Heart of Darkness #3: The Legality of the Natives’ Contract

            When Marlow, the narrator in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, mentions the natives’ contract with the Europeans he does so in a cynical manner.  In the third section of reading, Marlow becomes skeptical of the way the contracted natives are made to get food. In order to feed themselves, the natives are given a piece of wire that their contracts say they can use to buy food at the settlements along the river.  However, these settlements are few and far between and the ones that do exist tend to be hostile, making it so that the natives cannot get any food.  Marlow, having witnessed first hand the effects of malnutrition on the seamen, not only on the natives but also on the white men, feels especially bad for the natives and blames the Europeans when he is recounting his story;  “and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live” (104). The piece of paper referenced in the quote above would be the contract the natives are under but Marlow’s diction of “farcical” to describe the law that is being used shows his cynicism towards the legality of the natives’ contracts because farcical is synonymous with absurd.  By blaming the law on the people down the river, Marlow is blaming Mr. Kurtz, the man representative of European interests in the Congo, for the awful and unlawful treatment of the natives.  Throughout his story so far, Marlow has been consistent in saying that he believes the mission in the Congo is lacking a greater cause and therefore the Europeans have no reason to be treating the natives the way that they have been treating them.