Heart of Darkness: Section one

The British Empire in the 19th Century was immense; the Brits boasted that the sun never set on the Union Jack, as indeed it did not. Among those nations the empire included were Canada, Australia, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, India and Nigeria. Britain's interests were primarily economic; she was not interested in governing these countries any more than was necessary for her economic purposes. Since she was the first of the nations to industrialize, her plants needed raw materials for manufacture and markets to sell her goods. She desired the amassing of wealth through free trade. As a means to furthering this end she brought the British version of civilization: the "white man's burden."

For the purposes of this study our interests are twofold. First, What is Conrad saying about British imperialism? How is he evaluating it? Second, what are the implications for us as Americans, as America today seeks to impose her values on our world?

The Heart of Darkness begins with 5 seaman sitting on the deck of a yawl at evening in the London harbor. Behind them stretches the London metropolis, "the biggest and greatest town on earth," but we are repeatedly told that a "mournful gloom" rests upon it. The captain standing before them was the Director of Companies, "trustworthiness personified," but his work was "within the brooding gloom" (53).

The narrator's attention is focused upon Marlow who, sitting Buddha-like, begins to relate one of his "inconclusive experiences" (58). Note what type of man he is. Later in our reading we are told he greatly values work and hates lying above all things (85, 88). He muses that London itself was once "one of the dark places on the earth" (55) until the Romans and the Gauls brought civilization to it. "The conquest of the earth . . . is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only (58). We are not told the precise nature of that idea. What does Marlow have in mind? Probably the ideal of humanistic attitudes.

As Christians we must conclude that the idea which best redeems an uncivilized society is derived from Judeo-Christian values. What are these? The importance of the individual, of freedom of choice, of the rule of law, are among them. It is only in the instilling of such values in a people that the "conquest of the earth" may be said to be redeemed. Whether or not Conrad understood this is unclear from the text; he focuses on the negative underside of things, and leaves the reader to conclude for himself the nature of the "redeeming idea."

Marlow begins by relating how as a child he gazed at maps (this is strongly autobiographical) and dreamed of sailing up rivers, especially the Congo, that resembled "an immense snake uncoiled" as it serpintined its way into the heart of Africa (60). To receive his assignment he visits the headquarters of the Continental Trading Company in Europe (probably Brussels) where, in the office he meets women that remind him of those mythical figures that guard the entrance to the underworld. In mythology there were three: Clotho, who spun the thread of life, Lachesis, who measured its length, and Atropos, who cut the thread.

After being examined by a doctor, who wants to measure his skull, he visits his aunt to bid her good-bye. She represents a blind idealism which Marlow quickly sees as being completely out of touch with reality. In an aside he remarks that women in general are out of touch with reality, a remark which not only tells the reader more about the character of Marlow, but also has thematic significance for the story. Since the reader disagrees with him on his assessment of the feminine nature, one is inclined to suspect other of his judgments, which is Conrad's intention, as he is writing in the impressionist literary genre.

After a slow and tedious trip by sea, Marlow arrives at the company station where he encounters blacks in the most abject and inhuman conditions, some in chains as criminals, herded by other blacks with guns, and many lying prone "in attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair (71). In contrast to them is an immaculately dressed bookkeeper, whose appearance and bearing are completely incongruous with his surroundings. Marlow soon discovers that the prevailing motivation of all the whites he meets is simply to make money (76).

Soon Marlow begins to hear about Kurtz, a figure about whom everyone stands in awe. He is a "first class agent," who sends more ivory than all other agents put together (74), and who, at the same time has a reputation for being "an emissary of pity and science and progress." When Marlow is accused of being one of "the new gang--the gang of virtue" (83), he says he was suddenly enlightened, and almost laughs. What insight has he achieved? That Kurtz is using idealism as a cover-up for his own ambitions for wealth and personal advancement? Is it impossible to wed humanist idealism with ambitions for economic gain?

Reading Classics at the Wade

This fall we will be considering some fiction and autobiographies that present experiences of native Africans: colonialist attitudes, ancient customs and traditions of the Igbo peoples in Nigeria, and classic autobiographies of escaped slaves. Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness offers a commentary on colonialist attitudes, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart depicts Igbo customs and traditions, and Frederick Douglas's Narrative together with Harriet Jacobs Incidents present graphic accounts of their experiences in slavery and in escaping. This lecture gives some background for each of these authors and some suggestions for approaching The Heart of Darkness, which we will be considering next session.

