See the posting below for your assignment. Here, I've excerpted a portion of HofD to show how Marlow tells his story in an impressionist style. Remember the Seurat painting we viewed in class? See how Marlow's perceptions change from his first apprehensions through intermediate stages to final comprehension (or, as AM wrote in his paper: "He begins with the heat of the moment, then he follows up by reanalyzing the situation, and then there is the aftershock." Add to that, finally, an evaluation and judgement of the situation and his own reaction to it. See how he finally comprehends the "fence":
"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from under- growth. A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever there had been between, had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that..."
Much later, in Part 3, Marlow picks up the same thread after conversation with the Russian:
"I directed my glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing -- food for thought and also for vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen -- and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids -- a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber."
Marlow's story is the story of Africa's effect on him, and he tries to communicate the way he perceives. You can see here how first he seems to see one thing (fence posts) but eventually recognizes that those carved balls are actually human heads. His description, of course, is embedded in a tale Marlow has lived with for some time before he recalls it for the listeners on the Nellie.
