Conrad Evokes Passion

From the first few pages, imagery and description are present in the novel. By narrating the story of Marlow, Conrad depicts the passion that he feels toward what he does. The story is not very interesting. He tells us how he got the job to be the commander of the boat that will travel to the Congo River. What´s interesting, is the way he narrates it, using intense description and vivid imagery. With this, he reveals to the reader the passion that he feels towards the sea. The unknown narrator tells us this and when he mentions their captain, the Director of Companies, he said that he “resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified” (65).

When talking about the sea, the narrator includes himself and the other four men that were with him, including Marlow. They all feel the same passion but Marlow was the only one “who still followed the sea” (67). This gives me a hint, (besides the fact that he is the only character with a name), that the book will be mostly based on him. He is not like the others. Most seaman as the narrator states live a sedentary life but Marlow is wanderer. And to describe that, the narrator states: “to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine” (68). Here we can see the description and imagery I mentioned at the begging. He uses the glow and haze to express how Marlow likes to go beyond what happens and know why they happened. He then tells the story of the places in his childhood, specifically one that had become “a place of darkness” (71). And imagery comes up again with the way he describes the river “resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast a country and its toil lost in the depth of the land” (71). By comparing the river with the snake the reader gets a vivid image and can imagine it much better.

The way Charles Marlow talks about the sea evokes passion to the reader. My impression is that Conrad and Marlow don´t give much importance to the situations that happen through out the book, instead they focus on the description to evoke passion and feeling to the reader.