Jane Doe

Who is she? That is my first and final question.During the third section, we are exposed to Kurtz's relationship with the natives. While much of it is unclear, the two sides have trouble separating as shown by the native’s appearance along the river while the steamboat carrying Kurtz drifts away. However, only one person is given a full description. This princess perhaps, is glorified. She is adorned with “brass leggings to the knees, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck, bizarre things, charms” and more (60). The most she does in this scene is open “her bared arms” and throw “them up rigid above her head as though an uncontrollable urge to touch the sky” (61). This lover, perhaps, graces the pages only once more. “She put out her hands, shouted something, and all that wild mob” standing on the bank “took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance” (67). The steamboat whistle will not move even this friend, perhaps. Friend, lover, princess, goddess, daughter, or something else, who is the Jane Doe of the heart of darkness?