character’s introduction to it. Interestingly, Prince Hamlet and Marlowe share a certain navet when they first come upon their evils. Hamlet returns home after hearing of his father’s death from studies in Wittenberg, not yet knowing the cause of his death. Marlowe sets off from Brussels to explore “a blank space…a place of darkness” (1618), with an innocent childhood dream to explore the reaches of civilization. Neither man could have known the immense corruption and evil that awaited them at their destination, but both would quickly learn. Hamlet returns to Denmark to quickly find that a hasty “incestuous” marriage between his widowed mother and his uncle would all too quickly follow his own father’s funeral. Perhaps the most significant sign that all was not right in Denmark was the apparition of the slain former King. Hamlet’s father’s apparition is viewed by Hamlet and his company as an open sign that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (1068). From this first revelation, Hamlet learns by degrees of the evil that attempts to hide itself behind the “legitimate” passing on of the throne. Hamlet gets a first glimpse of the evil in the appearance of the restless soul of his father, later, more so with that ghost’s revelation of the murderous truth to Hamlet, up until Hamlet’s own observation of Cladius’ unique reaction following the performance of the players. Through each of these progressive steps he slowly comes to fully understand what he has returned home to. In Heart of Darkness, Marlowe too is quick to learn of “the horror” that he ventures into. Marlowe’s journey to the “heart of darkness” (1662) begins with his voyage aboard ship from the Continent to the Congo, both literally and psychologically. It is en route via sea that Marlowe gets his first taste of insanity, French Legionaries being ca...
