mythology and its absence part II

I am tired, so the following is all over the place.
This post assumes two things: 1. Stories aren’t superfluous, but vital, and not in some mamby pamby sort of way: “oh but they awaken your soul (don’t let me forget about this, because I’m making fun of it, but I think there is some real meaning to it)” kind of crap. Stories are vital in the same way that thumbs are vital—no thumbs, no survival. 2. There are many kinds of stories, but the two categories that I want to talk about are entertainment stories and pedagogical stories. Entertainment stories is a loose category into which I’m throwing everything from funny personal anecdotes to most movies. The only things that really designate an entertainment story an entertainment story is that it is in some way captivating, but if it were to be forgotten the next day, there would be no real consequence. So in other words, entertainment stories are fun and useless. Pedagogical stories are necessary in the same way that thumbs are necessary. Like entertainment stories, they should be captivating enough to hold the attention of the young and easily distracted, but also because captivating stories are more likely to be remembered (the content of pedagogical stories isn’t easily acquired from the raw, so it must be preserved with high fidelity and as if it were to exist forever). Ok, I think I covered the two assumptions.
My argument is that mythology is in the pedagogical category, and that literature should serve the same pedagogical function that mythology serves. If that’s true, that mythology and literature, though each expressing themselves differently, serve the same pedagogical function, then the only thing you have to figure out about any piece of literature is what it’s intending to teach us. For mythology the basic outline of many stories is “this is how we were created, this is who we are, and this is what we do, and this is what happens when we stray from what we should do.” It’s a description and a prescription. I think literature does the same thing, and in today’s world where the authentic is quickly but hopefully not permanently being supplanted by the artificial, its role is just as important. It describes us, it holds a mirror up to our face and shows us for the first time what we truly look like, and it presents us with the scenario of what we should be doing, and/or what’s going to happen to us if we aren’t doing what we should be doing (Benny doesn’t need stories because he only has one program: catch mice. But humans are the animal defined by their ability to act on any number of programs, so stories help them choose the best ones.)
So a pedagogical story is a survival guide. I was talking with mom about how a real story would have to exist beyond itself and its reader, it should help us navigate the world. A real story should be able to take a table and make some relevant comment on it. Long story short, a table is made from trees and humans directly depend on trees for our survival and if we don’t understand our relationship with trees then we are at risk of destroying them and thereby ourselves. No joke, it’s a fact of life directly relevant to our own lives seeing as how we breath air and stuff. New mythologies must include technology because it is now part of our survival.
Anyways, modern authors have a doubly difficult job; not only are they mining the content of their stories from raw ore, but they are also working against an pseudo-mythology that is kept in place so that a few people benefit greatly from our ununderstanding of how we were created, who we are, what we do, and what we should be doing. Modern authors’ first task is to disassemble this pseudo-mythology, hopefully explaining to us that we’ve been duped. They then have to tell us who we really are and what we really do, what we should do if we hope to survive and thrive (someone whose soul is awake realizes the true nature of their humanness, and the true nature of their relationship to other humans and the environment, sees the interdependence and so is less likely to harm either).
James Welch’s book gets at this, I think. He realizes that the white culture that the native Americans are buying into bases its existence on machines (yet doesn’t understand them), on nonsymbiotic relationships with other humans, on short-lived thrills, etc. Basically on a way of life that won’t thrive or even survive for very many generations to come. They don’t understand their own nature, that their nature is one and the same as nature’s nature, and most importantly, they don’t have a survival guide. But I think Welch’s book holds up the mirror to native americans’ faces and white people’s faces (at this point our fates are shared), disassembles the pseudo-mythology, and with the help of Yellow Calf, starts to build a new survival guide that will maintain us indefinitely.

Love/belonging, Esteem, and Self-actualization.

This was originally meant to be a comment on Mom’s “Winter in the Blood-Chapter 1-PT. 1” post but I’ll stoke my own importance and make it its own new self aggrandizing post. Here we go.

“My throat ached with a terrible thirst.” This quote is a simple but so very deep summary of what Winter in the Blood is about. It shows we the reader the deep longing that our narrator has within his soul. He is searching for a basic satisfaction of human needs, to find who he is, to fill his soul with something that it is missing. What he is missing is a connection to his Native ancestors and history, the world (as in mother nature) and especially a connection to himself and self-knowing. These are basic satisfactions of needs on the beginning levels of Maslow that are not being met. The narrators feeling of emptiness is indescribable like a thirst is indescribable, what biologically satisfies it does not matter, you will know when you are satisfied and you will know when you are not. An attempt is made to quench this thirst but with the wrong solution... poison that does not provide sustenance, only superficial relief... alcohol.

