Solitude and Leadership

The character Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness embodies two aspects of Deresiewicz’s vision of leadership. First, he questions the bureaucracy in which he is employed. He contrasts with both the manager, who has succeeded in the system by maintaining it, and the assistant, who is maneuvering to climb the hierarchy. Marlow studies and contemplates the manager’s role rather than merely following orders, exhibiting the type of independent thinking Deresiewicz asks of his audience.

Marlow also values and utilizes solitude in the manner that the speech endorses. He escapes the buzz of the chatty assistant (whom Deresiewicz portrays as analogous to the Internet) through a period of “focused work,” one of the four types of solitude the author advocates. Marlow learns about his abilities and defines his sense of reality. Using the character of a ship’s captain, a “practical, hardheaded person” doing boat repairs, Deresiewicz emphasizes that “finding yourself” does not mean “staring off into space” (Paragraph 38). The character’s creator, Joseph Conrad, wrote from experience, having spent nearly two decades as a merchant mariner. Deresiewicz uses Marlow to illustrate the usefulness of solitary work.

Deresiewicz introduces General David Petraeus to demonstrate what it means to be a thinker and how independent thinking relates to leadership. The general, a highly decorated and esteemed army veteran, is a powerful real-world example, particularly to the audience of West Point cadets. Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974 and was later stationed there as an assistant professor in the 1980s. His subsequent career included a stint as commander of US Central Command, or CENTCOM, the institution that oversees operations in the Middle East, including Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Deresiewicz relates Petraeus’s experience as a general in Iraq when he was openly critical of his superiors and advocated alternative war strategies. Petraeus is shown forming original ideas even within a strict hierarchy, the same hierarchy Deresiewicz’s audience has just entered. The counterinsurgency strategy Petraeus developed was based on his belief that officers require creative, flexible intellects. The general’s story also allows Deresiewicz to explain the relationship between an independent thinker and a leader—someone who not only can formulate original ideas but also dares to defend them.

Petraeus’s initial censure for challenging his superiors supports the author’s claim that bureaucracies tend to reward conformity rather than independent thinking. The fact that Petraeus was later vindicated and acclaimed provides an important qualifier to Deresiewicz’s description of advancement through conformity: It is possible to rise through a bureaucracy as an independent thinker. That is, Deresiewicz is not advocating the impossible. Petraeus was eventually promoted to four-star general, the highest attainable rank in the US Army, and was subsequently nominated as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by President Obama. The Senate confirmed him in a vote of 94-0.

Ironically, the end of Petraeus’s public career came not from his courageous opposition to military bureaucracy but from private indiscretion. Federal investigators pursuing an unrelated case discovered that Petraeus had engaged in an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Moreover, to aid her research, he provided Broadwell with information and documentation that she did not have security clearance to receive. President Obama forced him to resign, and Petraeus pleaded guilty to federal charges of mishandling classified information. The scandal occurred in 2012, three years after Deresiewicz delivered his speech at West Point.

The manager of the “Central Station” in Heart of Darkness is not referred to by name. This choice by Conrad reflects the character’s lack of individuality, which Deresiewicz posits is a defining mark of a bureaucratic personality. Likewise, the manager’s physical appearance, mannerisms, and voice are described as “commonplace” and “ordinary.” He has no notable skills or expertise. His authority comes not from the esteem of his subordinates but merely from the “uneasiness” he instills in them, which suggests an air of power but not much to support it. He is said to have been given his position simply because he “could keep the routine going—that’s all” (Paragraph 12). Marlow suspects the man is empty inside.

Lacking innovation and initiative, the manager will not originate anything nor will he disrupt the status quo. Deresiewicz uses the manager to illustrate how conformity is rewarded in a bureaucracy, which is the type of system the audience has just entered. The figure illustrates the problem to which the speech proposes a solution. Three paragraphs later, Deresiewicz invites the cadets to adopt a different style of leadership.