3, March
18--
To Whom It May Concern:
Note: I am not using specific names of people
or places to be safe in the event that this letter leaves the hand of the
messenger to whom I give it and a party other than the intended reads this.
I am writing to the Company on account of its
barbarous and barbaric actions here in the dark continent, centered around the
Central Station. I have heard no reports of misbehavior, nor any of resistance,
but I fear that the company is being operated in a very inefficient manner. In
fact, I have traveled to various places around the world and I believed that
this trip under the employment of the Company would be productive. However, I
fear that I have been sorely mistaken. There is a very noticeable lack of
organization, thereby reducing the efficiency of the Company as a whole.
Disorder in one single area may be permissible, but the lack of order found
both in the Outer Station as well as the Central Station confirm that the
Company must reorganize before it can continue in its quest. There is one
individual whom I have met who exemplifies the meaning of order, but he is a
man who survives and thrives on order alone, leaving him out of place and
darned near useless in a place such as the Outer Station. There was nothing
there to show that order existed. In places it looked as though someone tried
to instill order, but only succeeded in creating meaningless projects, holes in
the ground, meaningless blasting and the like. The native savages of the Outer
and Central stations have been subjected to brutality and servitude above and
beyond the necessary. Also due to the lack of order and due process my command
is sunken in the river and has been for two days. Based on the evidence that I
have and will present later in this letter, I tender my resignation from the
Company, effective upon my return from my current trip.
Upon my arrival to the Outer Station, I was
appalled at the state of things. There was a broken railway-truck lying on its
back next to a useless boiler "wallowing in the grass" (32). Other
than the dead and wasted machinery and a small drab grove of trees, the
landscape was dull and boring. To one side of the path, there was a large hole.
I could find no reason for the hole, except to keep the criminals busy with
work. For what reason the natives are called criminals I cannot understand.
Why, even, must they be put to useless work? The blasting in the cliffs served
no purpose other than to waste the dynamite and put lives in danger. That
doesn’t seem to cause any hesitation here in the jungle. Indeed, I had walked
along the path to the tress so I could stand in shade, but instead I was met
with shapes as dead as any, but still showing the symptoms of life. The black
shapes that lay around the grove in various positions of death seemed to cling
to the ground even though they "were nothing earthly now" (35). On
what right or need does the Company find it necessary to treat these humans in
such a way that they are brought down to creatures? I can still remember the horror
I felt when I looked into the sunken eyes that were "enormous and vacant,
[with] a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out
slowly" (35). The rest of the Outer Station was in disorder except for one
fine specimen of a man who made up for all the chaos outside of his office.
The fellow who I refer to is the Company’s
chief accountant. He was a man with backbone, he showed absolute refusal to
give up to the wilderness outside his door. The fellow kept all of his books in
apple-pie order, and matched with starched collars, white cuffs and silk
neckties. In short, this chap was outright amazing, especially considering that
he had been stationed here for almost three years. His appearance appeared so
out of place in that junkyard heap of a Company station and even more
spectacular and unsuited to the walls of rushes and enormous trees bounding the
central Station from where I now write. That fellow was faultless in his
appearance and of good temper. I only pitied the man half the time I spent in
his company for the lack of adventure in his job; the good accountant only kept
on writing "correct entries of perfectly correct transactions" (38)
while souls died and left their shells of bodies in sight of his doorstep. There
was one benign result of meeting this uncompassionate soul. He was the first
person to introduce the name Kurtz to me. From the outset I wanted to know more
about this "first-class agent" (37). Only by prying and pestering did
I elicit more information about Mr. Kurtz from the Accountant. It is funny that
I never did learn his name in the ten days that I spent in his company. He is
too caught up in his numbers to care about the world outside his shanty. But
his meager responses to my questions only whetted my now burning desire to meet
this Kurtz.
I now jump to my present location 200 miles
inland from the Outer Station. The hike to this station was dreary; walking the
road in the blistering heat with only landmark events like finding a murdered
native in the road greatly reduced the moral of the entire group. The trek
could be withstood except that the Company chose to send incompetent fellows
the entire trip from Belgium to the Outer Station only to have the collapse on
the trek form the Outer to the Central Station. Dreary silence marked the
entire fifteen days, even as we came in sight of the stinking mud banks and
towering rushes that marked the Inner Station. The first thing that I had
knowledge of when I entered the gap in the rushes was that my steamer had sunk.
By the impatience and lack of discipline of the manager, the impromptu trip
that he tried to undertake scraped the bottom of my steamer. This irked me very
much because not only was my first freshwater command sitting at the bottom of
a river, but also I would be further delayed from visiting the now infamous Mr.
Kurtz. He is infamous not to others, but only to myself because he has become
my sole fascination in the wilderness and is the only reason that I will
continue this trip. I have heard from another man whom I will call the
brick-maker who has told me much about Kurtz. By now he has become not a
person, but an object, a goal for me. I go not to meet the physical body of
Kurtz, but to obtain my goal of knowing who Kurtz is and making my own opinion of
him. The disorganization of the Company is also responsible for the time that
it will take me to set the steamer afloat. Each day could be spent working but
instead I sit here with nothing to do while the materials that I need, rivets,
are lounging in great numbers at the Outer Station. Rivets in great numbers are
rusting away, while here I scrounge to find a single one. Instead of working on
my steamer and working towards my goal of meeting Kurtz, I am forced to
contemplate the great green trees festooned with vines that are my jail-bars.
Due to the incompetence of the Company in the
departments of organization and common sense I hereby resign from the company.
In the event that I do not reach the Inner Station, please convey my body to
Mr. Kurtz, the chief of the aforementioned station. I also expect full and
complete compensation be paid to my aunt in Belgium.
Sincerely,
Charlie Marlow
Writer’s Reflection
I
just did not like this assignment. Plain and simple. It’s not extremely hard
for me to look at something from another point of view, but I draw the line at
pretending to be a fictional character. The hardest part of this assignment was
translating my thoughts into coherent sentences. It didn’t help that the book
was boring. Somehow I still managed a "B+" on my letter. Oh,
"the horror, the horror."