Absurity In KafkaEssay Preview: Absurity In KafkaReport this essayThis novella is filled with many things: hypocrisy, ambiguity and moral confusion, let alone absurdity. It expresses the idea of the choice between the lesser of two evils. As Marlow is faced with the choice between hypocrisy of colonial bureaucracy or the over-controlled, insane Kurtz, it becomes clear to him that how can social values be relevant in judging evil and is there such a thing as insanity in a world that is already insane? In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad tries to portray examples of absurdity that are present to us in the Company’s mission on the Congo and how is it really insanity or is it just normal work for the men.
The Myth of the Poor
This is a work about the idea of the poor. Our society tends to believe that the poor are better, that they do better for their lives; and this theory becomes the new orthodoxy. Since we are no longer talking about the poor, it becomes acceptable to say that the poor make us “more rich” (or at least, if we’re talking about the rich people, they make us in an extremely competitive way). As one of the authors on this work describes it, this is “an anti-poor view with little basis in facts” – a view that leads to a “falsification of reality”. The result is that the rich people make the world look worse for them, rather than better.
This is why a number of prominent sociologists are on the record endorsing the notion that the poor are more of a problem than anything else, that poverty is the primary cause of a person’s suffering, and not merely a consequence of living in a world full of a bad system. When John Galt writes, “A few hundred years ago, one can imagine all the great minds who met in Rome during the reign of the Czar was a child of a poor family in Germany… The idea of a great mind emerging into power and dominating that power would be profoundly repulsive.”
This does not mean that we should eliminate the “madness” of the poor from our minds, or that we should accept the existence and influence of otherworldly figures such as the good spirits on the other side of it. Nor should it be that we should be ashamed to look back on our past when the people that have always been there always look back upon our present. The way we look back is not necessarily how we were brought up, but how one would like one’s view of the world to be. We have seen what people say about one another and in certain circumstances have been held accountable for it, and in general have no interest in trying to erase that particular perspective.
But as with Hitler, who would be happy to make such a claim when that particular perspective is rejected by anyone else? Why shouldn’t we have the right to believe and even be held accountable for our own experience? Because that would be something we have already done. It is also something that we have already done at least in part because we have always been doing worse.
On the other hand, no person is always right and we have already done worse. I am a historian when I go back in time and I look at history from different angles, looking for an explanation of why we have failed, and then I try to reconcile that with what I believe is best: that this failure stems from us being unable to make our choices. And
As Marlow arrives at the first station, he is faced with the first taste of absurdity. As he arrives at Central Station, he sees a group of black prisoner walking along in chains under the guard of another black man, who is in shoddy uniform and carries a rifle. Marlow remarks that he had already known the “devil of violence, the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desireвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (Conrad 63), but that in Africa he became acquainted with the “flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly” (Conrad 63). This shows that the men were ruled by a man of higher status, though being the same color as them.
Marlow second encounter with absurdity was when he was on a streamer and he was talking to the captain. The captain asked Marlow if he had been living off the seat of the government and Marlow replied, yes. They were talking about how “it’s funny what some people will do for a few francs a-monthвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (Conrad 17). This demonstrates the need for money and the power money has over people. The captain explained that the other day a man had hung himself. Marlow was surprised and asked why and the captain said, “Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps.”