V-2nd - Chapter V, Part I

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I can see the Heart of Darkness reference (Father Fairing=Kurtz), though not sure there's any ivory-like prize hovering in the background.  Profane, like Marlow, takes the job (embarks on a quest) partly for adventure, partly for economic reasons.  What does Profane learn at the end?  That shooting alligators (militarism) is wrong?  But he does it anyway.  Then the light goes out.  He's forever tainted.  But why by this particular murder?  He's already bagged a number of other gators.  Somehow, passing through the hallowed ground of the Kurtz-like cannibal-priest gives him qualms about the whole thing.  Letting compassion, in any form, seep into a genocidal scenario ruins everything: it makes the colonialist feel guilty, without saving a single life.  This will all happen again in Chapter 9.

The Moby Dick allusions seem weaker.  Maybe, Alice, you can expound on them a little more?

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>

>
>certainly the colonialization and enocide theme is continued here with
>the priest and the rats, but the inanimate theme is bound to it as,
>although the chapter title sez Stencil goes West, Benny goes East,
>carrying, from the West, the Light and the Gun. Africa, of course, is
>East; so the Heart of Darkness Ivory theme here, and yes, Moby-Dick
>parody--the sharkskin suits, the labor organizations, the bums. The
>long description of the bum with a cadilac, another Jew, from Poland
>is intersting.