Winter in the Blood has many references to water and to liquid. These are always negative references when they concern the narrator but are positive when they involve non-Native Americans. The clearest example has to do with the silty Milk (white) River that provides an abundance of fish for the white men but nothing for the Native Americans. In fact, the narrator cannot even see fish or even believe that there are fish in the river while the whites receive sustenance and prosperity from the river easily. The narrator cannot function in the world, so much so that it is not possible for him to provide for himself from it and it hardly provides the basic elements of survival for the Natives. Again, alcohol is its offering. Everything that they get is through struggle and usually results in pain.

There are more water examples than I can list or have time to search for at this point but the dry, cracked, gumbo flats are one example, summarizing the world that the NA’s live in. Another that I like is Yellow Calf’s well. He is still somewhat connected to the old ways of the Natives and maintains his communication with the old world but his pure life is still being corrupted and influenced by the new world... his well is cloudy, but at least it doesn’t provide alcohol. A new thought comes to mind; I wonder what the fact that Yellow Calf makes bitter coffee with the water has to do with things? Also, the little girl in the narrators car ride that gets sick from the water is interesting. She seems to be Native, which I reason from her father having a beaded headband and cannot drink the water without getting sick. Things are getting worse for the youth.

The narrators relationship to liquid is a metaphor for his search for meaning in life like a need that needs to be satisfied like thirst and the disappointment that this search has created for him. His methods for understanding the world are incompatible with the modern world. They create a distance that makes it hard for him to to understand how life works and therefore hard to be successful at finding meaning and happiness. His perceptions are different from the perceptions of those around him even though they witness the same things. They probably both create and result from the distance he makes and experiences in his life. The differences in realities is very visible in the strange, Richard Brautigan-esque and magical realist occurrence of the rivers and reservoirs being full of fish for the white man but completely bleak to the narrator that was mentioned earlier. It is not that he is unlucky at fishing, he cannot see the fish at all and does not believe that they are even there. For the whites the water is prosperous, for him, desolate. He is on a separate, unfortunately lower, plane of existence. He also feels that his father never got anything accomplished in life but is then directly contradicted by his mother who says that he must be confused. These are both instances of the author showing the narrators disconnection from the world. This is done, I think, to show the position of the Native Americans in the modern world. They have different perspectives that do not work in the new reality. The narrator is a symbol for all NA’s.

This novel is bleak. Its desolation, hopelessness, and misunderstandings shrivel any positive emotion in the reader like a drop of water sizzling through the sand of a scorched riverbed on a summer day. The feeling is a dryness in your mouth, sucking away hope like bone dry dust. The mother horse and her colt in the first part of the novel offer promise and the possibilities that come with new life but at 100 pages in and from the title of the book I doubt that things are going to turn around. What can be seen as positive is the authors beautiful prose which is lush and nourishing as well as the knowledge of alternate perspectives that come with reading the novel. When we know pain we can better work to and then appreciate happiness. blah blah blah.

Chapter 1 and 4 - Pt. 1 WINTER IN ....

I liked your comments about Native American Mythology, and how actually all people have had some sort of Mythology, religion, government, structure, or what ever to keep life in perspective, to give their group meaning. I like how James Welch brings us into the life of one family on a reservation, showing how the "old ways" have been abandoned and how the family has adopted many of the "white man's ways". It is not really a negative life unless one constantly looks back to the way Indians used to live in America. The main character sees good in nature and searches for the past to help him make it in the present. Their history is not as it was in ancient days, but their family has its own history and survival as a family comes first. He at least has his memories and stays on the ranch, constantly returning to it.

See page 8 - where he even sees hope and life in a tadpole he saves from the washtub. Small details in his life give him pleasure like recalling the good times with his brother when they used to ride calves for fun until their father caught them. Much is revealed through what the protagonist notices. The author does not try to overwhelm us with complex prose. He just presents the story and lets us decide what is important. The life this family leads on the reservation is how it is, even though the past keeps popping up. We know the main character keeps bringing up his bad knee, keeps explaining what type of man his father was, visits Yellow Calf for a reason.

