In Heart of Darkness, Marlow, in explaining his motivations for venturing into the Belgian Congo in the first place, almost apologetically, draws on the common spirit of adventures shared by teenage readers of adventure novels; he calls his childhood "passion for maps." His desire for travel was born from the need to discover unexplored spaces that appeared as empty spaces on globes and maps. Africa itself is "the largest, the emptiest" - although "it has ceased to be an empty space of delightful mystery, it has become a place of darkness" (5). Marlow, therefore, ventures into Africa not out of a stubborn adventurous impulse, but under the apparatus of a Belgian trading company. With this air of disappointed enthusiasm in mind we meet the characters who populate the Congo. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay While it should be noted that the country is populated by black people, we are only really introduced to the company's agents, the white Europeans who are in the country to make a profit. In fact, any other suggestion is almost unreasonable, like "Why come here?" by Marlow. one of his companions is greeted thus "with contempt": "To make money, obviously. What do you think?" (17). However, there is another reason that runs counter to this, namely the romantic notion of the colonialist as “something like an emissary of light, something like an inferior kind of apostle” (10), bringing progress to the Congo and the same prosperity time. return to the company. There is a disjunction between this ideal, undoubtedly expressed in religious terms (he will later refer to fellow colonialists as "pilgrims", a more ironic sort of irony than the missionaries would provide, since the pilgrims are concerned with taking, while the missionaries look at giving) ), and the vehicle transporting him, one which Marlow immediately addresses, before he has even heard of Kurtz. “I dared to imply,” he tells his aunt, “that the company was run for profit” (10). The inviolable pursuit of profit, he suggests, will cross purposes with the “superior motive” of colonialism. Soldiers and customs officials enter the country with Marlow, no one else. These two value systems will conflict, as one will have to take precedence. There is no loyal obligation to duty, of the kind Conrad describes among the sailors in “Well Done,” to resolve the differences between these conflicting missions. This struggle is dramatized among the ranks of the company's men in the Congo. We have noted that one of the ways Conrad works to illuminate moral and psychological truth is through contrasts, through dynamic juxtapositions. The methods of Kurtz, the director of the Inner Station, with his rhetoric and his ideals, and with his extravagant success, are contrasted with the sordid practicality and terrifying inefficiency of the director of the Central Station. Marlow is immediately identified, and almost simultaneously identified, with Kurtz - which places him in an inevitable positional antagonism with the director of Central Station. We must therefore read Marlow's characterization of the manager in reference to this prejudice. Marlow's description of the Central Station manager reduces him to a type by his insistence on his illegibility. It is one that defies the imagination to conceive of, a testament to the inability of his memory to record the man. As regards his complexion, his features, his manners, his voice, his build, his size, he is "common", "ordinary". This is in stark contrast to Kurtz, whose entry into the book is anything but mythical: "He seemed at least seven feet long, a graven animated image of deathin ancient ivory" (54-5). Kurtz seems even more authoritative in his failing health, if only because he becomes "frightening" (55). There is an extreme contrast between Kurtz's specter and the manager's solid complacency. However , the one distinguishing gesture will later be considered as equally significant as Kurtz's highly dramatic entrance "There was only an indefinable, faint expression on his lips, something furtive - a smile - not a smile -. I remember it, but I can't explain it. [It made] the meaning of the most common sentence appear absolutely inscrutable" (18 ). That this inscrutability, this immediate obfuscation, is its most distinguishing feature will seem significant later. Although it is heavier, it will seem to be emptied of meaning in the same way as the remarkable Kurtz's speech. It is significant that Marlow does not name the manager. By identifying him only with his position, he is emptied of personality: he becomes symbolic of his position. Kurtz, however, refuses to be defined by his position he talks to the manager's "spy," the brickmaker, and asks, "Who is this Mr. Kurtz?" the answer he receives makes him laugh because describing Kurtz as "the head of the Inner Station" is a tautology that does not does nothing to define a man who lives, it seems, in defiance of the limitations his position should impose (22) Marlow takes the manager's emptying to a literal level: "Perhaps there was nothing inside him" (19). ). But, he continues, it is precisely this void within him that makes him a successful man for the colonial enterprise. Marlow can attribute his survival only to his imperfect humanity, to what he calls his lack of "innards" (19). His actions, then, depersonalized, are stripped of humanism, monstrous in a place where "there were no external controls" (19). Marlow's characterization, already contrary to him, finally describes him in terms typical of the other, as the ultimately inscrutable: "It was impossible to say what such a man could control" (19). This opacity is the source of its power. These skills, however, are what allowed him to survive. The tension of colonialism of which Marlow is an envoy is decidedly different in tenor from that of the manager. “You are of the new gang,” accuses the bricklayer, “of the gang of virtue” (22). Where does this contempt come from? Partly it is due to the fear of losing his position. But Marlow and Kurtz come from a different environment than these inhabitants. Marlow states of the warden: “He was a common tradesman, from his youth employed in these parts – nothing more” (18). It would not be misleading to describe the director of the central station as a kind of ideal, in the same way that Kurtz is an ideal type. While Kurtz is a man brought in from the outside – a representative of the best of Europe – the manager is the victor (almost Darwinian) in the political meritocracy of the colonial mission. There is a disturbing specter of iniquity in Kurtz's (and Marlow's) vision of interjection into the internal structure of the Colonial company. Marlow's narrative works to obscure this fact. Marlow's place in the Congo, after all, is won through favor, not merit. It is significant, however, that his role is not beyond his capabilities: whether he deserves it, whether he is up to the task entrusted to him, it is a marginal question, subordinate to Europe's social policy. When Marlow overhears the director talking to his uncle, one of the main complaints they raise against Kurtz is the external privilege he exercises: "he asked for the administration to be sent there, look at the influence that man must have" (28) . But which order disturbs Kurtz, an intruder? The manager has created a kind of fake democracy – where equality is imposed by a dictatorial order..