excerpt adapted from Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings
of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees
were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.
The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish, and there was no joy in the
brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on,
deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances, and on silvery
sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The
broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost
your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long
against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself
bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once-
somewhere-far away-in another existence perhaps. There were
moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes
when you have not a moment to spare to yourself, but it came in the
shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder
amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and
water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble
a peace. It was the stillness of a relentless force brooding over a
mysterious intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used
to it after a while. I did not see it anymore. I had no time. I had to keep
guessing at the channel. I had to discern, mostly by instinct, the signs
of hidden banks. I watched for sunken stones. I was learning to clap
my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by just barely
some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-
pot steamboat I drove and drowned all the passengers. I had to keep a
look-out for the signs of dead wood that we could cut up in the night for
the next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort,
to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality-the reality, I tell you-
fades. The inner truth is hidden-luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the
same. I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me.
14
Select the correct answer.
Which sentence best expresses a theme of the passage?
A.
Reality is simple and predictable.
B.
Truth is elusive and intimidating.
C.
Nature is bizarre and fascinating.
D. Humans are selfish and needy.
Re