Questions: What is the "borrow pit" and why does Lame Bull not acknowledge the main character's comments about how old he was on pages 6-7 when he says he was twenty? Lame Bull seems to just ignore the comments. Also, why does he call his mother "Teresa" sometimes instead of "mother" or "mom"?

myth and its absence

One of the themes that the groundbreaking short film Messenge explores is the extent to which humans are obligated to maintain some sort of mythology, personal or shared. I think this theme is also somehow deeply relevant to Winter in the Blood, though I'm not sure how. My guess is based on the assumption that 1. stories (from world mythologies to soap operas to lies to self-confirming delusions) are a universal trait of the human species just as language and music are 2. as my boy darwin would tell us, nature allows for no excess; if a trait exists, it has a cost to the organism but is perpetuated because of its adaptive advantage. So, these native american fellows once had a complex and rich system of beliefs that infused the greater culture. My hypothesis is that, unlike modern american mythology (religion, history, television), native american mythology was an adaptive mechanism central to their survival as a people. It was like a traffic system with agreed laws, assumptions, courtesies, etc. that guaranteed the safety of the road. When the white man came, not only did he nearly bring the native americans as a people to the edge of nothing, but he also erased their culture and its mythologies. Welch paints a bled world in the opening pages and chapters of his book. Nihilism, deadness, decrepidness, hopeless humor. The fish are gone from the river, the ancestors of the deer that the protagonist's ancestors hunted are no longer within reach, the last thread to the ancient knowledge is thin and thinning. My question is how much of this lack of life and prosperity is the result of the lack of a unifying and clarifying story, and how much can Welch's book do to resuscitate the stories that might be left, for them and us, and all the rest of those bad beginners.

Winter in the Blood-Chapter 1-PT. 1

The first chapter was a negative beginning: burnt grass, bare gray skeleton, stark as bone, none of them counted, dry, cracked gumbo flats. The location is dry and a prairie opens up for us, bleak and hot, yet with the contrast of the horse and her colt holding life and promise behind the old cabin. It describes the protagonist's difficulty in coming home after being with the white man and his wild wife, his eye swollen, feeling the emptiness in life, not caring about his mother, grandmother and girl "who was thought to be my wife".

The mention of distance in this first chapter - "But the distance I felt came not from country or people; it came from within me." - turns out to be a significant word or theme throughout this book.

The novel's beginning made me sad, but I needed to read on, to find out what the protagonist was feeling, to feel what he felt, to discover why the people treated each other with distance. This might just be a unique literary experience. I was ready.

supplementary reading

Excerpt from 'A Prospect of the Sea' by Dylan Thomas

It was high summer, and the boy was lying in the corn. He was happy because he had no work to do and the weather was hot. He heard the corn sway from side to side above him, and the noise of the birds who whistled from the branches of the trees that hid the house. Lying flat on his back, he stared up into the unbrokenly blue sky falling over the edge of the corn. The wind, after the warm rain before noon, smelt of rabbits and cattle. He stretched himself like a cat, and put his arms behind his head. Now he was riding on the sea, swimming through the golden corn waves, gliding along the heavens like a bird; in seven- league boots he was springing over the fields; he was building a nest in the sixth of the seven trees that waved their hands from a bright, green hill. Now he was a boy with tousled hair, rising lazily to his feet, wandering out of the corn to the strip of river by the hillside. He put his fingers in the water, making a mock sea-wave to roll the stones over and shake the weeds; his fingers stood up like ten tower pillars in the magnifying water, and a fish with a wise head and a lashing tail swam in and out of the tower gates. He made up a story as the fish swam through the gates into the pebbles and the moving bed. There was a drowned princess from a Christmas book, with her shoulders broken and her two red pigtails stretched like the strings of a fiddle over her broken throat; she was caught in a fisher- man's net, and the fish plucked her hair. He forgot how the story ended, if ever there were an end to a story that had no beginning. Did the princess live again, rising like [con't]

supplementary reading

a mermaid from the net, or did a prince from another story tauten the tails of her hair and bend her shoulder-bone into a harp and pluck the dead, black tunes for ever in the courts of the royal country? The boy sent a stone skidding over the green water. He saw a rabbit scuttle, and threw a stone at its tail. A fish leaped at the gnats, and a lark darted out of the green earth. This was the best summer since the first seasons of the world. He did not believe in God, but God had made this summer full of blue winds and heat and pigeons in the house wood. There were no chim- neys on the hills with no name in the distance, only the trees which stood like women and men enjoying the sun; there were no cranes or coal-tips, only the nameless distance and the hill with seven trees. He could think of no words to say how wonderful the summer was, or the noise of the wood-pigeons, or the lazy corn blowing in the half wind from the sea at the river's end. There were no words for the sky and the sun and the summer country: the birds were nice, and the corn was nice.

