He Laughed, Then Became Serious: Subconscious Desires of the Russian in Heart of Darkness and Marlow in Youth

This is an essay I just finished for my ENG 500: Graduate Literary Studies class at NAU. Enjoy.

Telemoonfa
ENG 500
Final Paper
December 8th, 2008


Abstract

In this article, “He Laughed, Then Became Serious: Subconscious Desires of the Russian in Heart of Darkness and Marlow in Youth”, author Telemoonfa gives a close reading of the Russian and Marlow from a psychoanalytic perspective. Telemoonfa compares and contrasts the two characters, giving special attention to their youth and sense of romance and adventure. After giving many examples of the subconscious mind coming through from the texts of these two works by Conrad, Telemoonfa concludes that the Russian’s and Marlow’s subconscious desires are very different from their conscious desires.

He Laughed, Then Became Serious: Subconscious Desires of the Russian in Heart of Darkness and Marlow in Youth

The Russian that looks like a harlequin in Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness and Marlow in Youth both have subconscious desires that are not recognizable to the hasty reader. But a more thorough reading, and a psychoanalytical outlook, brings their subconscious desires to light. In this paper I will compare and contrast the two characters and see what darkness I can glean from their brains.

Both the Russian and the Marlow in Youth are literally young. (From now on in this paper I will refer to Marlow in Youth as “Marlow B”, so as to distinguish the Marlow in Youth from Marlow A, the Marlow in Heart of Darkness.) Conrad actually gives us precise ages. The Russian plainly says, “I am twenty-five,” (Conrad 124) and Marlow B is twenty years old (4).

Age seems to be an important, defining characteristic of Marlow B and the Russian, especially in Youth, as age comes up quite a bit in the story. Marlow’s youth is contrasted with the age of Captain Beard and Mahon. Upon first meeting Captain Beard and Mahon, Marlow B says, “between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy between two grandfathers” (5). Later in the story Marlow B says, “I had never noticed so much before how twisted and bowed [Captain Beard] was. He and Mahon prowled soberly about hatches and ventilators, sniffing. It struck me suddenly poor Mahon was a very, very old chap. As to me, I was as pleased and proud as though I had helped to win a great naval battle. O Youth!” (22). One can picture Marlow standing up proudly, showing off imaginary medals on his chest, drinking in the fun and the adventure of it all, whereas the two older sailors, “grandfathers”, are looking somber and jaded.

The Russian and Marlow B are literally young in body, but they are also figuratively young in mind. The Russian has lived a vagabond life. He ran away from his father, an archpriest, and ran away from his hometown of Tambov. He wandered around aimlessly, not engaging in commerce or in the usual vocations of young men, until somehow he stumbled upon Kurtz’s ivory kingdom in the heart of the African jungle. Marlow A says of the Russian’s wanderings and of his youth, “For months- for years- his life hadn’t been worth a day’s purchase;” In other words, the Russian had not been working and earning money. The Russian had not been growing up or assimilating to typical culture. “and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity” (126). To further illustrate how the Russian was figuratively young as well as literally young, Marlow A says of him, “The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-colored rags,” and “If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this be-patched youth” (126).

When it comes to a carefree attitude, Marlow B’s youth is different from the Russian’s youth, though. Marlow B does not wander around like the Russian does. Marlow B signs up to work for a company that is in the business of shipping things via the sea. He takes the responsibility of second mate, and performs his duties well, but he does not take responsibility for the cargo the way that the older gentlemen on the ship did, or even the way that the stockholders back in London did. But Marlow B’s youth and spirit of adventure is illustrated in this scene: The Judea is near sinking, and everybody on the ship has to take turns using pumps to get saltwater out of the boat and back into the ocean. Marlow sees “By the light of the lantern brought on deck to examine the sounding-rod I caught a glimpse of their weary, serious faces” (11). But imagine how Marlow B’s face would have looked when he exclaimed, after hours and hours of pumping the water out of the ship, and while still in the act of pumping the water, “By Jove! This is the deuce of an adventure- something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate- and I am only twenty… I was pleased. I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation” (12). In contrast to the old, weary faces of the other men pumping out the water, Marlow B’s face must have been joyful, because he had the spirit of youth inside of him.

Even though the Russian’s idea of youth and adventure was more reckless than Marlow B’s idea of youth and adventure, they both sound an awful like Henry David Thoreau, who went to the woods because he “wished to live deliberately” (Thoreau 490). Only Thoreau was more methodical, calculating and economical in his approach to his adventure. Nevertheless, looking closely into Marlow B, the Russian, and Thoreau, we see in their ideas of youth and adventure an abandonment of typical endeavors, a journey, a sense of independence, a retreat from society, and self-reliance, wonderment at the sensation of being alive, and a soaking-up of the magic of life.

