Heart of Darkness Man and the Natural World Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #13

[The brickmaker to Marlow]: "There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said; 'but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man - you apprehend me?—no man here bears a charmed life.'" (1.68)

In case you had any doubts about which side Nature is on, this passage should clear things up: the animals'.

Quote #14

"The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not." (1.70)

Nature is a living, silent, immobile, and malevolent mass: we're thinking that Marlow knew about kudzu.

Quote #15

"[…] the uncle said, 'The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?'" (2.1)

The uncle says that nature (the climate) might "do away" with Kurtz, freeing up a rung on the corporate ladder for him and his nephew. Let's see: heat, darkness, wild animals, cannibals—yep, things are looking pretty dire for Kurtz. (Of course, the subtext is that the manager and his nephew might be running into some of these problems, too.)