Heart of Darkness Vocabulary list #2

Audacity

excessive boldness, rashness, daring (27)

"Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or a serious intention in the whole batch of them." - Marlow

Ostentation

pretentious and vulgar display, especially of wealth and luxury, intended to impress or attract notice (27)

"He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew." - Marlow (about the butcher)

Ominous

threatening (29)

"The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion."- Narrator

Implacable

unable to be calmed down or made peaceful (30)

"It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention." -Marlow

Intrepidity

resolutely fearless; dauntless (determined) (33)

"He squinted at the steam gauge and at the water gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity." - Marlow

Farcical

absurd; ridiculously clumsy (36)

"They still belonged to the beginnings of time-had no inherited experience to teach them it were, and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they lived." - Marlow (talking about the natives)

Inexorable

unrelenting; unavoidable (37)

"Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity." - Marlow (on the natives)

Inexplicable

hard to explain or impossible to understand (38)

"When I though of it, than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamor that had swept by us on the river bank." -Marlow

Shoal

an area of shallow water(39)

"To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes." -Marlow

Atrocious

monstrous, shockingly bad, wicked (44)

"Like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean without any kind of sense." - Marlow

Peroration

the concluding part of a speech, typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience (45)

"The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember." - Marlow

Altruistic

unselfish, concerned with the welfare of others (46)

"It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying." -Marlow

Harlequin

buffoon; clown (48)

"He looked like a harlequin." - Marlow (describing the manager)

Privation

Lack of basic necessities or comforts of life (50)

"His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with maximum privation." - Marlow

Crestfallen

discouraged, dejected, downcast (53)

"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen." - Marlow

Fecund

fertile; productive (56)

"The colossal body of the fecund an mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul." - Marlow (talking about the native woman attracted to Kurtz)

Obtruded

forced upon (someone) unwillingly (59)

"The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my memory." - Marlow

Tenebrous

dark; gloomy; obscure (63)

"It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms. " - Marlow

Sarcophagus

a large stone coffin (68)

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Fidelity

faithfulness; loyalty (69)

"She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering." - Marlow