glories of exploration. He remembers to have pointed to the North Pole when he was a child (Conrad 08).
He arrived in a city that made him thinking about the whited sepulchre.
Marlow’s invited for an adventure, and he sets his position in his initiation to it by saying:
“My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment: but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some inferno” (Conrad 17). He describes his approach to this situation by saying: I shook hand with this miracle, and I learned he (white man) was the company’s chief accountant, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He was devoted to his work, and had not taken care of himself so much.
The adventure to Africa contains the stage of a rite of passage. Marlow retells the adventure and the story of Kurtz while his friends are stuck in the Thames River (in London) while the tide is flowing out. It shows the ambition of people to expand their horizontal line toward new societies, and the extension of forces, in the attempt to dominate new lands. When they come back they hybrid people, and acquired hybrid culture. His meeting with Kurtz in the woods, and the adverse conditions he was found, left him the frustration of a lost personage, who had so many things to tell him. The immense feeling of lost invaded his mind, and conduced him to reflections and immersion to his unconscious life. Buddha is mentioned at the end of the book. Like the prophet, Marlow got isolated, and emerged in deep reflection (Conrad 78).
Cunha 07