Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
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Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness tells the story of a man who ventured too far into the darker areas of his own 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. 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 Kurtz and Marlow. The character of Marlow is a persona for the author used in several stories and novels, and 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 stor
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f the world is bringing light, and Singh finds a number of ways in which Conrad contrasts civilization and the dark of Africa, noting how Brussels is likened to a "white sepulchre" while the natives are "shapes," "shadows," and variously dehumanized (Singh 268-269). Yet C.P. Sarvan points out that the story is an allegory and that Africa serves an allegorical and not a literal purpose:
But it may prove emotionally difficult for some to follow the allegory when it is thought that Conrad, casting about for an external parallel, for a physical setting to match the inner darkness, chose Africa (Sarvan 283).
What is apparent in the novel is that there is always an ambiguity in Marlow as in other Europeans, for they are drawn to different parts of the world and yet always believe that their own society is the best. This realization forces them always to see other peoples in the wold as lesser beings, even as they may tolerate them. Marlow notes how he and the other man on the yacht are linked, but the link is not British civilization but the sea, which is a metaphor for travel and for exposure to far more of the world than most people ever see:
One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immuta
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Approximate Word count = 1688
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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