Another similarity that the Russian and Marlow B share is their unusual emotions. Marlow B seems emotionally distanced from the rest of the crew. He does not mention any real friendships he developed with his shipmates, although the entire voyage lasted over a year, and surely they must have gotten lonely, all alone out there, on the boat, at sea. Further, Marlow B’s emotions do not coincide with the emotions of the rest of the crew. While the rest of the crew is miserable, and tired, Marlow B is off in la-la land, fancying himself as the hero in some grand adventure, much like Don Quixote fighting windmills as he thinks he’s fighting giants. In reality, the voyage of the Judea is a complete financial failure. The cargo, 600 tons of coal, ends up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, along with the burned remains of the Judea. But Marlow B didn’t care. As he puts it, “…the owner, the underwriters, and the charterers squabbled amongst themselves in London, and our pay went on” (Conrad 16).

As for the Russian, he is a mess of emotions. Indeed, I would go so far as to diagnose the Russian as manic-depressive. Notice the way that the Russian talks, in garbled speech and disjointed thoughts, in sentence fragments, like a smooth stone skipping on a lake, jumping from subject to subject (The ellipses are quoted, not my addition).

“You don’t talk to [Kurtz]- you listen to him,” he exclaimed with great exaltation. “But now” He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously, while he gabbled: “Brother sailor … honor… pleasure… delight… introduce myself… Russian… son of an arch-priest… government of Tambov… What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now, that’s brotherly. Smoke? Where’s a sailor that does not smoke?” (123)

The text also says of the Russian’s rapidly shifting moods, “His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next” (122). His roller-coaster emotions have a manifestation not only in his facial expressions but also in the clothes he is wearing. The Russian’s clothes, like his emotions, are multi-colored and sewn together.

I have now reviewed some of the striking similarities between Marlow B and the Russian. My next object is to investigate what is going on inside their subconscious minds, as opposed to their conscious minds, and propose possible interpretations concerning their repressed desires and thoughts. I will treat Marlow B first and the Russian second.

Marlow B consciously thinks he is nigh immortal, but his unconscious mind is fearful of death. His subconscious fears of death creep up and peek through, as it were, in bits of the text.

Throughout Youth, Marlow B brings up death and death imagery frequently. Here are a few examples: Marlow says that the ship, Judea, as it was burning and sinking, “burned furiously; mournful and imposing like a funeral pile” (35). Marlow remembers Judea, “as you would think of someone dead” (12). When the people on the ship were desperately pumping water out, Marlow B says, “We pumped watch and watch, for dear life; and it seemed to last for months, for years, for all eternity, as though we had been dead and gone to a hell for sailors” (12). Again, when they were pumping water, the sailors were “without spirit enough in [them] to wish [them]selves dead” (12). Again on page twelve, we learn of the words written on the Judea’s stern: “Judea, London. Do or die.” Death and dying is constantly brought up.

Death is also brought up in less obvious and more telling ways. Near the beginning of the voyage, Marlow B describes the weather this way: “It was January, and the weather was beautiful – the beautiful sunny winter weather that has more charm than in the summer-time, because it is expected, and crisp, and you know it won’t it can’t last long” (10). Is it too much of a stretch to say that the sunny weather is like life, and the cold weather is like death? Marlow knows subconsciously that the icy hand of death is coming just as he knows consciously that the icy weather of winter is coming. It is important to note that the subconscious information does not come out consciously, so that even though Marlow B is not aware of it, the carefully reading psychoanalytic critic can spot the subconscious’s mind coming through (Barry, 105).

Another spot where Marlow B’s deep-rooted fear of death is made manifest is when Marlow B is watching the ship sink. The burning and sinking of the ship is like death, the sadness, severity and absoluteness of death. “The unconsumed stern was the last to sink; but the paint had gone, had cracked, had peeled off, and there were no letters, there was no word, no stubborn device that was like her soul, to flash at the rising sun her creed and her name” (Conrad, 35). We can see from that quote that the sinking ship is dying without any last words, any last requests, or any last meal, so to speak. Judea, in her final moments, is a nameless, creedless, mess of burned wood and coal that sinks into the infinite, pitiless sea.

Elsewhere Marlow B compares the mercilessness of the sea to the mercilessness of time. Marlow B says that time is, “more cruel, more pitiless, more bitter than the sea” (30). And what comes at the end of every mortal’s time? What happens when time is through with its short day of mercy? We all know the answer. Death, of course. Death.

Thus we see that Marlow B is subconsciously afraid of death. Subconsciously, he wants to cheat death, to go on living forever. Marlow says, “I remember… the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort- to death” (36, 37).