Among those authors whose lives are utterly fascinating Joseph Conrad's certain ranks high. His life falls into three distinct phases: his youth in Poland, his years on the sea, and his career as an author who became a master stylist and a leading writer of impressionist literature. He was born in 1874 into the life of the Polish landed gentry as Jozef Korzeniowski. Poland was at that time under Russian rule and his father, being on the wrong side of the political fence, was exiled into Russia. Conrad's mother died when he was 8, and he was raised by his uncle.

As a youth Conrad was an avid reader, particularly of the works, in translation, of Dickens and Shakespeare. But he was especially fascinated by the study geography and the lives of men who devoted themselves to the exploration of land and sea. One day as a child gazing at a map of Africa, he put his finger down on the Congo River and declared that one day he would go there. The wish was realized in 1890 when as a steamboat captain he navigated up the Congo, an experience that offered the inspiration for The Heart of Darkness.

He astounded his uncle when as a teenager he declared his determination to leave his land-locked Poland and go to sea. Finally securing permission, with the help of a tutor he made his way down to Marseilles, France, where in 1874 he entered the French navy, and his naval career began. As a neophyte sailor he had many adventures, including participating in smuggling goods into Spain during the Carlos uprisings.

Conrad recounts how--in 1874 or 75, he forgot which--he first heard words in the English language when a sailor shouted "Look out, there," and was enchanted by the sound. Joining the English merchant marine, he rises in its ranks to its highest by 1886. In 1890 he realized the dream of his youth by taking command of a river steamer and sailing up the Congo. But he contracted malaria, which necessitated a year of convalescence in England. Having made an attempt at writing a story--Almayer's Folly--prior to this time, and finding it well received, he soon abandoned his life on the sea, married, and quickly rose to become a master writer of English fiction.

Musing on his adopted career, he writes: "The truth of the matter is that my faculty to write in English is as natural as any other aptitude with which I might have been born. I have a strange and overpowering feeling that it had always been an inherent part of myself. English was for me neither a matter of choice nor adoption. The merest idea of choice had never entered my head. And as to adoption--well, yes, there was adoption; but it was I who was adopted by the genius of the language, which, directly I came out of the stammer stage, made me its own so completely that its very idioms, I truly believe, had a direct action on my temperament and fashioned my still plastic character." He speaks of "the sheer appeal of the language, my quickly awakened love for its prose cadences, a subtle and unforeseen accord of my emotional nature with its genius . . . You may take it from me that if I had not known English I wouldn't have written a line for print, in my life." (Cushwa, An Introduction to Conrad, 209, 210).

Conrad entered the fiction-writing profession at a time when its leading English practitioners--e.g., Henry James, Ford Maddox Ford--were experimenting with point of view, and developed what is know as literary impressionism. Quickly adopting the technique, Conrad becomes one of its masters, and The Heart of Darkness is a good example. Impressionism is motivated by the desire to explore the nature of personal reality. The Impressionists ask, "Where does reality really lie?" and answer, "Not simply out there, in the external world, but rather within the human breast." They therefore turn away from the objective points of view of an author like Dickens and position in their writings one or more characters from whose consciousness they relate their story.

Impressionist techniques have many advantages, among them an enhanced sense of immediacy on the part of the reader, together with a certain aesthetic distance, as the reader is seeing external details "second-hand," as it were. Impressionist authors carefully depict the development of awareness on the part of a viewing consciousness, thus giving them an additional tool for keeping the interest of the reader. The focus is often on confronting a mystery and exploring various interpretations of it. The convention of the unreliable narrator quickly develops, so that readers feel, were they in such a situation, they would see it differently. Thus impressionist stories often are ambiguous, inviting more than one interpretation, each quite plausible.

Therefore, as you read The Heart of Darkness, note carefully what type of person Marlow is. We see him becoming fascinated with the mystery of Kurtz and gradually learning about this strange idealist. Precisely what does Marlow learn, from his adventure up the Congo, about Africa, about Kurtz, about the human nature? Why does he draw the conclusions he does? Do you agree, or take issue? To what extent do your Christian convictions shape your own impressions? We should have much to take about in our forthcoming sessions.

Chinua Achebe, in Things Fall Apart, adopts a more traditional third-person point of view to his story. His purpose is to give a fair and objective presentation of the time-honored customs and traditions of the African tribe in which he was himself born and raised. Born in 1930 into a Christian family in the Igbo tribe of Nigeria, he was raised in what he describes as the "crossroads of cultures." "On one arm of the cross," he explains,"we sang hymns and read the Bible night and day. On the other, my father's brother and his family, blinded by heathenism, offered food to idols." He was educated in a missionary school and an African university, where he read much colonial literature. He recounts how he unconsciously identified with the white man in these stories until he read The Heart of Darkness and realized that he really belonged with the savages Marlow saw dancing on the shores of the Congo, and he condemned Conrad's work as racist. When Things Fall Apart was widely hailed as a master novel, he continued to write novels in which he explores the nature of European colonialism and its effect upon the African peoples.

