Purposeless Actions

Through Marlow’s journey, the reader encounters several scenes in which there seems to be no real purpose in the colonist’s and slave’s actions. The first of these encounters happens when Marlow comes across a battleship which shoots projectiles at the jungle: “a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech – and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight” (Conrad, 22). Tactless individuals might be one thing, but shooting at the forest with a battleship seems a bit too much. Marlow’s impression of such actions reveals his sanity, until the moment, and his disgust of other white men’s stupid futile actions.

Another event in which such purposeless actions occur, happens when Marlow sees slaves “building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work going on” (Conrad, 25). This scene reminded me of some of the Nazi work camp stories, one of which really impressed me. Captives had to roll huge rocks up a cliff and let them fall over to go back and retrieve the rock and start the process all over again. As individuals tried to slow down the process, they were physically punished. Conrad’s objective of repeatedly including such purposeless actions may be to reveal the insanity required to become an oppressor and the struggles within an empire’s different classes.

A third scene of such encounters, occurs when Marlow narrates that he “avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn’t a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do” (Conrad, 26-27). Conrad’s sarcasm brings with it observations of human’s depravations under such conditions as imperialism. The misconception of being superior to other individuals brings with it the possibility the insanity of subjecting people to absurd dehumanizing tasks.