Chapter Two – Moby-Dick and Heart of Darkness

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of such complacency, and an attempt to achieve an “imaginative understanding” of his journey
into Africa. That journey was characterised by his inability to find answers to metaphysical
questions, and it revealed an almost universal collapse of moral standards. However, Marlow
does not allow his scepticism to degenerate into despair; his lie to the Intended is proof of this.
It allows him to “survive tragic knowledge without incurring self-deception – that is to say, to
affirm the values of the active life [of service to others] without blurring his sense of its
underlying contradictions.”253 Marlow has discovered “that culture does not eradicate, but
merely keeps in check, [man’s] primitive instincts.”254 By keeping alive the Intended’s faith in
Kurtz, he vindicates the notion of service to others in terms of the “positive illusion”255 that is
needed for the preservation and advancement of civilization.
Perhaps one of the most important differences between Ishmael and Marlow, on the one hand,
and Ahab and Kurtz, on the other, is the way in which they make sense of their experiences.
Whereas Ahab and Kurtz try to make the world conform to the dictates of their minds (a model
of domination), Ishmael and Marlow are willing to adapt their thinking to the demands which
the world makes on them (a model of interaction). One of the implicit messages of both Moby-
Dick and Heart of Darkness is that an arrogant interpretative inflexibility is destructive, while
an adaptable and unselfish approach to interpretation dispels the darkness, and is truly life-
enhancing.

252 Heart of Darkness, p. 70.
253 Berthoud, p. 63.
254 Berthoud, p. 60.
255 Berthoud, p. 63.