Marlow’s reaction to primitive conditions is different because, rather than being forced into his journey, his was one chosen for himself to escape from the standards of city life in Europe, and he has been given time to prepare himself psychologically. However, he also feels his sense of mastery as a European is severely threatened, particularly because Marlow bases his perceptions of the Africans on a kind of thinking that was current during the time that Conrad wrote the novel. Scientists during the time theorized that various human populations existed in different levels on an evolutionary scale from savage to civilized, and Europeans were placed on the farthest end of the continuum, which indicated that they were the “fully civilized.” Scientists claimed that although Europeans had reached the height of civilization, far from their savage past, the memory of savagery still remains within them. Hence Marlow is fearful about his own quality compared to the Africans, whom his civilization has taught him to believe are savages. Maureen shares a similar situation. She is extremely sensitive in her relationship with July because she fears the recognition of her subconscious racist views, which are made much more obvious in the village, and tries to defend herself when she expresses a liberal guilty conscience for fear of having treated him poorly:
-I've never made you do anything you didn't think it was your job to do. Have I? Have I? I make mistakes, too. Tell me. When did we treat you inconsiderately-badly? I'd like to know, I really want to know- (Gordimer, 71).
Also, because she is unwilling to relinquish her status as a European, she does not adapt to her new surroundings as well as her other family members. Maureen grieves over the loss of possessions, while her children, not so concerned with a life of luxury, easily adjust to their new environment. Unlike her husband Bam, who attempts to become a part of the community as a way of coping with the situation, Maureen feels trapped and alienated within the village, which causes her to go mad. Her loss of civility is revealed when she drowns a litter of kittens, which she justifies as her “obssess[ion] with the reduction of suffering” (90).
The characters in both novels experience disequilibrium of their setting, which first destroys their sense of time. Without a watch, Maureen quickly loses her internal clock and continues her existence "not knowing where she was, in time, in the order of a day as she had always known it" (17). This seems to be immensely discouraging for her, as the track of time is an organizing principle offering the semblance of order. All the stable, secure regularity of privileged existence such as appointment books, tiny rolled bits of paper money and what class the Smales had represented back in Johannesberg mean nothing in the death black village. She feels bewitched and cut off from reality. Marlow experiences a similar sense of insecurity as he travels up the Congo, a journey he describes as a timeless voyage “back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings” (30). He feels lost and insignificant in his surroundings, which irritates his pressure of being European. Marlow refers to himself and his boatload of pilgrims as wanderers who “could have fancied ourselves the first men taking possession of an accursed inheritance… We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of the first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign – and no memories” (44). Bam and Maureen also experience this psychological transportation from one reality to another. This would explain their unconsciously developed habit of speaking about life outside of the village in the past tense:
Whites in the pass offices and labor bureau who used to have to seal with blacks all the time across the counter—speaking an African language was simply a qualification, so far as they were concerned, that’s all. Something you had to have to get the job.—
What are you lecturing about?—But he hadn’t noticed he had spoken of back there in past tense (Gordimer, 44).
Nature provides an important influence the development of the subconscious in both novels. Conrad depicts Europe as the “conquered earth,” whereas Africa is described as “monstrous and free.” The unfamiliarity and immensity of Africa’s nature to the Europeans heightens their sense of insecurity. Maureen often stares into the wild expanse of the bush, the borders of her freedom, feeling lost and "pathetic, a cat at a mouse-hole, before that immensity" (Gordimer, 43). During the night, she feels that even "the moon and stars had been stifled" and the dense bush "that hid everything was itself hidden" (Gordimer, 47). Marlow also remarks on how the vastness of nature causes him to feel small and lost: “Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost” (Conrad, 104).
As Marlow is recounting a spiritual voyage of self-discovery, the Smales, particularly Maureen, also take a journey into the hidden self. For Maureen, the end result of having to live a life on mere necessity uncovers the selfishness and darkness within. Eventually, she becomes less and less of a wife and mother and drifts apart from the family. When the helicopter is heard at the end of the story, Maureen is more vibrant and happy than she’s ever been since she arrived in the village, and runs for the helicopter, forgetting her family whom she no longer loves or feels obligated to. Little consideration is taken into the consequences she might bring upon her family or to July’s people. Marlow’s deep psychological journey into his own darkness leads him to the confrontation of the impulsive savagery in his unconsciousness he had never acknowledged while in the deceptive milieu of a “civilized” existence. Much of this reflection is based upon Marlow’s final meeting with the power-hungry egomaniac Kurtz, in which he describes him as “lack[ing] restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him” (Conrad, 133).
The modern odyssey the characters take toward the center of the Self within the primitive wilderness of Africa uncovered much of the character’s personality-- the personality that had been hidden under the influence and pressure of being European. The African experience stirred the unconscious forces within the self, bringing out all the true, repressed dark aspects of the personality.
Word Count: 1,490
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Works Cited:
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness, New York: Dover, 1990.
Gordimer, Nadine. July’s People, London: Penguin Books, 1981.
McLynn, Frank. Hearts of Darkness: The European Exploration of Africa. New York:
Carol & Gey, 1992.