Heart of Darkness: Entry 3

Marlow is currently on board a French steamboat as they begin the colonization and resource extraction processes along the coast of Africa.  His convoy periodically stops to land soldiers and other routines, making Marlow feel quite lonely.  When they reach the mouth of the Congo and Marlow boards a new steamboat, the captain of the ship informs him of a Swedish man who had recently come down for the same purposes but hanged himself just before their entrance into the African interior. 

When Marlow arrives at the Company station, he is disturbed by what he sees.  Old and dilapidated machinery, environmental destruction, and black slavery enforced by chains, rifles, and soldiers. Disgusted and reminded of the many downsides of human nature, and their extremes in what he saw in the Congo, Marlow walks to a grove of trees where he finds a group of dying native workers.  Marlow offers them a biscuit.  When Marlow meets the chief accountant of the Company station, he is informed that he will inevitably meet Mr. Kurtz: an agent with the Company that supposedly sends back more ivory than all the other agents combined, making him automatically destined for a position upgrade.  He tells Marlow to tell Kurtz when he meets him that everything is working nicely at the Outer Station, but the accountant refuses to send a letter, for a mysterious fear that it will be found in the Central Station. 

Key Quotation:

"There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course.  It was as unreal as everything else -- as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work.  The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages...there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at the halter" (Conrad 61). 

This quote shows how oftentimes people disguise their truly selfish intentions under philanthropic titles and veils of lies.  Sometimes it is done with such subtleness that the man himself forgets his own facade.  These imperialists in Heart of Darkness had one chief aim: to generate riches for themselves by breaking the backs of African natives for the ivory that their land contained.  The last part of the quote quips at how some people seem to be above the general laws that unofficially govern the rest.  Had the natives of Africa turned to imperialism towards Britain, it would have undeniably been wrong; the Europeans, however, viewed themselves so honestly as superior to all other races, and so this heartfelt belief justified their actions in their minds.  I find this type of behavior very prominent in modern society.