Marlow´s Voyage Tips

It turns out Marlow is telling a story to his friend aboard The Nellie. Narrating his voyage and how he traveled “deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” (105). He is a great storyteller and the story actually becomes the book. More than a story, I think Marlow is learning from it as he narrates it. He already lived it and now while telling it he states lessons and tricks. His story can be seen as a manual for someone who wants to make an expedition to Africa during an imperialist era. The idea of voyage is important and recurs throughout the novel. And I mean a journey like the one Marlow is doing. Not like the ones we do today. It´s much easier to buy a ticket go to the airport board a plane, and once we get to the destination get a taxi and got to a hotel. Mostly everything is done for us we just pay. A manual for a journey now a day would be pointless. What good would it be for us to have tips on how to know at what times there are less people in the airport. Pointless. We don’t have to know about the weather and how it can affect our trip, they just announce to us if something is wrong. Marlow did have to worry about that. And make decisions of weather to continue sailing or not at night for example. More than a journey it is his passion, he was a man that “followed the sea”(66). And that´s one of the reasons why he tells his story with such emotion and the reader feels secure that Marlow knows what he talking about. As I read today, I imagined that I was going to take Marlow´s voyage and some tips that I saw as important were the following:

“Going up the river was like travelling back to the earliest beginning of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and big trees were kings”. (102) He warns us about geography and that you have to respect it because it has been there long before us.

“There were moments when one´s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself, but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence”. (103) If you have passion for the journey it will help you to look at your past objectively and recognize mistakes.

“The reality-the reality , I tell you fades”. (103)

“We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth that wore the aspects of an unknown planet”. (105) Like when we travel we go to places that are not our own. Where we do not dominate.

“The earth seemed unearthly”. (105) We all travel into the unknown.

If we were to follow most of these “tips” and apply them to our own journeys we would experience the same passion as Marlow. Of course we have to go to places that interest us. That is what the Heart of Darkness does, it stimulates the want to go on a journey so the reader can learn just as Marlow did.