Greyscale

I’m going to make a confession: my book is highlighted all over. This means I can see what whoever did it was seeing that moment and certain patterns are created slowly. I complement the pink ink with notes of my own, little piece of paper stuck everywhere with arrows that point here and there bringing ideas together.
What I noticed upfront was the insistent appearance of dark, darkness, gloom. He describes the end of the world as being “the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke” (68). The image that comes to mind of a windy sea drawn in pencil, it brings to oneself a feeling of and infinite space lacking of promises. A sailor must feel like that when he is at sea, surrounded by a capricious mass of water millions of times bigger and stronger than he is.
In the middle of a very grey and dark environment Kurtz manages to find a speck of light. As Marlow begins to speak he describes the light brought about by the Romans “We live in the flicker- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday” (68). I chose to interpret light not only as life, but as knowledge as well. The Romans were the imposers of great quantities of civilization in their time and I think Marlow refers to their ability to sail- they sailed around the world conquering here and there, bringing light through the water.
The River Thames is also mentioned to be a connection between men, a mean that brings all men together under the same goal and the same passion for discovering and therefore sailing. A boat filled with light making its way across the water waiting to arrive and break the darkness that was there "just yesterday."