In his remorseless colonial novella, Conrad without neglect in any degree of imagination, insnares us in the grip of the primitive horrors of the jungle just as he does with character Charles Marlow, as we follow the sailor down the Congo River: charmed by the snake, perusing a desperate desire to understand the brilliant chaos unfolding in the age of discovery in one of the final frontiers. This appetite for understanding leads Marlow to forget the tedious tasks he set out to complete quickly in favour of finding the elusive Mr Kurtz, embodying the behemoth of progress and discovery, and shrewdly operating with a repulsive efficiency of moral disregard; Kurtz, a deep beating drum that resounds with unholy primitive desire.
These rumours and whisperings infatuate Marlow. Perhaps he had found a formidable philosophy for a mayhem he could not comprehend. Maybe it was kinship, the feeling of an animal with a nature not far removed from his own – a ceaseless explorer drawing the lines on the map’s blank spaces. This colonial adventure recounted by Marlow uncomfortably explores something perhaps essential in a human need for discovery, infatuation and relationship to the primitive, and motivations in the culmination of all manner of progress. This being said, I also think Conrad’s book is crucial reading in understanding the psychology of colonial attitudes and exploration in the age of discovery from a historical perspective. Marlow and Kurtz illuminate two parts of this exploration, but it is perhaps their similarities that are most poignantly intriguing, and most terrifying.
