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The colors white and black, which are two archetypal colors, are known to stand for purity and death. After he receives his job, Marlow travels to Brussels the city that reminds him of a “whited sepulcher.” The sepulcher which is something horrid that represents death and confinement is a reminder that Europe is the place that originally brought native people to their deaths. Its whiteness contrasts the black, as having beauty within it, underneath all the black. The reference to Brussels as a “whited sepulchre” is meant to allude to the Book of Matthew. In the passage, Matthew descri
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The use of color is effective in the story for a variety of reasons. ” People are described as black with hatred regardless of skin color.
Throughout the story, people are thought to have white souls or black souls depending on their innate “goodness” or “badness” or the role they are fulfilling at the time. In comparison, a white-souled, black-skinned person is thought to be truthful and full of integrity. Marlow sees two women knitting black wool in the office. “An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor predecessor…. bes “whited sepulchres” as something beautiful on the outside but containing horrors within the tombs; thus, the image is appropriate for Brussels, given the hypocritical Belgian rhetoric about imperialism’s civilizing mission. In fact, the yellow patch, “dead in the center”, covers the site of some of the most disturbing atrocities committed in the name of empire. The knitting represents the fates in mythology, while the color black represents doom and death. ” Yellow is seen as a cowardly color. Black isn’t just used to describe evil people.
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