Marlow B also reveals his subconscious desire to go on gallantly living forever when he speaks of reading Sartor Resartus. “I didn’t understand much of [Sartor Resartus] then; but I remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher at the time; a preference which life has only confirmed” (7). At first reading, this statement might seem insignificant to the story. In fact, it is out of place in the plot of Youth. Most of the story focuses on the adventures and fun times that Marlow B was having, and about the itinerary of Judea’s journey from London to Bangkok, but for some reason Marlow B stops his narrative to tell us about some books that he read in his free time. Why is the business about the books included in the story? I think it’s included because it is a release of Marlow B’s subconscious. It is very telling that the young, adventurous, but secretly scared of death, Marlow B prefers soldiers to philosophers. Philosophers tend to sit around thinking about death, thinking about reality, and the purpose, if any, of life. But soldiers do not think about death and life the way that philosophers do. They cannot. If soldiers were to think of death in the midst of battlefield combat, they would freeze, they would enter a state of mental paralysis, and be killed by the enemy. Furthermore, if soldiers stopped to think about what it could mean to put an end to the life of another man, perhaps they would not kill so hastily. Marlow B does not want to think about these weighty matters. He prefers mindless adventure. He prefers the motto on the ship’s stern, “do or die.”

Marlow B’s preferment of the soldier’s life to the philosopher’s life does not change, and his conscious love of youth and his unconscious fear of death also do not change throughout the story. That is odd, because most stories have the protagonist change, like Ebenezer Scrooge discovering the true meaning of Christmas. But in Youth, according to W. F. Wright, “There is no revolution of character; Marlow when he arrives is as young and unthinking as when he started” (Wright 11). If there was no moral of the story, no getting older and getting wiser, then the reader might ask, what’s the point, or the interest, of the story? Wright explains,

“The interest [in Youth] is neither dramatic or epic; it is lyric. And every detail of description and incident is to be enjoyed for itself alone. The only inherent connection between the details is their vivid and precise picturing of the youth’s living from moment to moment, absorbed exclusively in that moment and dominated by one basic emotion, a feeling of the magical nature of being alive. The buffeting of the waves does not increase his courage; it does not teach him anything. But it does require his undivided attention. It gives intensity to his sensations, in which intensity only can he be said most fully to live… [Marlow B] has succeeded in isolating and discovering with Conrad the profundity of wonder, and profundity which only intensity and singleness of focus can give” (11, 12).

Marlow B lives in the sunshine of life while he can, subconsciously knowing that the chill of death will eventually come. We have seen through several examples that Marlow B is fixated on death, but I also wonder if his drinking habit is a way of becoming a solider and not a philosopher, a way of forestalling death. Remember that numerous times during his storytelling, Marlow B says, “Pass the bottle” (10, 12, 16, 21, 24), and on the last page of the story, the anonymous narrator says of Marlow, “He drank,” and “He drank again” (42). Clearly Marlow drinks like a sailor.

In addition to his fear of death, Marlow B is also subconsciously desirous to overthrow his elders and to become the captain of the ship, or at least to obtain some role of authority. He often boasts of his own strength. For example, when they are pumping water out of the ship, Marlow B says, “here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps to the mark” (12).

Later in the story, after Judea has sunk and the little emergency boats are on their way to Java, Marlow B is determined to get to land first. He was ordered to stay close to the long boat, in case of bad weather, but Marlow B expressed, “I wanted my first command all to myself. I wasn’t going to sail in a squadron if there were a chance for independent cruising. I would make land by myself. I would beat the other boats” (34). Of course Marlow B knows consciously that he wants to beat the other boats, but what he doesn’t understand or think about is why he wants to beat the other boats to shore. Freudian psychology tells us that Marlow B, like most men, has a form of the Oedipal complex. He subconsciously wants to kill his “grandfathers,” Captain Beard and Mahon, and become the leader. But consciously, he will settle for the trivial bragging rights of making it to land before the other boats do.

Now for an examination of the Russian’s subconscious. Several literary critics have discussed the Russian before. (In general, more work has been done on Heart of Darkness than on Youth.) In an article that discusses how the minor characters in Heart of Darkness shed light on the mysteriousness of Kurtz, Gelaff writes, “Although commentators have seen the Russian as anything from the archetypal harlequin to Kurtz’s Fool to Conrad’s way of exercising his anti-Russian biases, the character sketch mainly emphasizes the naiveté and the strangeness of such a personality in such foreboding circumstances” (Gelaff 128). Most of the research that Gelaff cites, though, is more about the Russian’s role in the plot of the novella, whereas I am more concerned with what’s going on inside the Russian’s mind.

