El papel del juego en la enseñanza de las matemáticas

Europe.

The action so defined excludes, of course, the interview with the Intended. I will return to the place of this somewhat puzzling episode within the story later in the chapter. I continue now by noting the strong Aristotelian characteristics of the plot- structure I identified.

With Marlow as the protagonist, the plot describes a transformation whereby Marlow gains insight both into the evil in the world and in his own heart as well as into his ability to resist it. He undergoes a

transformation from a state of relative ignorance to one of increased knowledge but also from relative happiness to grief.

The long complication includes events 1-12. The three problems identified above— finding, work, Kurtz, and relief— are fully knotted together at the Central station. The denouement begins as Marlow starts

upriver at event 13. Marlow's arrival at the Inner Station is a reversal. Marlow has been thinking all along that meeting Kurtz will provide him with some answers and some relief from his disgust with the Company. It does just the opposite; the darkness is

worst of all at its heart. Indeed this is the central irony of the work: having risked his life to reach the Inner Station, Marlow does not find illumination; he finds even greater confusion. As Guetti has observed:

"Heart of Darkness", then, as an account of a journey into the center of things— of Africa, of Kurtz, of Marlow, and of human existence— poses itself as the refutation of such a journey and as the refutation of the general metaphorical

conception that meaning may be found within, beneath, at the center. (502)

The climax of Heart of Darkness is the attack on the boat at event 17. Strangely enough, this riveting and crucial scene has been largely neglected in the critical literature.® Yet it is the scene which depicts the final obstacle between Marlow and his super-objective, one of the longest and perhaps the most meticulously detailed scene in the story, and the only scene depicting physical violence. For these reasons, it demands serious attention in any study of the story's action. Hence a short detour on the

subject will not be out of place.

What is it, then, that characterises this scene as the high-point of excitement? Firstly, there is an increase of tension and a feeling of impending menace through Conrad's use of familiar, suspense-building techniques such as the forced halt just below the Inner

® For one of the few studies redressing this lack of attention, though in a somewhat different context from mine, see Stewart 321-3.

Station, thick fog, an inhuman scream from the bank, an invisible enemy, and an unnatural silence:

It was not sleep— it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf— then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well.

(73; pt. 2)

Second, as the plot diagram reveals, both the

seriousness and the rate of appearance of obstacles to Marlow's progress increase the closer he gets to Kurtz. By the eve of the attack (event 16) the situation has become life-threatening for the first time. The rate at which the obstacles appear begins to accelerate drastically at event 15, so that four major obstacles arise within about 18 hours. Elsewhere in the sequence, many days or weeks or months elapse between obstacles. In other words, around event 17 the action happens faster.

Simultaneously, time becomes increasingly

distended. As Lâmmert has shown, the appearance of time distortion is frequently a key to identifying "core" elements of the narrative (32). The section from nightfall the previous evening to the end of the attack takes up eight pages in my edition (with

digressions subtracted). The actual fight itself takes over four pages although it could not have lasted more than five minutes.

Finally, the attack is described, with but one digression, in minute, sensory detail and in scenes. It is thus more graphic than the rest of the tale.

This intensifies the excitement, since the subject of the description is physical violence and a savage killing. The following passage typifies the use of concrete, sensory detail— its "graphicality"—

throughout the entire section:

My feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing

lustre. . . . He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him.

(81-2 pt. 2)

Besides the accumulation of stark visual images, there is the shocking tactility of the warm blood and, in the instant before the passage just quoted, the "clatter" of the spear in the cabin as the helmsman falls.

These characteristics establish the scene as the story's climax. The subsequent scenes at the Inner Station are anti-climax in the literal sense: the scenes are not rendered in such acute detail and lack the intense, sensuous imagery. There is no distension of time and no violence. Marlow has reached his goal. The situation remains threatening, but the danger is more related than depicted and therefore not as

exciting.

It might be objected that the climax as the "emotional high point" must be a rather subjective thing and will vary from person to person, that, for

instance, Kurtz's last words, "The horror!" (113; pt. 3) or that the "grove of death" with its description of the workers as "bundles of acute angles" (45; pt. 2) might be more emotionally affecting to this or that reader than the death of the helmsman. This is indisputable.

However, the criteria for identifying the climax do not have to do primarily with reader response but with structure. Two of these criteria are the

construction of the scene— its "graphicality"— and its position in the plot. As I noted above, the attack on the boat is climactic by its very position as the last obstacle between Marlow and his super-objective. The stakes— the super-objective and life itself— are as high as possible at this point, hence, the level of excitement is high. The scene also has a vital

function in the cause-effect sequence and could not be omitted without damage to the plot.

