, so that upon his exit as well as his entrance the reader meets The Knitters, who thus function as a framing device within a framing device within a third framing device (the story-within-a-story). The repetition strengthens the portentous quality, and retrospectively the reader sees that they have indeed guarded the
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Approximate Word count = 2563
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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