How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
"One evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash." (1.55)
We're guessing that the Company trades these cheap Western goods—calico and cotton are inexpensive fabrics; beads are inexpensive decoration—for the African's ivory. Is it a fair trade? Nature doesn't seem to think so.
Quote #11
"[…] afterwards he arose and went out—and the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again." (1.56)
The black man blamed for the fire eventually abandons the Central Station and heads back into the wilderness. But does Nature protect him or kill him? "Took him into its bosom" isn't exactly clear.
Quote #12
"The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there?" (1.61)
Okay, this is about the time that we'd be checking Expedia for last-minute flights back to civilization: Marlow starts to see Nature as a living being, too big and too eerily silent for human comprehension. But notice how he's still clinging to his Englishness—"by Jove!" and "confoundedly big" are slang phrases that seem much more appropriate to cozy fireside chats than mute, primeval forests. It seems like maybe he still doesn't quite get it.