Heart of Darkness paragraph

"I let him run on, this papier-mâché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe." When talking to the brickmaker, Marlow uses the imagery of the brickmaker being made out of papier-mâché. This connotes that the brickmaker has no purpose and is 'empty.' The brickmaker is personified as a hollow figure that can be related to nothing but loose dirt. Marlow describes the brickmaker as a useless object, essentially, and he could 'poke his forefinger through him' without him feeling anything.