Heart of Darkness: The Search for an Occupation

HEART OP DARKNESS : THE SEARCH FOR AN OCCUPATION By Anthony Low (New York University) The Importance of work In Heart of Darkness, either as a saving counter-balance to the "fascination of the abomination" or as a comforting Illusion that conceals the reality below the surface, has often been recognized. Like many of Conrad's values In the major tales - doing one's duty, keeping the faith, living up to the English Ideal, avoiding sentimentality, greed, treachery, or weakness - work In Heart of Darkness Is ambivalent, on one level a simple prescription or panacea that has the virtue of proving Itself In practice and Is therefore a positive, unquestionable good; while on another level It Is seen to cover over the truth, to be a turning from reality, and to have potentialities of falling or corrupting Its pracltioners. James Guettl explains the ambiguity by the observation that "Marlow uses the term 'reality· In two ways: the primary reality Is the suggested essence of the wilderness, the darkness that must remain hidden If a man Is to survive morally, while the secondary reality Is a figurative reality like work, an artificial reality by which the truly real Is concealed or even replaced."1 When Marlow turns from the darkness of the jungle or the evils In man to his rivets and his seamanship, he Is turning from one reality to another - though It Is perhaps not as clear as Guettl suggests which Is the "primary reality." Another approach to the ambiguous value of work Is suggested by Walter F. Wright, who points out that Marlow1s work has a positive value In Itself and for Marlow, the worker; but that the ultimate end of the work Introduces doubts, for whatever Marlow accomplishes subserves "the mercantile activities of collecting a luxury, Ivory, for the monetary profit of speculators In Belgulm."2 Although his dedicated repair of the steamboat Is speeded by the desire to find and to rescue the mysterious Kurtz - who proves a tainted goal for the quest - he brings with him the manager and the trigger-happy pilgrims, and thus aids the evil they represent. From the time that Marlow first signs his contract In the offices of the Company In Belgium to captain a rlverboat on the Congo, he has accepted a job corrupted In Its purpose. His own Immediate reactions suggest that he ■enses this, for his misgivings are less about the possible dangers , physical and moral, to himself, than that he has unwittingly become an accomplice In some evil: "I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was something ominous In the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let Into some conspiracy - I don't know - something not quite right; and I was glad to get out.f""] (7-8)3 He has not yet gotten himself out, however; he must first travel Into the heart of darkness, make himself a far more conscious If unwilling accomplice of evil, ally himself with Kurtz, and tell the final lie that frees him at last - If, Indeed, he ever entirely escapes the consequences of his Involvement. The Inner value of work for Marlow Is undoubted. It Is something deep and personal, which no outsider can understand, Its value less In the thing done than in the doer: No, I don't like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means. (25) Work is the way to follow the philosophers' advice, nosce telpsum; through it is found "your own reality" - and who is to say this reality is less real than any other? In another mood, however, Marlow suggests that the reality found in work is actually an illusion. He has been busy watching for firewood to heat the boiler, and comments: ["] When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere Incidents of the surface, the reality the reality, I tell you - fades. The inner truth...