The Absurdist Triumvirate

“Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear -- or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul -- than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint!” (71)

In consideration of the publication date of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, 1899 puts the work 34 years after Lewis Carroll’s initial publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With no evidence as to whether or not Conrad was influenced in any way by Carroll’s earlier text the likenesses between the two stories are striking and surprising. From the Chief Accountant’ lingering smile (like that of the fading Cheshire Cat [“`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.”]) to Kurtz’s writing “'Exterminate all the brutes” (characteristic of The Queen’s proclamation “Off with her head!”) each text experiences it’s characters slow lose of stability and sacredness for life as the characters, Alice and Marlow, become deeper entrenched in their respective rabbit holes.

One such examination of this slowly leaking sense of decency towards the mortality of others is found in the passage above where Marlow examines the power of self-restraint. If taboos exist to insure and keep peace then cannibalism must represent one of the most disruptive behaviors to the colonials. However, as Marlow observes the natives restraint in the face of hunger he comes face to face with his own weakening sense of peace and right or wrong. As Marlow recognizes that “disgust simply does not exist where hunger is” he too recognizes his own hunger and his own loss of disgust or morale sense of propriety. Throughout the text this same loss is represented in different characters but most strongly in the civilized characters who coming from an established community of morals become less and less adverse to barbarism as they travel deeper into the jungle. Marlow’s restraint is his disgust and his feelings of horror which keep him from giving in to the hunger of the jungle.

Taking all of this into consideration its also interesting to think about something that Matt first pointed out to, that Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland and Kafka's The Trial (1925). When taken together the three texts make for a perfect Absurdist Triumvirate, a series of parables bridging from one century into the next.