Waddup suckas?
This week on Thug Notes we goin straight primeval on yo ass with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
As he chillin on the Thames River with some homies,
mah boy Charles Marlow start talkin bout some dark bidness he saw while hustlin in the ivory trade.
See back in the day, Marlow got hooked up tradin ivory up in da African Congo for some crew called The Company.
And this gang full of shysti fools just sittin on they asses waiting for sh*t to happen.
Marlow get the word that he gonna holler at G-ed up agent named Kurtz livin at the inner station,
but the only ride he got is a busted-ass steamboat.
So after gettin his ride pimped, Marlow starts his journey towards Kurtz.
When it comes to slingin that clean ivory to make swole dollas,
dis fool Kurtz got the whole congo SOLD UP and all the otha bruthas hatin on him since he ballin so hard.
Just as Marlow cruisin up to Kurtz’s spot, arrows start flyin outta nowhere,
and the helmsman gets straight LIT UP.
After Marlow escape, he scopes a Russian wearin some dopey-ass duds who say Kurtz ain’t yo everyday hustla.
Naw, the natives worhsipping Kurtz like Mista Big up in here —
meaning Kurtz can do whatever he please.
Turns out, it was Kurtz who ordered the attack on Marlow’s whip.
When Marlow meets the Big Dawg, he sees that he's ill in more ways than one.
Marlow convinces Kurtz to truck it back to Europe,
but he keeps gettin sicker til he spits his last words: “The Horror! The Horror!”
and then he croaks like a bitch.
With Marlow back in Europe, he makes a stop to see Kurtz’s lady.
When she axe about his final words, Marlow lies and says that Kurtz used his last breath to say her name.
Aight slick.
If you got yo sh*t together,
you know that most peeps say HOD representin a descent into humanity’s evil nature as Marlow flowin upriver.
And as all well-read thugs know,
dat journey slingin ambiguity and paradox up in here like Scarface slingin dat yeyo.
Fo example, when Kurtz is away from society for too long,
he get all whacked out in the head and start doin some notorious deeds.
But at the same time, society with all its crooked imperialism doin vicious sh*t on the reg.
Cuz it’s the eyes of civilization that keeps humanity’s darkness in check.
But when we surrounded by the silent whisper of the wilderness, we straight lose ourselves to the dark.
It’s only then that we ain’t got no man-made code to tell us what’s what and we start gettin straight nasty.
Naw mean?
On the real, both human beings AND society decked out wit enough evil inside to inspire all dat horror Kurtz talkin about.
But what’s Kurtz really trying to say with those last words?
Not only is Kurtz referrin to his own dark deeds, but the beastly evil inside the heart of erry hustla.
Cuz in the wilderness, that evil got nowhere to hide.
Civilization, though, be all shady bout it and sweeps dat sh*t under the rug like s’all good.
Peep this quote from Matthew 23-
So when Marlow say a city look like a “whited sepulcher,”
he really sayin that it’s full of crooked bustas frontin like they civilized.
But is mah boy Marlowe one of these hypocrites?
Cuz this fool say he hates to lie —
Yet, at the end of the novella, he lies to Kurtz’s woman like it ain’t no thang.
Why?
Like the hero of the mythic journey,
Marlow returns from the dank depths of Hades with info that s’posed make the world a better place.
And since he realize that darkness that lie beneath is just too f**ked up for Kurtz’s biddy to bear, he lies.
Sometimes, there are more important things than than stickin straight to the truth.
You feel me?
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