The most confusion I have with this book is keeping up with who says what. Yet, I found the passage in pages 108-109 to be the most confusing. Beginning with "The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free" and ending with "Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been... (110)."
This passage is very confusing for me. First of all, I find it hard to figure out who is talking, but I assume it is Marlow. I'm also unsure what some of the context means. I am sure that there is much meaning behind the multiple metaphors in this passage.
Marlow is the one talking. I think the monster must be the natives as most Europeans would have seen them in the context of being confined and forced to work for them. In this case, Marlow is seeing them in their unfiltered, unconquered form, which he is unaccustomed to. I think the hut of reeds and "melancholy pole" symbolize what the natives' lives were like before the colonizers came. He is showing that life was better ( just in a different way from the Europeans) for them beforehand.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think Kat is correct; Marlow is the speaker, and he is describing the sights he sees on his trip down the river, as well as other tangents that I don't entirely understand.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Kat said entirely, this passage confused me a bit too. Also just as an afterthought, I feel like there are a lot of paradoxical statements here. Like the earth being "unearthly." Perhaps Conrad is trying to convey the fantastical qualities of Marlow's experience in Africa.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. This passage, and the book as a whole, is filled with paradoxical statements. For me, these add to the confusion. It is hard to get a complete image of what Marlow is describing when everything he is saying is contradictory.
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