Welch, Thomas, Picasso, and Everyone Else

Randomly selected sentence from A Prospect of the Sea:

“Did the princess live again, rising like a mermaid from the net, or did the prince from another story tauten the tails of her hair and bend her shoulder-bone into a harp and pluck the dead, black tunes for ever in the courts of the royal country?”

Randomly selected sentence from Winter in the Blood:

“My right eye was swollen up, but I couldn’t remember how or why, just the white man, loose with his wife and buying drinks, his raging tongue a flame above the music and my eyes.”

Prospect is almost pure metaphor; not only is the princess a character in the story that the boy is imagining within Thomas’s story, but she is taken from a Christmas story in the boy’s story. Three levels of fiction. Then there is a prince from yet another story. Within this one sentence, the princess, who is already a metaphor, is futher simileed upon when she rises like a mermaid. She alternatively becomes a musical instrument. And then there is also an allusion to the phoenix as she rises and lives again. Thomas takes a single subject and sends it through a prism, breaking it into many concepts, all of which existed within the original subject as possible themes from which metaphors could be constructed. The difference between Thomas and Welch and the majority of authors is that most authors will take a trait from their character or a quality or concept that they want to describe, find an appropriate metaphor that illustrates that trait or quality or concept and they stick to it; their work is done and they don’t think about it twice. Thomas starts with a trait or a quality or a concept, considers many possible metaphors to illustrate his that trait etc. and instead of choosing one, he throws them all in, mixing them together and bending them back and forth upon and through one another. An author might say a subject was quiet, strong, and intelligent, etc., but Thomas turns all those adjectives into metaphors, letting them play with one another, sometimes letting them take over an entire paragraph or an entire story. He doesn’t let the plot get in the way of the will of the metaphor. His stories are kind of similar to dreams in that way.
VS Ramachandran wrote about the paintings of picasso that show a subject composed of all possible perspectives of their face and body, combined into one form. It turns out that within the are of the brain that recognizes faces, there are specific areas that recognize the face from a given angle, whether profile, straight on, ¼. Normally only one of these facial recognition areas activates when viewing a face, but when a person views a multi-perspective picasso face, all three of these areas activate simultaneously. I think Thomas is doing something similar to our brains when he composes these multi-layered sentences with multi-dimensional metaphors. He intentionally activates multiple and disparate regions of our brains that in normal life never have the opportunity to activate simultaneously. I don’t know why it’s cool, why having these multiple regions activate simultaneously is cool, I just know that it is. It’s like a sphinx or a griffin or a labradoodle or Beatles’ harmonies. Anyway, Welch kind of does this too, but not to the degree or level of skill that Thomas does. He has some runs like “his raging tongue a flame above the music and my eyes.” That’s interesting because it completely disregards natural laws that dictate that something like a tongue can’t at once be a flame and also in someone’s mouth and in the air. Welch activates fear with raging, the sensation of touch with a flame, hearing with music (which in itself activates many other senses and emotions) and vision, all within one short sentence and with one thing. the sentence occupies multiple dimensions, senses, emotions, and all the intellectual crap that goes along with it. Kind of like cerebral yoga, which is why I like good art, what little of it there is. Ps I’m not going to re view or revise these posts, so I apoligize if their our gramattical, or speling airers.

the following

post was screwed up by these stupid posting things so it is kind of hard to make sense of, but basically there is a prospect of the sea, and then the other section is winter in the blood

word analysis

A Prospect of the Sea
570 word sample taken from the first paragraph of Dylan Thomas’s A Prospect of the Sea.
21 sentences total
Adjectives
High, hot, unbrokenly, blue, warm, before, golden, sevenleague, lashing, moving, drowned, broken, stretched, broken, dead, black, royal, green, best, first, full, blue, house, nameless, wonderful, lazy, half, nice, nice, summer
Total adjectives: 39 or 7% of total words
Neutral adjectives: 20 or 50% of total adjectives
Positive adjectives: 13 or 33% of total adjectives
Negative adjectives: 6 or 15% of total adjectives
Color adjectives: 7 or 18% of total adjectives

