Joseph Conrads's Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was born in Poland in 1857. He spent most of his early life traveling to Africa, South America and Australia. When he was older, he became a commander of British ships in the Orient and learned English. Later in life, he began writing fiction in the English Language. Heart of Darkness was written in 1902. His other major novels include Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo (1904). He died in 1924.

The modernist novel Heart of Darkness is the story of one man's journey into Africa around the turn of the century. Marlow, the narrator, tells the story of the psychic and emotional ramifications of journeying into a place that has long been identified as "The Dark Continent." The novel serves as an exploration of Europe's colonizing mission in Africa during the nineteenth century, but particularly as an exploration of Marlow's implication in that mission. In his essay "Marlow and the Double Horror in Heart of Darkness," Fred Madden explores the way Conrad's text serves to implicate Marlow and by extension all colonizers in the moral ambiguities associated with colonization.

Madden begins his essay by referring to one of the most significant moments in Heart of Darkness: Kurtz's death. The title of Madden's essay is taken from Kurtz's last words:

It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven t

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the nature of the continent and the nature of men, Madden makes a statement that clearly misreads Conrad's novel. He states that "Marlow often imbues the wilderness with menacing presence, but perhaps endowing it with a spiritually corrupting influence is suspect" (176). Madden believes that Marlow performs this anthropomorphism because in order "to protect his own self-image, egotism, and feelings of superiority, Marlow needs to see all the causes of corruption as outside himself" (176). This last statement may indeed be true, but Madden does not push his analysis far enough to explore Conrad's motives in allowing Marlow to perform this activity. Madden most assuredly understands that the title Heart of Darkness is more a reference to the human heart than to Marlow's journey to the center of Africa. He also understands that the human heart under analysis here is the heart of the colonizer. But what he does not seem to understand is that the darkness revealed in that heart is not a reflection of any external image, but rather an emanation from within that is projected onto an external world and people. "The horror" that Kurtz cries out against upon his death is the horror of this realization; the realization that the exte

Category: Literature - J