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Posted by Ishmael on July 22, 19100 at 11:29:13:
In Reply to: This "Old Bean" is wide awake, thanks posted by L. Swilley on July 22, 19100 at 00:18:52:
You guys just don't get it. You don't understand the setting of the story - the cirstances, the cruel realities of the Congo - the horrible dilemma of the fat man episode and the absolutely human motivation of Marlow's action ( was he to let the man die in agony of thirst compounded by malaria? Or was he to wait with the man in the ditch until his own provisions ran out? ) You don't understand the nature of Marlow's guilt and how his concience is the whole motivation for his telling of the story and his sympathy for Kurtz, and and his identification with Jim - who became an outcast because he left HIS post and his human cargo - to die helplessly at sea (they were picked-up). Conrad may have over-estimated the average reader's capacity to understand all of the subtle implications of his frame stories.
: Ishmael wrote,
: " Why does Marlow say all that stuff about feeling that he was becoming "scientifically interesting" at precisely the time that he explains - or fails to explain - what happened to the fat man? "
: [I don't know at the moment, but your interpretation, requiring us to give so specific a conclusion from so vague a reference, cannot be defended from other material about this Marlow in this story, no part of which suggests such a possibility. Marlow's sympathy with the natives and his controlled disgust with the whites who suppress them alone speak volumes for a man who could not allow himself the "convenience" of murdering the fat man. Kurtz might well do such a thing, but the larger story depends on Marlow's admiration of but distinction from Kurtz in exactly such contexts.
: [And, following Marlow's "I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting," he says, "However, all that is to no purpose." If we accept that the first sentence suggests the possibility of a mental distortion that would entertain a murder, might we not with equal certitude maintain that the next suggests a rejection of that very temptation? It is all too fuzzy for determination.]
:
: "Also, how does the development of the character called Marlow - and the character of this character - over the course of its development from 'Youth' through 'Heart of Darkness' to 'Lord Jim' not support the commission of a mercy killing in the bush of a flabby devil? "
: [From my perspective, the Marlow of each story is peculiar to the story in which it occurs; the novels using the same name for narrator or central character are NOT chapters of a larger work, but each a discrete construction, and Marlow, if even remotely the same character, different at least in respect to the *aspect* of the common "character," an aspect appropriate to the particular story in which this or that "Marlow" occurs. Therefore, in spite of a common name (which may, indeed, reflect a peculiar interest of Conrad which we can never know) there is no unity of character from one discrete story to the next, any more than Hemingway's Nick should be considered the same from one of his stories to the next. The Marlow of "Heart of Darkness" is a function of the larger organism of that story, nothing validly more. I would go so far as to agree that what is *likely* of a same-named character *in a similar context in another story* is a *hint* that we should look for similar conclusions in the immediate work under consideration, but the *hint* would have to be supported by the larger argument of the immediate work (Indeed, I would say that of *any* character in another work by the same author, but based on similarity of context, not on mere likeness of name.
: [(By the way, "flabby devil" is your term, Conrad/Marlow does not use it here to describe the fat man.)]
:
: "This action is absolutely critical to any understanding of 'Heart of Darkness' as well as Marlow's empathy with Jim in the subsequent novel,'Lord Jim'. Awake old bean!"
: [Sorry. For reasons given above, I can't go with you there - although I would appreciate any reference in any "Marlow" story where that character murders or endorses murder for convenience, as you would have him doing here in HOD.]
: [L. Swilley]