At the end of class today, I sort of, uneloquently, in broken English, attempted to articulate something I that popped into my head a few days ago and has been troubling me ever since. And here it is: we have been reading this whole novel, Heart of Darkness, and listening to Marlow tell this terrible yet incredible story, right? He has been telling us about Kurtz and the Manager, and how he felt, what effect these events had on him, no? But, what if, just, what if, Marlow is not exactly telling the truth? Not on purpose, but he is retelling this story, it has already happened, gone, done. What if he's remembering wrong? Or what if that which he's telling us he thought or felt at a certain time is really just what he came to believe he thought or felt after further reflection?
Isn't this whole story just a lie then?
That just begs me to ask the question, how accurate is storytelling? Can we really know that what is being told is what really happened? Especially when we're talking about how someone felt, because people's feelings fluctuate so much.
I think the scariest part, though, is that the person who's telling the story really thinks that they're telling the truth...
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