HOD: Quotations Flashcards
1
Q
quotes describing the African jungle (place)
A
- “Monotonous grimness” presents to the reader a world where lugubriousness rules.
- Images of harsh and plosive decay surround Marlow when he finds banks that have been “rotting into mud”, matched with the “thickened slime” of water, which “invaded the contorted mangroves”.
- Marlow is entrapped in a “colossal jungle” which appears to be “almost black”, symbolising both the physical and metaphorical darkness that lies within the African jungle.
- Allochronic discourse is used when Marlow ventures “up the river”, which, to him, seems as if it was similar to “travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world”.
- Marlow harshly describes London as “barred by a black bank of clouds”, with an “overcast sky” and “dark air”, hinting that London is possibly just as dark as the Congo (plosives).
- “the word ‘ivory’ rung in the air.”
2
Q
quotes describing the African people
A
- Marlow dehumanises the slaves by referring to them as “not enemies… not criminals… nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation.”
- The further use of allochronic discourse in describing the Africans as “wanderers on a prehistoric earth” places them into a lower status that the colonisers describe themselves.
- The African mistress wears bold colors, stripes and fringes, brass rings that climb up her ankles, and jewelry that Marlow can only describe as “barbarous” and “bizarre.”
- Marlow is almost embarrassed but has to admit that he and them are both humans alike - “they howled and leaped… and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was… the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.”
3
Q
quotes describing Kurtz’s descent into insanity
A
- Kurt reveals the tenebrousness of his personality when he exclaims that he “went a little farther… then still farther - till [he] had gone so far that [he didn’t] know how [he’d] ever get back.”
- The effects the environment has had on Kurtz’s sanity can only be fully understood when he is seen “[crawling] on all fours” along with “hardly being able to stand” with “still plenty of vigor in his voice”.
- What further, the “wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion [of Kurtz]” showing how nature has plagued Kurtz.