On the other hand, the scene at the grove of death, though indeed full of shocking and painful images with a high degree of "graphicality",

nevertheless occupies a relatively unimportant position in the plot. There is little at stake for Marlow at the grove of death. Indeed it is here that the active problem first begins to become clear.

Likewise, Kurtz's last words, as devastating as they may be, are a poor candidate for the climax, since they utterly lack any "graphicality", "The horror!"

the sentence, "A pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel" (82; pt. 2). It lacks

sensory detail. Its impact does not come from its effect on the senses; it rests on what one chooses to infer from Kurtz's words rather than on any concrete image. Whatever fear it may provoke comes after one has first decided to what it refers.

By comparison, the death of the helmsman is shown to us as an immediately fearful image. We "witness" it. In this respect, I suggest that Kurtz's "The horror!" is to the stabbing of the helmsman what Hamlet's "The rest is silence" is to the stabbing of Laertes and Claudius. Hamlet's last words may be profound, may offer a dark and devastating final

vision, but they do not put the spectators on the edge of their seats, as does the immediately preceding sword fight. Kurtz's last words may well be the climax of the story's meaning, but in no way are they the climax of the action.

To return to the analysis of the composition of the action, the scenes at the Inner Station, then, form the resolution of the active problem. This is why the return trip down the river is almost entirely narration with very few scenes. This is also the reason why

Kurtz's death and Marlow's illness receive rather short shrift— e.g. "Mistah Kurtz— he dead" (112; pt. 3): they are not part of the action. In the same way, the

of Being are not part of the action and are mentioned only in passing.

Since Marlow's first problem— finding a job— is solved very early, the action mainly concerns the remaining problems: the physical struggle to get to Kurtz and the metaphysical struggle for answers. Thus, the action as a whole can be divided into two parts, the physical and the metaphysical. I shall first consider the physical struggle. Marlow must make the 200-mile tramp, raise the sunken boat, find rivets, withstand the apathy and climate at the Central Station, live with the Manager's ill will, and so forth. All of these barriers stand in the way of his meeting Kurtz while at the same time making him more and more desperate to do s o .

The physical and metaphysical quests are gradually joined together. Certainly by event 12 the physical conflict has assumed a metaphysical dimension. That the situation is becoming morally intolerable for Marlow is evident in his description of the "pilgrims"

They beguiled the time by backbiting and

intriguing against each other. . . . There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else— . . . as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. (53-4; pt.l ) The journey has become not merely a journey towards the Inner Station but also, Marlow hopes, towards

illumination, towards "a kind of light" (32; pt. 1).

ï

unity\ 165

As Marlow's dismay and disgust increase, he begins to think of Kurtz more and more as an answer:

I was curious to see . . . this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort . . . and how he would set about his work. (62; pt. 1) Thus, he is bitterly frustrated when he believes Kurtz has been killed.

There was a sense of extreme disappointment. . . . I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had

travelled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr Kurtz. . . .

I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life. (83; pt. 2)

Marlow's progress on the physical level, then, is a journey towards the Inner Station, and on the

metaphysical level an escape from the Company.

However, the active question of the metaphysical level is difficult to formulate. Marlow never

identifies exactly what is at stake on this level. Furthermore, the moral questions that bother him— the nature of evil, oppression, restraint, and so forth— are themselves fairly abstract issues. Unlike the decisive resolution of the active question on the physical level, the questions on the metaphysical level— the level of thought— are not resolved but end in contradiction.

One such unresolved problem is the question of restraint. Marlow wonders what it is that prevents a "civilized" man living in the heart of darkness from turning into a savage. Marlow himself finds the necessary restraint by keeping occupied with the

"surface truth", that is, through his work. On the journey upriver he sees the inhabitants dancing wildly. Part of him is horrified, part of him is attracted:

What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity— like yours— the thought of your remote kinship. . . . You wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no— I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white- lead and strips of woollen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steampipes— I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags. . . . There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. (69-70; pt. 2) In other words, the physical struggle to keep the boat running keeps Marlow from the moral morass.

Next Marlow contradicts his ideas of restraint and surface truth with the example of the wood-cutters on board the steamboat. They are cannibals and outnumber the whites six to one, and apparently they are

starving. Marlow wonders what prevented them from killing and eating the whites.

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