Christopher James
Heart of Darkness Quote Reflection
Since I was not here on the day we wrote quotes in class I have chosen a quote to reflect on it. “The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”(page72) This quote offers Marlow’s first impression of the Central Station. The word “ivory” seems to be something he hears all too often now that he works for this company. To them, it is far more than just the tusk of an elephant or rhinoceros; it represents an economic freedom that companies have never seen or experienced. These companies are running amuck doing as they please with no thought of how their actions affect the people or animals of Africa they simply only care about “Ivory” and its economic value. Marlow’s reference to a decaying corpse is both literal and figurative: elephants and the African people both die as a result of the European’s pursuit for ivory and the entire enterprise of the ivory trade is just rotten at the core. This is true in the cruelties and the greed that are both part of a greater evil of how money corrupts the soul of every human, instead of thinking of each other you start to be selfish and be narcissistic to the core of your humanity. I see these companies creating an “African Holocaust” as Joseph Conrad says himself. This quote is why I see the book is titled as Heart Of Darkness, the Ivory trade is routed in greed and evil that corrupts the heart into darkness all the way to the core, but it could also be to the state of mind of imperialism (the European world takeover during the 15th through 20th centuries). At this time the Europeans just conquered people and tribes around the world, they would enforce their laws and social norms onto the indigenous people. Then when they came to the dark jungles of the Congo they saw the indigenous people practicing cannibalism an act they saw as evil so it could refer to the heart as middle of Africa the Congo and darkness because there is such evil acts like cannibalism. This quote to me shows just exactly how much power the companies getting the ivory have. If they can commit genocide on people and endangerment on large powerful animals, just how powerful are the companies that slay so many innocent? This must be the heart of darkness, the power, greed, and madness of the people that run these ivory stations a truly evil in the atrocities they commit on the native people and animals. No amount of wealth or power is worth the countless lives of human beings and the extinction of the world’s most beautiful animals. These two crimes against the world are what I see as The Heart Of Darkness.