Marlow travels from his home East of London up the Congo River into the heart of Northern Africa. Contrary to what one might think, Marlow is not particularly fond of his fellow Europeans and already holds assumptions he has made about them. He stereotypes the white Europeans as ignorant and monotonous. When he first arrives he immediately thinks of a “whited sepulchre” (54). It is clear that Marlow resents Brussels because of his use of this description. The metaphor relating the city to a whited sepulchre, also called a tomb, suggests that the city itself is dead, perhaps by lack of knowledge or dead by archaic custom. He follows with, “prejudice no doubt,” a fragment (54). This capitalizes on the borderline bigotry of his culture and provides
