Brantlinger’s Criticism is admittedly quite abstruse;
however, what I can understand I will attempt to render here.
I) The book’s impressionistic style is able to unite Conrad’s
anti-imperialistic style and racist, imperialist voice into “an apparently
harmonious whole.”
II) Through an analysis of Marlow’s late admiration of the
monstrous Kurtz and gothic adventure-romance motifs, one can understand that
Conrad is not criticizing modern imperialism for its brutality, but rather for
its apparent betrayal of that which was once a “true, grand, noble, albeit
violent enterprise.”
i.e. Modern Imperialism is now a “gigantic and atrocious fraud”
III) The book is also critical of its own failure to meet
its own expectations of high morality.
