The Orphan Characters of Heart of Darkness All of Conrad's main characters are, in a fundamental sense, orphans. To men like Marlow, his parents offer him no predestined place in an ordered world, or, if such a place exists, they do not feel it to be a real alternative for them. The awareness of a hostile and annihilating force at the center of existence brings to Conrad's characters a constant sense of their personal vulnerability. Before this revelation, they were orphans searching for ground for their lives, but they never doubted their ability to discover it. For most of Conrad's characters, the experience of vulnerability marks the true beginning of their journey. Conrad's novels are attempts to come to terms with this experience, to develop ways of living with this knowledge or overcoming it, because only if such a way can be found can man ever achieve a stable identity. Perhaps the mind can directly confront the darkness and master it. It. Although this darkness is in its essence something foreign to the mind, if the mind can exercise its control over this force, if it can give it rational form and substance and thus establish the image of the "ombre sinistre et fuyante", the darkness will be robbed. its destructive potential. By assimilating its sources in this way, it may still be possible for man to achieve self-sufficiency. Even if he has not found a father, found a source that naturally gives him his reality, man will have created one. For most of Conrad's characters, the initial thrust of their attempt to assert sovereignty over the terrain of their existence is directed toward its immediate source in the irrational. Ultimately, however, man's efforts to control the darkness must lead him beyond... middle of paper... earth; it is among the best-ordered things in France. Mr. Graham Greene, who has learned from both France and Conrad, understands this fact, and never proposes to make our skin crawl as Conrad and James do in these stories. Kurtz can be described as the logical consequence for any man to admit a violation of those defenses which the protection of personal integrity constantly requires. The line of human heads with which his rank had been graced only showed, reflects Marlow, "that there was something wanting in him – some little thing which, when urgent necessity arose, could not be tied up." Or - as he put it elsewhere - "his nerves have gone bad". There are many other tales from this period, notably Falk and The End of the Tether, which revolve around this theme. And it constitutes, albeit with a slightly less showy colour, the basis of Lord Jim (1900). (22)