Becoming Scientifically Interesting

“I couldn’t help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. ‘To make money, of course. What do you think?’ he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night—quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush—man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn’t the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor—‘It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.’ I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose.” (Conrad 13)

Throughout Heart of Darkness, a reader is forced to make an evaluation, and subsequent consistent re-evaluations, of Marlowe’s mental state. While one must often read into the text in order to do so, there are moments within the story where Marlowe calls attention to his own declining mental health. Therefore, the reliability of Marlowe’s entire narrative is called into question. The above quotation is a unique moment in which Marlowe displays a self-awareness that hints at his steady decline into what one may consider to be madness, darkness, or mere unreliability. 

In this passage, Marlowe is conveying the story of his arguably useless, and certainly laughable, “white companion.” The man is not well suited for the climate or environment of the Congo, however, when Marlowe questions him about why he came to the place, the man asserts that it was entirely for “money, of course.” This calls attention to the purely capitalist motives of the majority of the colonial forces and imperial agents employed within the region while simultaneously implying that Marlowe possess a different motivation. When the man falls victim to fever, he must be carried by the natives within Marlowe’s caravan who are already carrying sixty pound loads. This is in stark contrast to Marlowe’s description in the proceeding paragraph of the path and “now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by his side.” The black men are allowed to waste away and die under forced, enslaved labor conditions, while the white man’s well being is guarded under threat of violence. Marlowe explains that he makes a speech to the carriers who are complaining or abandoning their duties because of the difficulty of carrying this white man. However, he makes this speech “in English” and it is merely his interpretation that the meaning of his accompanying gestures was not lost to the men. This is an instance where the legitimacy of ‘law’ in the eyes of the colonizer is mediated by the language of that colonizer, rendering the law itself unreliable. However, it is soon clear that Marlowe’s speech was not successful as later that morning, he comes across the man in the litter wrecked in the bushes. He describes it as “man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors.” The word ‘horrors’ stands out clearly, for it appears as a rather obvious exaggeration for what has occurred, particularly considering the scenes of death that Marlowe was so recently describing. The man wants blood in return for was has happened but the carriers have fled. Marlowe’s response to this is interesting, because he refers back to the “old doctor” and the notion that “it would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot’ and furthermore, that he feels as though he is “becoming scientifically interesting.” This leads one to the conclusion that in this moment, Marlowe is changing somehow, yet one must question why and how this is occurring, which is what I hope to explore further in my paper.