The rebel hippo: pilgrims in Heart of Darkness

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Within Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the narrator of story within the story, Charles Marlowe, brings an interesting (a perhaps a bit unconventional among Europeans during that time?) perspective of the effect of imperialism on the Africa, and specifically the Congo, by illustrating the foolishness of the people involved in the proceedings.  For example there are those, such as his aunt herself, who believe that Europeans needed to be sent down there in order to “[wean] those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” (Part I, paragraph 28) and sees people like Marlowe that are venturing into Africa as some sort of “emissary of light… or lower sort of apostle” (Part I, paragraph 28).  However as we see from the type of people Marlowe has encountered so far, almost all of the individuals are simply there to try to get rich as quickly as quickly as possible using as little work as possible.  The only other person, who we have a lot of references to but only a few slight hints about his actual nature in Part I and the beginning of Part II, that may actual retain any sense of morals or may actually be getting anything done and creating real improvements, if not for the natives then at least for the actual European trade endeavor in Africa, is Kurtz who is described as having said to the manager that ‘Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.’ (Part II, paragraph 2).  In contrast the rest of the people (that Marlowe often refers to in his narration as “pilgrims”—because they traveled to Africa but don’t actually accomplish anything there, are simply waiting to feed off the riches of others?) are only there to steal resources from the land and strip it of its riches for as little work on their part as possible.  Because their only motivated by money, they have no way of truly succeeding in surviving in the environment (“they were all waiting—all sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them… though the only thing that ever came to them was disease—as far as I could see.” (Part I, paragraph 53) and are really quite afraid of it, as their attitudes towards the hippo (paragraph 69) show.  After sitting for nights in a row, emptying all their shotguns, and still being unable to catch it, they could only said, ‘That animal has a charmed life… but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man—you apprehend me?—no man here bears a charmed life.’ (Part 1, paragraph 69).  So in a way the hippo almost symbolizes how the nature refuses to be beaten by the foreign technology and contributes to Conrad’s continuous imagery of how Africa’s nature is like a darkness that is vibrant and alive despite its ominous stillness as he describes it “The high stillness [African forest] confronted these two figures [the manager and his portly uncle] with its ominous patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion” (Part II, paragraph 2).