Nouns

Summer, corn, work, weather, corn, noise, birds, branches, trees, house, corn, wind, rain, noon, rabbits, cattle, cat, arms, head, sea, corn, waves, heavens, bird, boots, fields, nest, trees, hands, hill, boy, hair, feet, corn, strip, river, hillside, fingers, water, sea-wave, stones, weeds, fingers, tower pillars, water, fish, head, tail, tower gates, pebbles, bed, princess, christmas book, shoulders, pigtails, strings, fiddle, throat, net, fish, hair, story, end, story, beginning, princess, mermaid, net, prince, story, tails, hair, shoulder-bone, harp, tunes, courts, country, boy, stone, water, rabbit, tail, fish, gnats, lark, earth, summer, seasons, world, God, God, summer, winds, heat, pigeons, wood, chimneys, hills, distance, trees, women, men, sun, cranes, coal-tips, distance, hill, trees, words, sky, sun, country, birds, corn

Total nouns: 123 or 22% of total words

Repeated nouns:

Corn: 7
Summer: 4
Bird(s): 3 (plus 3 species)
Tree(s): 4
Water- 2
Sun: 3
Fish: 3
Sea: 2
Rabbit(s): 2
Hill((s)ide): 4
Tail(s): 3
Living things: 55 (45% of nouns)
Natural things: 92 (75% of nouns)
Dead things: Possibly 1
References to the weather or time of year: 14
Body parts: 14

Like: 6
No: 6
Winter in the Blood

~570 word sample taken from the beginning of Winter in the Blood.

31 sentences total

Adjectives

Tall, sorrel, burnt, shady, bare, gray, stark, hot, swollen, white, loose, raging, wild, white, easy, even, bad, black, furry, burnt, blazing, pale, green, milky, dry, cracked, deep, empty, terrible

Total adjectives: 29 or 51% of total words
Neutral adjectives: 17 or 59% of total adjectives
Positive adjectives: 1 or 3% of total adjectives
Negative adjectives: 11 or 38% of total adjectives
Color adjectives: 6 or 21% of total adjectives

Nouns

Weeds, pit, leak, mare, colt, grass, cabin, place, name, roof, mud, logs, chunks, skeleton, mice, insects, tumble weeds, home, bone, wind, wall, hill, cabin, barbed wire, graves, Earthboys, daughter, man, Lodgepole, Earthboys, fence, sun, back, highway, eye, man, wife, drinks, tongue, flame, music, eyes, Rocky Boy, money, breasts, hair, home, cinch, torture, throat, knee, head, heat, mare, colt, cabin, graveyard, hills, Little Rockies, haze, home, mother, old lady, grandmother, girl, wife, reason, hatred, love, guilt, conscience, distance, years, country, prarie, sun, Milk River, valley, waters, river, sagebrush, cottonwoods, flats, country, distance, people, distance, distance, country, people, hawk, moon, feelings, mother, grandmother, girl, highway, fence, two miles, home, throat, thirst

Total nouns: 102 or 18% of total words

Repeated nouns:

Mare: 2
Colt: 2
Graves/graveyard: 2
Distance: 4
Sun: 2
River: 2
Home: 4
Mother: 2
Grandmother: 2
Cabin: 3
Throat: 2
Hill(s): 2
People: 2
Country: 2
Girl: 2
Body parts: 11
Living things: 33(32% of nouns)
Dead things: 8
Natural things: 49 (48% of nouns)
References to weather or time of year: 5

Like: 0
No: 6

Some adjectives and nouns that the two stories share

Summer, distance, hill, throat, head, hair, water, heat, man/men, weeds, wind, river, sun, green, black, etc.

The Rebirth

“...He began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of his hands outward, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes without a lotus flower...”

This reference to Eastern philosophy early in the pages of Heart of Darkness, a novel set in the African jungle, a novel about the depravity of man, written in Victorian England and by an author from Poland shocked me. It seemed so out of context to what the rest of the story was about. There is no peace in the story, no zen, only... suffering.

