First Impressions

Waiting for the Barbarians: A Quest for Truth?

So far in Waiting for the Barbarians, I have found the magistrate to be an interesting and somewhat perplexing character. He is extremely relatable for several reasons including the fact that I find myself also pitying the fisher folk that are living in the barracks. But more interestingly, my first impressions of the magistrate include those of admiration. He is constantly seeking truth and the existence a higher moral ground to be present in everything around him.

His pursuit of truth is apparent in his conversations with the colonel, in his conversations with the prisoners, and in his thoughts throughout the first section. For example, he asks the colonel on the subject of torture, “What if your prisoner is telling the truth yet finds he is not believed?...How do you ever know when a man has told you the truth?” (5). He continues stressing the importance of truth when he marvels at the colonel’s statement of the tone present in truth-speaking people when he says with a hint of sarcastic humor, “The tone of truth! Can you pick up this tone in everyday speech? Can you hear whether I am telling the truth?” (5). He gathers from this conversation an interesting idea: “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt” (5).

The theme of truth appears several more times in this section. Once is when the magistrate is asking the boy about the confession he had made saying “Are you telling the truth?” (10) when he had previously told the boy that he “must tell the officer the truth. That is all he wants to hear—the truth” (7).

With his search for truth, the magistrate is simultaneously aspiring for a higher level of morality to be present around him. He clearly dislikes the colonel’s use of torture and the fact that the colonel brought in a bunch of fisher folk who were clearly not “barbarians” the magistrate had in mind. The magistrate also helps the first two prisoners by taking care of the boy’s wounds and making sure the father was disposed of properly.

In the first section, truth is an undeniably important theme. However, as the story progresses, is this quest for truth muddled up by other things?

And can the magistrate really be described as a seeker of truth? Or was that simply a quick interpretation of his character that can be proved inaccurate?

I am also curious whether or not the magistrate is really to create a higher moral ground in the things around him? Or is that also one of his characteristics only present in the first section? (440)

Selected Letters en Route to the Congo

· Starts with Conrad remembering his initial desire to explore the unmapped lands of Africa

· He recalls looking at a map of Africa when he was about nine and telling himself “with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity” that he would go there when he grew up

· Then admits to having lost that eagerness and confidence

· Writes to his uncle of his desire to see him next time they both are in Brussels

· Thanks his uncle for his kindness in Cracow (where Conrad lived at teenager after his father died)

· Conrad regards his aunt as both a relative and a close friend and writes to her often

· Conrad experiences a lack of faith in the future, but continues to have an optimism and persistence that is necessary in the “wicked world” of Africa. This is shown in a letter to his aunt when he writes, “One doubts the future. For indeed—I ask myself—why should anyone believe in it? A little illusion, many dreams, a rare flash of happiness followed by disillusionment, a little anger and much suffering, and then the end. Peace! That is the programme, and we must see this tragi-comedy to the end. One must play one’s part in it.”

· Reveals his uneasiness about the fact that 60% of the Company’s employees return to Europe before they completed six months’ service. Others, still, are sent home so that they shouldn’t die in the Congo and ruin the “excellent” statistics. Only 7% complete their three years’ service.

· Feels grateful for the letters from his aunt that make his existence “slightly bearable” and begs for more letters

· Refers to himself as a “humble servant”

(287)

Darkness

Within the first part of Heart of Darkness, we are able to get a clear look into the “darkness” of Africa. Marlow describes men dying amongst the trees, “they were dying slowly…nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (17). He also alludes to a different kind of darkness—the darkness and accompanying corruption of the white staff—when, soon after arriving, he says “I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly” (16). Marlow meets the Company’s chief accountant, a “pretending, weak-eyed devil,” who initially appears as a “sort of vision” and “miracle” to Marlow (18). However, Marlow becomes less infatuated with the chief accountant after an exchange the two have about a sick man. Marlow expresses his grave concern that the sick man is dead while the chief accountant, “with great composure,” responds, “No, not yet" and later adds, "When one has to make correct entries one comes to hate those savages—hate them to death” (19).

Toward the end of Part 1, after losing his steam boat, Marlow says, “being hungry…and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage” (23). After spending time in Africa, is Marlow, like the native men and the white staff, doomed to darkness and corruption? If so, what makes this environment so detrimental?