t lesson Marlow needed to learn. Marlow shows his true feelings about the helmsman when he admits that he “missed him even while his body was still lying on the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in the black Sahara…he had done something, he had steered…he steered for me - I had to look after him.” (51) Here, Marlow shows his first sign of seeing a black man as valuable. He realizes how important the helmsman was to him, not only because he steered for him, but because he had created “a kind of partnership” and a “subtle bond” with the him which was “suddenly broken”. This is the only time throughout the book that Marlow creates any type of bond with someone outside of his own race. This is the one native that is able to come out of the darkness and be a part of the “civilized” world. There are many other components that make up Heart Of Darkness other than the natives. One could write a book on this novel and still not have grasped everything Conrad intended to hint at in the jungle he created. Every word means something in this story. Every syllable is important in understanding what Conrad was trying to say in Heart Of Darkness: Do not let the darkness suck you in because you will never come out again....
