Conrad illustrates Marlow's changing perspective in a scene involving the cannibals. ... Conrad also illustrates Marlow's growing empathy for the men he once called "savages" during a scene in which a band of followers sent by Kurtz attacks the steamboat with flying spears. ... Conrad follows the chaotic scene on the shore and the strange conversations on the steamboat with a nightmarish scene in the jungle. ...
(Conrad 7) Within this narrative paragraph Marlow sets the tone for the rest of the novel. ... It is not only what Marlow says that makes him fit in with the solemn setting but it is also his appearance: Marlow is pointedly described as sitting in the pose of Buddha, suggesting that he has been the recipient of a weird Enlightenment, which he is impelled to share with his listeners. ... The setting causes many of the characters to go insane, " The sun was too much for him, or the country perhaps- (Conrad 80). ... (Conrad 94) Just the setting itself is so concentrated with the darkness of Kurt...
The twentieth century really begins before the end of the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887 was felt by many to represent the end of an era. An end-of-century stoicism, and a growing pessimism among writers and intellectuals, may be traced to several sources, not least the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species which put the existence of God into radical question. Across the whole population, and in the face of rapid economic and social changes, radical doubts about the stability of the existing order were expressed. By the end of the nine...
