Rlpr on Nostr: "How does this color the rest of the novella? In looking back over earlier events, ...

"How does this color the rest of the novella? In looking back over earlier events, one now grasps Conrad’s theme of the desirability of civilization’s inherent artifice. “Artifice” generally carries a negative connotation, but here it’s meant in the same sense that an artist transforms materials into art. Civilization makes of humanity more than it is in its natural state. It’s superior to the facts of bare life, mud huts, and cannibalism that Marlow left behind in Africa. Without making ourselves more than what we are in biological reality—without the artificial overlay of civilization—we are primitive and backward, like the superstitious African natives who eat each other and call Kurtz a “god.”"

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/heart-of-darkness-civilization-over-the-horror-of-barbarism-6019895