Things Fall Apart does not deal with the horrendous wrong of the slave trade, but an untold quantity of native Africans were captured, herded on ships like cattle, and taken to Europe and America to be sold into slavery. In America, several Africans managed to escape and gain a measure of freedom in the North. Some fifty book-length slave narratives exist, most of them published by the Abolitionist Movement in the North. Frederick Douglas's Narrative and Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are the most famous.

Douglas was born and raised a slave in Maryland, from which he devised his escape in 1838. A self-educated, brilliant man, he rose to become a powerful orator and ardent advocate for emancipation of his fellow Africans. During the days of Reconstruction, he was appointed to various governmental positions, finally becoming minister to Haiti in 1889. He publishes several accounts of his experiences; we will read the first of these, published in 1845 and very influential in effecting Emancipation.

As horrendous as the fate of male salves was, that of female slaves was still worse. Harriet Jacobs's graphic account of her experiences brings into sharp focus the plight of the black woman. If time affords us opportunity, we will close on a lighter note, considering how Joel Chandler Harris's Adventures of Briar Rabbit offers, in quite another vein, comments on Southern social realities.

Reading Classics at the Wade

Time and Location: Wednesday afternoons, 2:00 - 3:00, Lecture Room at the Wade Center, corner of Washington and Lincoln Streets, Wheaton, Il.

Texts: Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Anchor Books.

Conrad, Joseph. The Heart of Darkness. Signet

Douglas, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave. Penguin.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Signet.

Harris, Joel Chandler. Tales of Uncle Remus: Adventures of Briar Rabbit. Puffin.

Description: Our readings for this session will focus upon the nature of native African culture and the exploitation of native Africans during the nineteenth century by certain Europeans and Americans. The Heart of Darkness presents the experiences of Marlow, a steamship captain, as he travels up the Congo into the heart of Africa in pursuit of Kurtz, a mysterious European idealist, and his subsequent disillusionment both with European colonialism and with human nature itself.

Things Fall Apart, written by a native Nigerian, gives a full documentation of the culture and traditions of the Ibo people and the impact upon them of colonialism and early missionary activity. Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs both give grim accounts of their experiences of growing up in American slavery and of their subsequent escapes. Both became strong voices in the Abolitionist movement. We will end the session with a quick look at the amusing Tales of Uncle Remus, noting how they subtly suggest some attitudes of the blacks toward the whites in the South.

Readings:

September 7: Introduction

14: The Heart of Darkness, Section I

28: The Heart of Darkness, Section II

October 5: Things Fall Apart, Chapters 1 - 6

12: Chapters 7 - 11

19: Chapters 12 - 18

26: Chapters 19 - end.

November 2: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Chapters 1 - 5

9: Chapters 6 to p. 74

16: P. 74 to end

23: No Session

30: Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl, first half

December 7: Finish Incidents

14: Select tales of Briar Rabbit

Reading at the Wade

Time and Place: Saturdays, 10 - 11 a.m. meeting room, The Marion E. Wade Center, corner of Washington and Lincoln, Wheaton, Il.

Texts: Dorothy Sayers: Letters to a Diminished Church. Nelson
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Return of the King. Del Rey.
__________: The Tolkien Reader. Del Rey.

Description: The Return of the King is the third of three volumes that compose Tolkien's famous The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It presents the epic battles that finally defeat the forces of Sauron, the heroic struggle of Frodo to destroy the ring, and the party's return to the shire. "On Fairy Stories" is Tolkien's famous and provocative essay offering penetrating insights into his thought and intentions in his writings, and "Leaf by Niggle" is a mythic exploration of end-of-life issues.

In Letters to a Diminished Church Dorothy Sayers startles her readers into considering afresh the central doctrines of the Christian faith, developing a perspective upon Christian truth which is uniquely hers.

Readings:
September 24: Overview of first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings

October 1: Return of the King, Book V, Chapters 1 - 3

8: Book V, Chapters 4 - 10
15: Book VI, Chapters 1 - 4
22: Book VI, Chapters 5 - end.
29: Reader, "On Fairy Stories"

November 5: "Leaf by Niggle"
12: Sayers, Letters, pp. 1 - 33
19: Pp. 35 - 71
26: No Session

December 3: Pp. 73 - 107
10: Pp. 109 - 146
17: Pp 147 - 201.

