Heart of Darkness
Heart of DarknessIn Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness the Europeans are cut off from civilization, overtaken by greed, exploitation, and
material interests from his own kind. Conrad develops themes of
personal power, individual responsibility, and social justice. His
book has all the trappings of the conventional adventure tale -
mystery, exotic setting, escape, suspense, unexpected attack. The
book is a record of things seen and done by Conrad while in the
Belgian Congo. Conrad uses Marlow, the main character in the book, as
a narrator so he himself can enter the story and tell it out of his
own philosophical mind. Conrad's voyages to the Atlantic and Pacific,
and the coasts of Seas of the East brought contrasts of novelty and
exotic discovery. By the time Conrad took his harrowing journey into
the Congo in 1890, reality had become unconditional. The African
venture figured as his descent into hell. He returned ravaged by the
illness and mental disruption which undermined his health for the
remaining years of his life. Marlow's journey into the Congo, like
Conrad's journey, was also meaningful. Marlow experienced the violent
threat of nature, the insensibility of reality, and the moral
darkness.
We have noticed that important motives in Heart of Darkness
connect the white men with the Africans. Conrad knew that the white
men who come to Africa professing to bring progress and light to
"darkest Africa" have themselves been deprived of the sanctions of
their European social orders; they also have been alienated from the
old tribal ways.
"Thrown upon their own inner spiritual resources they may be
utterly damned by their greed, their sloth, and their hypocrisy into
moral insignificance, as were the pilgrims, or they may be so corrupt
by their absolute power over the Africans that some Marlow will need
to lay their memory among the 'dead Cats of Civilization.'" (Conrad
105.) The supposed purpose of the Europeans traveling into Africa was
to civilize the natives. Instead they colonized on the native's land
and corrupted the natives.
"Africans bound with thongs that contracted in the rain and
cut to the bone, had their swollen hands beaten with rifle butts until
they fell off. Chained slaves were forced to drink the white man's
defecation, hands and feet were chopped off for their rings, men were
lined up behind each other and shot with one cartridge , wounded
prisoners were eaten by maggots till they die and were then thrown to
starving dogs or devoured by cannibal tribes." (Meyers 100.)
Conrad's "Diary" substantiated the accuracy of the conditions
described in Heart of Darkness: the chain gangs, the grove of death,
the payment in brass rods, the...
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