Heart Of Darkness Quote

“It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise,

This quote shows the connection Marlow feels to the animals around him. This uses the words howled, leap, horrid, uproar, wild, and passionate. All of these words are words that could be used to describe some of the most savage animals. But Marlow feels kinship to them, and that excites him. That fact that these humans are being so incredibly inhuman excites the animal within him. He knows that he shares flesh and blood with these natives. That deep down they are the same, they are just the clay that their lives have molded them into. These natives only have a different sculptor than Marlow but all in all they come from the same material. It is this native scream that Marlow feels deep inside of himself that amazes him. The fact that he feels very close to this savagery. You must ask yourself though what would you feel in his shoes. We have no idea, and we can only make false assumptions based on what we feel right now.

Personally I love the end of this quote, "a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?" This to me shows the connection of todays human race to the very first human beings. That despite all of the incredible differences that have happened over these thousands and thousands of years, there is still that connection to between human beings from every time period.