Heart of Darkness After reading the HUGE paragraph that starts on 44, write a reflection on what we learn about Kurtz, how the paragraph functions as foreshadowing, and why Marlow is jumbling up all this information now (in the course of his story).

While traveling, Marlow becomes somewhat delusional. River travel brings back the past—enlarging and distorting it until it becomes an uncontrollable paranoia that he is being watched. The telling of the tale takes on the tone of an epic quest that is larger than life. There is pregnant silence and a failing of the senses. Marlow appears to be traveling deeply into his own mind. His fanatic interest in the proper working of things is evident when he states that scraping a ship on the river bottom is "sinful." The religious language, which in another context might be humorous, demonstrates Marlow’s mounting panic. This paranoia in turn diminishes his sense of reality, leaving him searching for a sense of truth and stability—making him even less reliable and even more distinct from Conrad’s own perspective. Marlow’s transformation in part helps to explain his obsession with Kurtz. Behind the myth of this mysterious figure there is a real, substantial person. Kurtz is the bogeyman of the area and, most logically, the one on whom it is easy for Marlow to fixate.