t between trees, leaning against trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced with dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.' Note that Marlow describes the emaciated natives as being 'half effaced with dim light'. He is just beginning to see the realities of civilization and progress, and the reality that the natives are not 'the enemy' or madly insane, but are sick, starving, dying, helpless, and weak; the partiality and dimness of the light reflects his half-awareness. As if to ensure the reader's cognizance of the pun, fate would have it that as Marlow departs for the station from the shade, he runs into one of the colonialists: 'I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear silk necktie, and varnished boots.' The contrast between the starving, deprived, wretched natives and this overfed, overdressed man parodies the man, while his dress ('white', 'snowy', 'light', 'clear', 'varnished') again makes a pun of Marlow's understanding of light (the man's tie also stands in august contrast to the absurd white worsted the black man had wrapped around his neck in the shade). These pun provides a context for Marlow's use of the metaphor later to critique the colonialists treatment of the savages: noticing a painting of Lady Justice in the manager's station, Marlow observes: 'The background was somber, almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.' With this, the metaphor has come full circle, and Marlow's understanding of civilization has been fundamentally altered. We've now established that Marlow's perception of reality in regards to civilization changes: what he initially thinks of as rational and good, he concludes is irrational and evil. It remains to be shown that Marlow believes Kurtz to have been anything short of fundamentally evil. When Marlow first learns of Kurtz's activities in t...
