In the colonial era, the nations of Europe staked out territory in regions such as Africa, attempting to extend their reach over people different from themselves and to exploit resources found in those regions. Belgium was not the only colonial power in Africa, but it was one of the harshest. Joseph Conrad knew the colonial experience in the Congo and used this as the setting for his Heart of Darkness.
In his novel, Conrad tells the story of a man who ventured too far into the darker areas of his soul. He is presented as much affected by his locale, and there is a certain racist component in this analysis given the way Conrad contrasts the civilization of white Britain and the non-civilization of black Africa. The very image of darkness raises a question for some as to how darkness and so blackness are identified with evil. Yet, Marlow, the man who goes to Africa to find Kurtz and bring him back, has a different conception of evil and knows that it lurks in every heart. His is not a racist view but a realist's view, and he worries as much about his own soul as he does about Kurtz? soul. What may be right for one social group, given their circumstances and the way they are tied to the land and to the jungle, is very different from what is right for a society such as produced by Kurtz and Marlow.
The character of Marlow is a persona for the author used in several stories and novels. He makes a journey from civilization into the darkest part of Africa to bring back a man named Kurtz who has gone into the interior and shed his civilized exterior to degenerate into the primitive. For Conrad, the individual possesses within himself the possibility of the primitive, but society and civilization have created a framework of control by which the individual can escape from that state. This seems evident in the opening passages as Marlow is about to tell his story to the other men sitting on the deck and refers to the civilizin...