Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 

 

Full of dense, rich prose; Heart of Darkness details an unsettling journey, across the world, away from home and ‘civilisation’. It is a complex portrayal of human nature and a  scathing critique of colonialism.  Jospeh Conrad memorably renders the themes of his novel using an array of motifs and striking symbolism. 

 

It may be considered similar in plot to an ‘adventure novel’. However, it noticeably lacks the dashing bravado, the ‘heroism’ of an adventure novel. The novel’s tone is dark and portentous throughout, and the author expresses his thoughts in dark lyrical language. 

 

As hinted at in the title, light and darkness play important roles in the novel.  They are recurring motifs, and the first thing our protagonist Marlow says is “And this also… has been one of the dark places of the earth.” 

 

Marlow is a sailor, the captain of a ship, and is narrating his story to a group of men about to set sail for distant lands. He is recalling the time, in Africa, he was journeying to meet a mysterious offi
cial named Kurtz. 

He describes these foreign lands as ‘dark’, only illuminated recently by the conquering European society. 

 

Here, light seems to refer to structured civilisation, while the darkness is the raging force of nature. As Marlow descends deeper into the forests of Africa, he feels like he is being consumed in darkness. Light implies logic and reason, while darkness is primitive human instinct. “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.”

Continuing with his equating of nature to darkness, nature is not described as benevolent or gentle, it is a vicious, mighty, magnificent entity. In those less explored lands, nature seem to hold an advantage over man. 

 

During Marlow’s journey, suspense is slowly built up. Kurtz, the enigmatic man he has been sent to meet, is at the centre of it.  Kurtz has been described to Marlow as a brilliant man, an emissary of progress. However he hears the whispers of his companions, who decry Kurtz and his idealism idiocy. ‘And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,’ continued the other; ‘he bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you—that ! And he wants to be manager!

In the woods, he meets yet another man, a lost Russian traveller, who reveres Kurtz almost as a saint or a god. These contrasting perspectives build the mystery, the gruelling suspense of the novel.

 

The author also gives his perspectives on colonialism along the way. Marlow pities the colonised people, whom he regards as deeply miserable- had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain. He regards colonialism as sheer brutality, rather than the romanticised views of others- just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

The novel unconventionally highlights the effect of colonialism on the coloniser, and the author emphasise that men have to be blind to take on the heart of darkness- in battling nature, in trying to civilise, to colonise; men often blind themselves, lose all their rationality, the reason. I

n colonising the natives, and supposedly stamping out their savagery and brutal instincts, the colonists bring out these savage, primitive instincts in themselves. 

Talking of a colleague who had flogged an elderly native man over a triviality, Marlow says - Oh, it didn’t surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. 

The colonists are portrayed as corrupt and greedy men, hungry for more blood money, and Marlow views them almost with disgust, and hopes he is better than them- I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing.

 

However, the man portrayed as most corrupted, is Kurtz- “His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.

 

Kurtz: Kurtz, for most of the novel is a spectre on the horizon, looming. An almost God-like figure, he only seen in the rumours and whispers of other. He haunts our narrators thoughts, as a strange ghostly figure. Even when he appears in real life late in the novel, he is unsubstantial, pale and skeletal like the ivory he covets. He is described as a ‘mostly a voice’, and his voice is his most recognisable characteristic. His voice, his ‘gorgeous eloquence’, is referred to throughout the novel, and is depicted as impossibly alluring, especially to lost men far from home. 

He is described as a shining beacon of progress, a man bringing civilisation to the savages by his admirers; whereas his detractors call him a madman. Perhaps most aptly, he is dubbed an extremist. But he is universally acknowledged as a highly gifted man. Marlow states that.  ‘no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil’. 

When he finally appears, late in the novel, he is dying of illness, and feverish with passion and madness. It appears, far from bringing Instead of bringing light to the savages, he has ironically rooted himself there. The natives, though they obey him, are still standing. Their leader, a strange exotic woman, is a symbol of everlasting nature. 

Though nature has been suppressed, Kurtz has been broken- in mind and body. His glorious ambitions of progress and hope have been shattered, he 

It is ironically revealed he ordered the natives to make an attack on Marlow’s ship - because he does not want to be taken away. 

Kurtz, the coloniser who has taken the natives’ land and liberty, the conqueror, is conquered - conquered by “the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness”.  He is utterly consumed by the darkness.

Eventually he is convinced to be taken away, but dies on the journey. He is an enigma, a cipher to all those around him, in life and in death. 

 

He has a lasting impact on out narrator. Charles Marlow our narrator,  something of a restless wanderer. Joseph Conrad ironically states that Marlow is is an exception among sailors; sailors are stay at home creatures, always at home on the sea, whereas Charles Marlow is truly adventurous. His peers consider him a bit of an oddity, and regard his stories as longwinded, and inconclusive, however it can be inferred that he is an intelligent, thoughtful man. In the novel, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Kurtz, haunted by Kurtz. He wants to meet Kurtz, initially supposing that he would dislike Kurtz, but when he meets Kurtz, he is enraptured by Kurtz, like everyone else in the novel. 

When he returns eventually traumatised by his experiences, and feels contempt other people and their ‘shallow’ lives.  When he meets Kurtz’s grieving fiancée, he lies and tells her Kurtz’s last words were her name. 

In doing this, Marlow protects Kurtz, and the ideals he stood for, maintaining their illusion. He allows the fiancée to continue to believe in Kurtz, and by extension, the colonial greatness he represented. 

He reveals to no one the chilling, ominous words Kurtz said on his death bed, words that aptly sum up the sentiment of the novel-  ‘The horror, the horror’.