Throughout the novel, Marlow depicts the savageness of the natives and the powerfulness of the land. The juxtaposition of the two is very clear; Marlow believes that the land is quite admirable, while the people are horrid. As the narrator describes the scene on page 44, he begins to make the distinction between the natives being human and inhuman. He never necessarily acknowledges that they are human, but he says, “…they were not inhuman”. This change of stance confused me, especially since he said in the lines before, “We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free”. To me, it does not make sense that something is a monster, yet free; this line is contradictory.