Marlow
Charlie Marlow, thirty-two years old, has always "followed the sea",
as the
novel puts it. His voyage up the Congo river, however, is his first
experience in freshwater travel. Conrad uses Marlow as a narrator in
order
to enter the story himself and tell it out of his own philosophical
mind.
When Marlow arrives at the station he is shocked and disgusted by the
sight
of wasted human life and ruined supplies . The manager's senseless
cruelty
and foolishness overwhelm him with anger and disgust. He longs to see
Kurtz-
a fabulously successful ivory agent and hated by the company manager.
More
and more, Marlow turns away from the white people (because of their
ruthless
brutality) and to the dark jungle ( a symbol of reality and truth.)
He
begins to identify more and more with Kurtz- long before he even sees
him or
talks to him. In the end, the affinity between the two men becomes
a
symbolic unity. Marlow and Kurtz are the light and dark selves of a
single
person. Marlow is what Kurtz might have been, and Kurtz is what Marlow
might
have become.
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~csicseri/chara01.htm