Underhill.Part II. Chapter 4

In her chapter "The Illumination of the Self" Underhill presents this phase of mystic experience as "a form of mental life, a kind of perception, radically different from that of 'normal' men, which is peculiar to mystics" and, she claims, some artists. For the Christain mystic, illumination is an exalted state of consciousness in which the individual enjoys a period of loving and joyous relation with God. In the chapters that follow she discusses the various ways in which illumination occurs: receiving visions, hearing voices, and so forth.

Mystic experiences seem to be cyclic. From the initial awakening discussed in Chapter Two the individual passes through successive periods of purgation and illumination, spiraling upward, as it were, to ever more complete states of union with God.

When the soul is normally "absorbed in the illusions of sense" the "eye which looks on Eternity is idle." But, quoting Plotinus: "when we do behold Him, we attain the end of our existence and our rest. Then we no longer sing out of tune, but form a truly divine chorus about Him; in which chorus dance the soul beholds the Fountain of life the Fountain of intellect, the Principle of Being, the cause of good the root of soul." Underhill remarks, "Such a beholding, such a lifting of consciousness from a self-centred to a God-centred world, is of the essence of illumination (160).

Achieving a more vivid consciousness of God than is enjoyed by the average Christian is a matter of perception, of seeing what is normally hidden but is truly there. One is reminded to Christ's remarks in the Sermon on the Mount, "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness" (Matt. 6:22,23). The context in which Christ said this suggests that a person's darkness is occasioned by concerns with wealth and daily cares.

Underhill includes in the chapter several quotations taken from the writings of those mystics who have recorded some of their experiences, and I will not try to copy many here. The quotation from William Blake on p. 161 gives his commitment to communicating something of his visions in his engravings and his exceedingly demanding poetry. Blake insists that "the doors of perception" must be cleansed in order to see all things as they are, infinite. For the mystic this cleansing involves the purgation which was treated in Chapter Three.

Underhill remarks: "It is in these descriptions of the joy of illumination--in the outpourings of love and rapture belonging to this state--that we find the most lyrical passages of mystical literature. Here poet, mystic, and musician are on common ground: for it is only by the oblique methods of the artist, by the use of aesthetic suggestion and mystical rhythm, that the wonder of that vision can be expressed. When essential goodness, truth, and beauty--Light, Life, and Love--are aprehended by the heart, whether the heart be that of poet, painter, lover, or saint, that apprehension can only be communicated in a living, that is to say, artistic form" (163). That musical utterance is essential to any attempt at communication suggests why, in the Book of Revelation, for instance, the redeemed are so often represented as singing.

On p. 167, St. Bernard, in the lengthy testimony of his experiences, insists upon their ineffable quality. One is reminded of St. Paul saying that, on the occasion of his mystical experience, he "heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat" (II Cor. 12:4).

For some, illuminations take the form of having an altered view of the natural world; that is, one's eyes are opened to see that the goodness and glory of God permeates the natural world and everyday life. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil . . . ." Gerard Hopkins exults in his fine sonnet, "God's Grandeur." Thomas Traherne in the 17th Century wrote: "Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in heaven; see ourself in our Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys. . . ." (from Centuries of Meditations).

Such perception is motivated by love for God and in turn increases one's love for him. Underhill remarks: "By that synthesis of love and will which is the secret of the heart, the mystic achieves a level of perception in which the whole world is seen and known in God, and God is seen and known in the whole world. It is a state of exalted emotion: being produced by love, of necessity it produces love in its turn" (180).

George MacDonald: Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood, published in 1867, is the first of three novels by George MacDonald about the fictitious Rev. Harry Walton, a parish priest of the Church of England. After the remarkable success of such early novels Scottish novels as David Elginbrod (1863) and Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865), MacDonald, now well established in London as a rising young novelist, turns to write a story with a purely English setting.





The prevalent theme in MacDonald's early novels is that of acquiring an education and proper orientation to life, and here he concerns himself with a cleric who is learning how to become an effective minister. Written in the first person, the story presents Rev. Walton, now aged, recalling his learning experiences in his first full-fledged pastoral charge. "I had formerly officiated as curate in a proprietary chapel," he recalls (that is, he acted as a chaplain to a family of sufficient means to have their own curate). "Alas, I had now to preach . . . to a company of rustics, of thought yet slower than of speech, unaccustomed in fact to think at all. . . ." He has considerable lessons to learn of the quality of ordinary people.





One cannot but ask why MacDonald, who as a Scottish Presbyterian was raised in the dissenting tradition, educated at Highbury Congregational Seminary in London, and served for three years as pastor to a Congregational flock in the southern coastal town of Arundel, would undertake to write about a cleric in the Church of England. Why not write about a dissenting pastor?