Now I see that it fits perfectly. Buddhism, specifically personal enlightenment and the quest for understanding are prevalent ideas in Heart of Darkness. Marlow’s journey up the river and into his own soul is his journey to awakening. His quest is much like that of Buddhas journey to seek the meaning and source of suffering in the world. He will see much of it in the jungle.

Life as suffering is the first and most prevalent truth of Buddhism. Darkness touches everyone in the jungle, it permeates into their souls. Those that let it stay there are doomed. Those that use the knowledge of suffering to further their own understanding and are successful at keeping their souls pure will be stronger from the experience.

Kurtz is on a path toward enlightenment but his path has faults. Marlow looks to Kurtz for inspiration on how to survive in the jungle. Marlow absorbs Kurtz’s life knowledge but Marlow knows that Kurtz has been corrupted by the ways of man and the evil of the jungle and will never move past these flaws. Kurtz does maintain a zen-like understanding of the world but he still fights against it and tries to conquer the jungle. “‘Oh, but I will wring your neck yet!’ he cried at the invisible wilderness” (97). According to Marlow, Kurtz’s soul is as “...translucently pure as a cliff of crystal” (100). He is on the path but is perhaps a few wrong turns away. That his soul is a cliff and not a lotus flower is the problem and there are far too many heads on poles at the bottom anyways.

The “bepatched youth,” better known as the Russian, is an interesting character, halfway to enlightenment but also halfway to doom. He is a lost soul and is looking for guidance. As a student of Kurtz, “He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in...” This is a pure motivation but unfortunately his mentor can only get him so far towards accomplishing this.

The one person that does effectively use the Dharma of Kurtz and the jungle is Marlow. The most important lesson for Marlow comes from Kurtz on Kurtz’s death bed and may be the moment that Marlow obtains enlightenment. Kurtz’s last words, “The Horror! The Horror!” are the foundation of the Buddhist outlook on the world. Life is suffering.

What makes Marlow different from everyone else in the novel is that he maintains the middle way. There is nothing extreme in his actions. He almost doesn’t change at all throughout the story and it is only his enlightenment that makes him different in the end of his trip up the river than he was at the beginning. He only observes. He gathers knowledge for his own understanding. He sees the hedonistic ways of the cannibals and is tempted but does not join them. He sees the colonists materialism and refrains from their extremes but still wants to make a buck for himself. His soul remains pure and he comes away with a greater understanding of life. There is light in his heart.

After Kurtz dies Marlow returns to the sepulchral city. Here his new Buddhist understanding makes the people in the city stand out and gives him the feeling that he stands out from them as well. “I felt sure they could not possibly know the things I knew” (101), although he “...had no particular desire to enlighten them...” (101). Unfortunately, and true to Conrad’s style, a wrench is thrown in the clarity of these passages when Marlow adds, “...I was not very well at that time” (101). This may mean that because he wasn’t well he couldn’t spread his knowledge or it could mean that the thought of having a greater knowledge than those around him was crazy. The later may be disproved in the next paragraph.

The novel ends with Marlow again seated in the position of a Buddha. His storytelling demonstrating that he has found the origin of suffering and gained an understanding of how to be free from it. Like the Buddha, Marlow spends his time after enlightenment traveling and teaching others what he has come to understand.

There are most definitely many more examples of Buddhist philosophy throughout, but my knowledge of Buddhism is limited and I am thinking that this may be my last post on Heart of Darkness so I am going to be lazy and let other people continue this specific journey to enlightenment. Post themes if you find them and I will do the same if I come upon them in further readings.

104

“...I had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived - a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me - the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart - the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires, within the patient woods, those broken phrases come back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid manner, when he said one day, ‘This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. H’m. It is a difficult case. What do you think I ought to do - resist? Eh? I want no more than justice.’ ...He wanted no more than justice - no more than justice.”

Flames and Running and Threats of Violence and All Around Crazyness

Can anyone give me a brief summary of exactly what was going on with the fire and Kurtz crawling into the jungle and Marlow chasing him and natives rioting in the third part of the book? It starts on page 90 of my edition. It was very confusing and I don’t know who is attacking who and why Kurtz is trying to escape and whether Marlow really has the desire to kill Kurtz, who started the fire, etc., etc., etc.

What is the purpose of this section? Nothing really came out of it did it?