Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan's The Failure of Metaphysics in Heart of Dearkness

The Article's main points

1. The novella "hinges" upon the tension between the strong religious overtones in Marlow's narration and the explicit denial of the metaphysics (transcendental or supernatural) which his story carries. Marlow himself refuses to explore the question of his initial motive for the journey, dismissing it as a notion, an urge to travel into the heart of Africa.

2. Conrad has used a lot of religious terminology and biblical illusions in the novella. Marlow's quest to travel into the heart of Africa almost seems like a quest for spiritual salvation. It is a quest, Vulcan argues, which entails the assumption that there exists a metaphysical object, a locus of worship to which the pilgrim directs himself. However, she argues that the dark overtones of religiosity are subverted by a rival discourse, a note of skepticism and despair, and an explicit rejection of the very concept of a pilgrimage.

3. The use of adjectives in the novella are overwhelming and work against themes.The reader who expects mistiness to clear as Marlow progresses towards the heart of darkness and toward the revelation implicitly promised in the concept of the pilgrimage, is faced with a thickening fog in which concrete noun-objects seem to be swallowed by vague and portentous qualities. In addition, she argues that the language seems to construct reality rather than refer to it.

4. Because Vulcan believes that the novella's dialogue has tension between a transcendental type of dialogue versus a anti-metaphysical one, she says that the ultimate significance or illumination at the end of the novel is ruined. This happens by the conspicuous absence of the object that would carry the meaning, and leaves the novel in a state of undecipherable reality.

5. She argues that Marlow realizes that Kurtz is a paragon of the blind omnivorous greed which motivates others, that the plenitude he had hoped to encounter is merely the culmination of the hollowness which is Kurtz's being. She says that Kurtz carried a sort of deified stature throughout most of the novel, and that this carries a metaphysical significance throughout the novel.

Ultimately, the metaphysical nature of the novel works against itself as Vulcan argues that Marlow's motives for going to find the mystical Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness were meaningless and unsatisfying to a reader.