It is true that, attracted to the ministry of F. D. Maurice in London, he joined the Church of England in 1866, no doubt while he was writing this novel, so he can now presume to speak as a member of that denomination. But, alas, he has a quarrel with the priesthood. "For the priesthood passes away," Walton remarks," "the brotherhood endures. The priesthood passes away, swallowed up in the brotherhood. It is because men cannot learn simple things, cannot believe in the brotherhood, that they need a priesthood. . . . And I, for one, am sure that the priesthood needs the people much more than the people needs the priesthood (22)." The priesthood, in other words, however necessary, is not in itself desireable.





One has but to consider the role of the priest in MacDonald's time to understand his sentiment. The priest was too often simply a sort of social leader. From the upper classes, trained at Oxford, a young man, choosing from among the professions, could see the priesthood as a desireable choice: acting as a role model of the English gentleman, his presence would be expected at dinner parties and balls, and his duties amounted to little more than reading Sunday services and preparing short, anemic homilies. The nineteenth century English novels, such as those of Jane Austen or of Anthony Trollope, afford one notable examples.





MacDonald wants to speak to this situation, illustrating what a priest should be. The tact and winsomeness with which he undertakes his task, attempting to recommend a very different model, is fascinating. Note how he gently begins in the opening paragraph of the first chapter. Having supposed himself "a mere onlooker" to life, Walton recalls how "the compulsion of my office," "the leading of my heart," and "destiny" drew him into "the very vortex of events."


He identifies his "destiny" is the engulfing love of God which "to us is known as an infinite love, revealed in the mystery of man." The concept of the love of God being revealed in the mystery of man is profound and beautiful. Why did God create man? Simply to bestow his love upon him. This is the destiny of all peoples: all are objects of the passionate love of God. To express this truth is the compulsion of his office and the reason for his undertaking to speak from his heart to that of his readers. The calling of the priesthood is to secure the recognition and acceptance of that love by individual hearts.



Rev. Walton has learned to make a firm distinction between describing externals and speaking "heart to heart." The former constitutes a "vision"; the latter a "revelation." The former speaks only to the intellect, and the intellect but considers and judges. It is the heart that receives, and receiving is transformed into a new creature in Christ. Revelations to the heart preclude all deceiving appearances and impact one's innermost being with truth.



Walton learned the importance of this distinction from early experience, for in his former position as "curate in a proprietary chapel" he "had been inclined to exalt the intellect at the expense of the heart" (7). In his writings GMD often makes this point: it is in the threefold relationship of God, others, and self that a person encounters reality and the truths of life are grasped, rather than supposing that the intellect is autonomous and the abstract systems of thought it devises are authoritative.



From his two initial encounters in the village of Marshmallows he learns two foundational truths for his ministry. From Old Rogers he acquires the first lesson: it is of vital importance to the laity that the priest be the same person in the pulpit as he is out of it. And from the naive remark of a little child he learns the importance of seeing his office as one of working with God: ". . . if any man's work is not with God, its results shall be burned, ruthlessly burned, because poor and bad" (16). For everything that happens in life--not just occasional occurrences--is providential.

The chapter closes repeating the idea of the opening paragraph: that true meaning and worth in life arises, not from intellectual analysis, but from relationships. Providence presented Rev. Walton, on his first day in Marshmallows, with "an old man whom I could help, and a child who could help me; the one opening an outlet for my labour and my love, and the other reminding me of the highest source of the most humbling comfort,--that in all my work I might be a fellow-worker with God" (17).

After his first Sunday in the pulpit, in which he feels the intense scrutiny of this people, he ventures into the village to to make individual calls. As one would expect, each of those he meets--the woman of strange reserve in her shop, Old Rogers and those of his family in the mill, Weir the carpenter fashioning his sister's coffin, Mrs Oldcastle and her grand daughter, and Mr. Brownrigg the church warden--will all figure in the episodes that are to follow, as Rev. Walton continues to learn from his experiences what it truly means to be a faithful priest.

The Peace of God

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you . . . .Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid" (John 14:27). God intends that we rest in Him and are possessed by His peace. As Augustine famously observed, our hearts are restless until we rest in Him. How do we avail ourselves of this peace? The key is the commitment of complete trust. We receive God's peace as we realize afresh that we are completely in Him and engulfed in His love.

Again, one's self is the problem. To desire peace simply as a possession of the self--something we covet and want to own--is subtly but terribly to miss the point and remain in doubt and restlessness. As in all aspects of our relationship with God, complete surrender and trust are the indispensable elements. To place one's self afresh in the body of Christ and rest completely in Him ("abide in me," Christ commands) is the way into the peace that He bestows.