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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page essay that compares and contrasts the characters of Marlow and Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. The writer argues that Kurtz's educated background, his learning and his trust in his own cultural heritage, proved to be poor shields from the tyranny of his darker impulses, once the reinforcements of civilization were not present. Marlow, on the other hand, as a man of action, had the resources to resist the freedom of a more savage world. By contrasting the characters of Kurtz and Marlow, Conrad's purpose in this dark narrative becomes clear. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khmarkur.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
era are sharply contrasted. Marlow is the new employee who is sent upriver to bring back Kurtz, a station manager for the same company. Kurtz has been in the jungle
for quite sometime, nine years. The journey upriver to find Kurtz is allegorical to the journey that both men take into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. It is
a journey that only Marlow survives, as Kurtz gave into the darkness long ago. As to why this happened -- why Kurtz abandoned every ideal that he held before coming
to Africa -- Conrad leaves the reader to conjecture, however, certain aspects of Kurtzs and Marlow character suggest an answer. Kurtzs educated background, his learning and his trust in
his own cultural heritage, proved to be poor shields from the tyranny of his darker impulses, once the reinforcements of civilization were not present. Marlow, on the other hand, as
a man of action, had the resources to resist the freedom of a more savage world. By contrasting the characters of Kurtz and Marlow, Conrads purpose in this dark narrative
becomes clear. According to critic Daniel Schwarz (1998), the act of writing was for Conrad a "self-conscious process" in which he tested
and explored his own intellectual and moral identity (p. 122). This suggests that Conrad created Marlow in order to explore his own identity. This interpretation is substantiated by the fact
that Marlow relates the tale a if he were "recollecting a spiritual voyage of self-discovery" (Schwarz, 1998, p. 123). The opening of the novel portrays the horrors of colonialism
and the effect it has on the natives. Marlow, despite his best efforts to remain objective, feels repelled by the signs of British imperialism. As he journeys deeper into the
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