Voice and Sound in the Heart of Darkness For Marlow, the voice is the supreme symbol of civilization, and civilized understanding is expressed through words. The absence of words or the inability to express something with words signals the absence of meaning. The psychedelic experience directly confronts the collapse of language (the 'transcendence of verbal concepts' mentioned in the introduction), its inability to express the hidden truth of existence. Marlow becomes aware of this – especially through his direct experience with Kurtz – but does not fully allow himself to believe in the failure of language. After all, language is still the most effective tool we have for communication. Sound is a signifier of meaning for Marlow. If the sound is understandable, for example English or the sound of the sea, then it belongs to civilization and intelligence. If it is incomprehensible, not English, or the silence of sound, then it belongs to savagery and ignorance. Therefore, understanding is represented in sound as well as in thought or action. For example: «With one hand I looked for the line of the steam whistle above my head and quickly let out one cry after another. The tumult of angry and warlike shouts was immediately checked, and then from the depths of the wood came as tremulous and prolonged a wail of sad fear and utter despair as can be imagined to have followed the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was great confusion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few falling shots rang sharp - then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern wheel came plainly to my ears" (Conrad, 82). The whistle is the signifier of civilisation, of all this it is incomprehensible to the first... middle of the paper......Because the story is full of silence, full of the memory of the wild. His story allows him to let go of the wild, to erase the memories of the palpable force of wild nature ?Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Editor Robert Kimbrough. New York, 1983.Cox, C.B Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Under Western Eyes. London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1987. Guetti, James. “Heart of Darkness and the Failure of the Imagination,” Sewanee Review LXXIII, no. 3 (Summer 1965), pp . 488-502. Ed. CB Cox.Ruthven, KK 'The Savage God: Conrad and Lawrence', Critical Quarterly, x, nn. 1 and 2 (spring and summer 1968), pp. 41-6. Ed. CB Cox.Watt, Cedric. A preface to Corrado. Essex: Longman Group UK Limited, 1993.