The Diction of Melancholia

In The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's fictional study of civilized man's futile efforts to maintain his dignity and altruism as he probes the inscrutable darkness of the jungles of the Congo for precious ivory, Marlow is torn between his lifelong devotion to truth and his compulsion to perpetuate the myth of Kurtz's dedication to the jungle savages whom he exploits. Marlow has commanded ships on all the seven seas; he has observed man in conflict with stormy seas and tempestuous fellows everywhere; and he has acquired an operative contentment of mind that enables him to appraise his associates and acquaintances with a dispassionate discernment that occasionally betrays his humanism.

Aboard the Nellie, a cruising yawl moored in the Thames, Marlow narrates his harrowing experiences in the “heart of darkness,” his metaphor for the impenetrable jungle which, in turn, symbolizes the unplumbed evil that lies dormant in the hearts of men, waiting only for cues to unleash their hearts’ perfidies. As a boy he had wondered about the mysterious serpent that rolled through the heart of darkness. Now, a sea captain, he could vindicate his youthful aspirations. Lacking a command for the first time in his career, he has used his aunt's influence to obtain the captainship of a ridiculously outfitted fresh water steamer that coughed and wheezed its way up the snag-ridden Congo.

Before leaving the continent, he had been warned by the company doctor to maintain du calme in Africa. A strange doctor, indeed, who took cephalic indices of all the fortune hunters leaving for the land of ivory and rubber, but who would never write a paper for a medical journal because he never saw those who returned. His parting advice to Marlow, “avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun,” was heeded by the sensible sailor. Before the story ends, many men die because they lack du calme. Captain Freseleven, Marlow's predecessor, argues violently with a tribal chieftain about a couple of hens; when he