A thesis question and a response—Jump in with your own!

Beloved students,

Here's a note from Lindsay Slater about her Heart of Darkness essay, along with my response. If you wish to comment on either, or pose ideas and questions for me and your classmates, please do so.

JD

JD,
I'm mostly sending this e-mail to get a line of communication open.
I've sure got a topic for my paper, but I feel like - especially by missing the last day of class - that I'm having trouble looking "beyond the immediate plot and world of the work of fiction you’re analyzing".
I'm particularly intrigued by the relationship between Marlow and Kurtz, a central topic and not particularly arguable by itself. But if one looks at it in terms of the quote "You are the new gang - the gang of virtue." (I, 60) referring to Marlow and Kurtz, then the motive of Marlow can be drawn into question. I think that he is looking for a defense of humanitarianism, or someone that had "an idea at the back of it".
I'm just afraid that I'll get bogged down writing this at Marlow's level. Because I feel confused about Conrad's purpose. At many points I feel as though it is partly an attempt to make us feel as though we are Marlow, but then why? Or he wanted to write the opposite of a fable and make us hunt for universal truths that are partly illuminated by human behavior. Did you discuss purpose that Friday?
I would really appreciate some guidance. I have a few body paragraphs, but they are comparable to the activity we did in class and only relevant to the topic.
Lindsay

PS: Amy Tang and I had a most insightful conversation. Here's progress.

Conrad exposes the desire to discover a validity about the humanitarian façade in the 19^th century through Marlow’s loyalty to Kurtz.

It sounds pretty.

Dear Lindsay,
I think you and Amy are on a good track. If you look over the early pages, you'll see that both narrators—Marlow and the unnamed passenger on board the Nellie—go to great pains to establish a humanitarian aspect to the colonial impulse. They are more poetic and less grandiose than Kurtz in his 17 page report, but the idea is the same. "Gang of virtue" is a great way to put it: an organized group of criminals who profess high moral standards. Now I don't see Marlow as a criminal, but I do see him as a good man who believes in virtue but finds its opposite behind the mask of civilization.
In other words: I think Marlow wants to believe in the redeeming virtue of humanity more than he really does. If Kurtz, to whom he remains loyal, is a sham then so is the whole thing. Ordinary people cannot assume the aspect of "supernatural beings" without succumbing to corruption and brutality, as Fresleven and Kurtz do. Kurtz takes his place "among the high devils of the land." Marlow turns to him for relief from the spectacle of the petty, cold and grasping devils of the Manager/Brickmaker type, but he can't deny that Kurtz proved to be a devil. In the end, Marlow has no evidence that anything but inhumanity and degradation can come from subjugating and debasing a foreign people. The only true "kinship" of an absolutely pure nature he experiences is the sort he feels with just those debased people. The kinship Marlow feels with Kurtz is for the mixed potential of a man (in Kurtz's case, maybe a genius) for greatness and depravity. You may be attracted by the greatness, follow blindly like the Russian, then end up mired in depravity.
Does that make sense?

JD

PS: I think I'm going to post your note and my reply on the blog.