The General Manager's most trusted agent. A sly, lazy, power-hungry fellow who despite his title seems to have never made a brick, the Brickmaker cares only about his own advancement and therefore sees Kurtz as a threat. He also thinks that Marlow and Kurtz are somehow allied within the company. Marlow describes the Brickmaker as a "papier-mâché Mephistopheles."
The Brickmaker Quotes in Heart of Darkness
The Heart of Darkness quotes below are all either spoken by The Brickmaker or refer to The Brickmaker. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Dover Publications edition of Heart of Darkness published in 1990.
Part 1
Quotes
I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my fore-finger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
Related Characters:
Marlow (speaker), The Brickmaker
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Heart of Darkness LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Brickmaker Character Timeline in Heart of Darkness
The timeline below shows where the character The Brickmaker appears in Heart of Darkness. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1
Marlow follows the Brickmaker back to his quarters, which are much nicer than any but the General Manager's. As...
(full context)
The Brickmaker, whom Marlow now calls a "papier-mâché Mephistopheles," continues to speak about Kurtz, and asks Marlow...
(full context)
...like "biting something rotten," Marlow pretends to have as much influence in Europe as the Brickmaker thinks he has in order to get the Brickmaker to speed up the arrival of...
(full context)
Marlow resumes his story. When the Brickmaker leaves, Marlow boards his broken steamship, which he has come to love after putting in...
(full context)