Heart of Darkness IV

Marlow concludes the book by illustrating how being in the darkness has affected who he is today. He has ventured up to the edge of the Abyss; due to looking at Kurtz, he was able to avoid falling in, but he still stands on the edge. Despite how he hates to lie, being in the darkness has caused him to do so. Deception slowly crescendos into a full-blown lie. At first, he is simply avoiding the truth with ambiguous statements such as "he was a remarkable man" and "his end [. . .] was in every way worthy of his life" (161, 163). His statements while the girl interpreted them as praising Kurtz, could equally well, and, given Marlow's perspective and the story that has just been told, should be taken as a criticism of Kurtz. His double-meaning statements show a deception that approaches a lie that one would guess him to abhor based on his earlier claim about his contempt for lies, which in turn shows how being in the Congo has changed him and moved him towards the darkness, how he has not yet fully left the abyss. These deceptions sharpen to a point when he directly lies about Kurtz' last words; here, it becomes dreadfully clear that the journey has changed him to the point where he will lie despite his former honesty, where he remains in the darkness despite having been so far from it prior to his journey. In this way, Conrad makes it painfully clear that although Marlow had Kurtz as a warning so as to know not to fall into the abyss, Marlow has not yet left the abyss, and so remains darkly pragmatic.