Marlow sat apart

“Marlow … sat apart, indistinct and silent” (165). This is one of the last sentences in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Marlow has told his mates on board the Nellie, a cruising yawl, about his voyage to Africa, to the “heart of darkness”, but in the end he has not really managed to convey his experience of “the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience” (13), although between them there is “the bond of the sea” (4). Marlow’s unique experience sets him off from the rest, he cannot communicate what the others have not experienced themselves. His sitting apart, indistinct and silent, is thus a simple but powerful symbol, a symbol of Marlow’s (and people’s) inability to  communicate something which others have not shared. In the final analysis, we can only communicate what the others know anyway. What remains outside understanding is “the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience”. (Conrad, Joseph: The Heart of Darkness. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984:).