Explanation: “They wandered here and there with their absurdly long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence.”
Exp. This extract has been taken from Joseph Conrad’s famous novel Heart of Darkness. Through Marlow’s narration of the Central Station, the novelist highlights the white men’s intense lust for ivory.
After arriving at the Central Station, Marlow begins working the very next day. However, he keeps wondering what the white men at the station are actually doing. He observes them strolling aimlessly and carrying long sticks in their hands. To Marlow, these men seem like a group of faithless pilgrims confined within a fence. Yet he repeatedly hears a single word uttered by everyone—“ivory.”
The word ivory is spoken constantly by all, so much so that it appears to Marlow as if these men are offering prayers to it. The continuous repetition of this word reveals their extreme greed, for ivory is the sole reason for their presence there. Ivory is the commodity that lies at the centre of everything in this place. Marlow feels that everything around him is unreal. Ivory seems to have invaded both the land and the Company’s Station situated there.
Marlow is astonished by the white men’s consuming passion for ivory. Their desire to possess ivory, a symbol of material wealth, appears to him to verge on madness.
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