that came out of the river. A new dimension is added to the discussion of light, however. Marrow adds, " . . . like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds" (49). Here is a different light. Here it is out of the control of people; it
is dangerous and perhaps even treacherous. Since water has
been so closely associated with light, part of this danger and
treachery carries over. This element of anger is also contained in the reference Marlow makes to his childhood, when he watched the sea and it was "a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over" (52). Marlow remarks that it has ceased to be a place of mystery and become a place of darkness. So the reader confronts the almost-contradiction of the water as light and the water as
...