there was in it [a map of Africa] one river especially.resembling an immense snake uncoiled. it fascinated me as a snake would a bird- a silly little bird." (Conrad 11) This particular description foreshadows that the voyage Marlow desires to embark on will reveal some evil truth, as the snake is a symbol of evil. Marlow's curiosity and longing to ".lose myself in all the glories of exploration" (Conrad 10) prompts him to find work on the Congo. As a result, his prestigious aunt gets him a job as a steamboat operator for an ivory company. Now, not only does Marlow have the opportunity to initiate his own spiritual quest, but he has an actual physical mission given to him to work in Africa; Marlow has been officially summoned by The Call. After The Call, Marlow encounters the second step in his hero's journey: The Threshold. The Company's headquarters in Brussels serves as the "jumping off point"(Harris 3) for Marlow's journey. It is here that Marlow feels as if his adventure has begun, when he says ".there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy."(Conrad 15). At the headquarters, Marlow is greeted by two knitting ladies, who serve as the mythological guardians of The Threshold. He perceives them "guarding the door of Darkness. introducing continuously to the unknown."(Conrad16). It is at this point in the journey that the hero realizes the importance, the mystery, and the danger of the voyage that is about to undergo. Thus, Marlow has gone through the first vital steps of the hero's journey; from here, he has to prove himself worthy of achieving his ultimate goal.
Indeed, Marlow's worthiness is tested in The Challenges, the next part of his journey. Once he has actually arrived in Africa, he is faced with increasingly more difficult problems that try all aspects of his personality. The first of these is his arrival to Africa, when his psychological self is bombarded by the atrocities that the white man has reaped on the natives: he sees a chain of African slaves, a grove full of African workers who were slowly dying, ransacked villages, and oblivious workers.
