Conrad and Africa

The purpose of this research is to examine Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness in relation to Belgian colonialism in Africa. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical and literary context in which Heart of Darkness was published, and then to discuss ways in which Conrad made use of the historical given of Belgian colonialism in the Congo to articulate narrative meanings.

Two features of Conrad's work dominate an appreciation of the literary and historical context in which it emerged. First is the issue of language; although Conrad wrote mainly in England and always in English, in fact he was Polish and remained aware of and concerned with issues of Polish nationalism. The second feature of note about Conrad's work is that it is almost always set in or near a major waterway. In their respective critical biographies, Roger Tennant (passim) and Gerard Jean-Aubry (14ff) make much of the fact that Conrad's experiences as a seaman were the basis for his books, and Zins's work on Conrad and Africa cites a political link between environment and narrative theme.

Heart of Darkness combines all of these elements--the river, the politics of European colonialism in Africa, and the exotic mystery of Mr. Kurtz--to create a story that is profoundly dark, without sentiment. In fact, it has resonance with what Martin Luther King, Jr., called in another context "the bleakness of nagging despair" (91), and for some of the same reasons, given Conrad's picture of the relat

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before he arrives in Africa and seduced by the ambiguous and compelling legend of Kurtz afterward. Kurtz appears to have brought "ideas" about Africa to the Congo and to have been seduced, first by acquisition of ivory, then by the "adoration" of villages upcountry that could gratify "his various lusts." But Marlow figures out that gratification developed a life of its own: The wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core (Conrad 102). Marlow implies that Kurtz was seduced into a mythology of colonialist omnipotence; the remoteness of the environment to work on human psychology is implicated in the seduction. The power of Kurtz's experience, amplified by the power of environment, works on Marlow, who remains perversely loyal to Kurtz's memory. This loyalty explains his feverish, distracted bewilderment after the whole episode of Kurtz's rescue and deathwatch and the slaughter of the villagers by th

Category: Literature - C