3, March
18--
To Whom It May Concern:
Note: I am not using specific names of people
or places to be safe in the case that this letter leaves the hand of the
messenger that I give it to and another 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. 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 in
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 that I have met that exemplifies the meaning of order,
but he is a man who survives and thrives on order alone, leaving him out of
place and darn 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. If
this happens to be my last trip, then I expect that full compensation will be
paid to my aunt in England.
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
laid 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 wild 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 advantage to 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. 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 that 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 live to return, please convey my body to Mr. Kurtz,
the chief of the Inner Station.
Sincerely,
Charlie
Marlow