Before examining the Russian’s head, though, it’s fitting to analyze the setting in which we find the Russian, as compared to Marlow B’s situation. After all, the environment in which one lives, and the experiences one is performer of or subjected to, have a great impact on one’s conscious and unconscious mind. We find the Russian in the middle of the jungle, the heart of darkness, with Kurtz, a madman. He lives in a place where the decapitated heads of natives surround Kurtz’s dwelling. The Russian has possibly participated in the midnight rituals of the natives. The Russian had been practically alone for two years and has somehow found himself in an area of the jungle that Marlow A tells the men sitting peacefully on the Nellie on the Thames, “I assure you that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness” (127). Indeed, the entire mood of Heart of Darkness is much more dark and foreboding than the light-hearted mood in Youth. I could go on about the terrible circumstances that the Russian lived under, but suffice it to say that the Russian has had more traumatic experiences than Marlow B has had, and those traumatic experiences, no doubt, have had a profound impact on the Russian’s mind.

Consciously, the Russian is in love with Kurtz. Not in a romantic or sexual way, but much like the love that a zealot has for a deity. The fanatic devotion, or the blind faith, that the Russian has for Kurtz is manifested when The Russian says, “You can’t judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now- just to give you an idea- I don’t mind telling you, he wanted to shoot me, too, one day- but I don’t judge him.” (128). After the Russian tells Marlow A the story about how Mr. Kurtz nearly killed him for a tiny bit of ivory, Marlow says that Mr. Kurtz must be insane. But the Russian readily defends Kurtz, saying that if Marlow A had just heard Kurtz talk for a while, then Marlow A would understand things better, and would have never even hinted that Kurtz is crazy (129). It’s as if the Russian has had a mystic experience while talking with Kurtz, a religious, mystic experience that the Russian can never properly explain. And when the Russian does try to explain his mind-expanding all-night talks with Kurtz, it comes out like this: “It was in general. He made me see things- things” (127). (The questions follow: Are the Russian’s conversations with Kurtz unexplainable because they are inherently incommunicable, like mystic experiences? Or, are the conversations with Kurtz unexplainable because there’s actually no substance to them? Those questions could be the subject of another paper.)

Consciously, the Russian adores Kurtz, and will defend every action that Kurtz takes, whether it be abandoning the station for weeks at a time, killing the natives and putting their heads on sticks, making the natives crawl whenever they approach Kurtz, or even attempting to kill the Russian for a small bit of ivory.

Subconsciously, though, the Russian is afraid that Kurtz is a false god. The Russian must know deep down that Kurtz and his midnight sermons on love, justice, and etc. are crazy and empty. The Russian makes up for his subconscious doubt with more fanaticism and devotion. He nurses Kurtz through two illnesses, when perhaps what he wants to do subconsciously is kill Kurtz.
Consciously the Russian wants to stay with Kurtz forever in the jungle, but subconsciously he’s afraid that Kurtz is insane and they’re all going to die.

A psychoanalytic literary critic would not be too far off, I think, if he or she were to diagnose the Russian as co-dependent, in addition to being manic-depressive. After all, the Russian has become very lonely in his years of wanderings, and now that he’s found Kurtz, he can’t stand to be separated from him. To the Russian, Kurtz is a powerful father figure, a surrogate father in place of his real archpriest father he ran away from. The Russian’s son-like feelings for Kurtz are well illustrated when the Russian waits longingly when Kurtz is away in the jungle. “… but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone far in the depths of the forest. ‘Very often coming to this station, I had to wait days and days before he would turn up,’ [the Russian] said. ‘Ah, it was worth waiting for! – sometimes’” (127, 128).

We have now seen how a careful psychoanalytic reading of the Russian in Heart of Darkness and Marlow in Youth reveals their hidden desires. Marlow B consciously wants to have fun and to be a strong man and a good sailor, but subconsciously he wants to overthrow Captain Beard and become Captain Marlow. Marlow B also consciously wants to live forever, but subconsciously he knows that death will come for him just as surely as the cold winter weather will come. As for the Russian that looks like a harlequin, he consciously wants to believe that Kurtz is a God, but subconsciously is afraid that Kurtz is empty and meaningless.


Works Consulted

Conrad, Joseph. Youth and Two Other Stories. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and
Company, 1926.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed.
Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002.

Burgess, C. F., “Conrad’s Pesky Russian.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 18.2 (1963): 189-
193.

Galeff, David. “The Peripheral Characters in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’” Journal of
Modern Literature 17.1 (1990): 117-138.

Reppen, Joseph, and Maurice Charney, eds. The Psychoanalytical Study of Literature.
Hillsdale, New Jersey: The Analytic Press, 1985.

Stape, J. H., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1996.

Thoreau, Henry David. “Walden.” The American Tradition in Literature 9th ed. Ed. George
Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999. 446- 508.

Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Reappraisal. 2nd ed. New York:
Routledge, 1998.

Wright, Walter F. Romance and Tragedy in Joseph Conrad. New York: Russell and
Russell, 1966.