These fears culminate in the final scene when Marlow meets Kurtz's Intended. Jokes about lawyers and sex express the principal anxieties of the narrative as a whole: being too far from the law and being too close to women. While Covino emphasizes the contrast between humor and horror, from a psychoanalytic perspective Conrad's humor is rooted in the same unconscious material as the horror. JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS IN HEART OF DARKNESS No one reads Heart of Darkness for the jokes (1899 page citations refer to the edition specified in the Reference), but a few critics have appreciated Conrad's humor, generally interpreting it as a reprieve from an otherwise intolerable vision of depravity.1 Covino (1977), for example, writes that Conrad softened the "harsh truth" with a "comic sensibility, helping us `carry on'": "Without humor, the horror becomes unendurable and would force us `ashore' with Kurtz for a howl and a dance" (p. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious in Heart of Darkness Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious in Heart of Darkness
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