Contradicting Symbolism in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

He describes the white colonists, claiming they are “like poisonous serpents; when chilled, they are feeble and harmless, but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death”. The use of the simile emphasizes the danger of the white colonists that

Tom Weylin’s sexual assaults on his female slave Tess and selling out her children reflects the miseries of the helpless blacks at the hands of the white population. Though Tess has lost her children, yet she has to comply with the orders and wishes of her white master. (The Fight, X) In addition, Weylin’s consistent whipping on Dana, Tess and Alice also reveals the existence of butchery and domestic violence by the whites. Particularly stripping of the Black women and beating them brutally serve as the black mar on the very face of the white community. (The Fight, XIII) History is also replete with the examples of butchery and cruelties inflicted upon the Black slaves in the USA, northern and central Europe, Russia, Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) and other parts of the world, where sexual exploitations, whipping and torture were the orders of the day. Hence, Butler has portrayed the exact picture of the situation prevailed in the olden past in her novel.

Their complexions, differing so much from ours, their long hair and the language they spoke, which was different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave of my own country. When I looked around the ship and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description

Marlow further degrades Africans by depicting the natives as simplistic and prehistoric. "The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell?" (Page 137). The natives are so primitive that they are denied language. Marlow chooses to question African culture by asking "who could tell?" instead of trying to grasp the native's signals because he believes the man's ideas are insignificant and shouldn’t be taken seriously or that the African is too insane to have anything allegeable to

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has allowed me to view the world through a multitude of new lenses. In seeing Kurtz and Marlow’s disintegration when removed from society’s watchful eye, I began to understand that all people have a streak of darkness in them under the right circumstances. While the narrator, and many readers at the time of this novella’s publication, believed that the African natives being colonized were “savages”, this book sheds light on the true brutes in this scenario: the thoughtless Europeans. The other complexity that I never truly understood until reading this book, is the idea that there is a single story told about Africans in Western literature. Africa is portrayed as weak, primitive, and impoverished in most books

“My first master’s name was Anthony. I do not remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony—a title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind

Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness is both a dramatic tale of an arduous trek into the Belgian Congo at the turn of the twentieth century and a symbolic journey into the deepest recesses of human nature. On a literal level, through Marlow 's narration, Conrad provides a searing indictment of European colonial exploitation inflicted upon African natives. By employing several allegoric symbols this account depicts the futility of the European presence in Africa.

     Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a story about a man named Marlow and his Journey into the African Congo. By reading the novel and understanding all the imagery Conrad has inserted, we can get a better understanding of the

But if one accepts the title as meaning, in essence, "the heart which has the quality of being dark," one has to consider the associations of "darkness." Though darkness ordinarily connotes evil, Conrad brings still more ambiguities about light and dark into the mix as the novel progresses. Ivory, a constant presence in the novel, gains associations with the horrors of European colonialism and human materialism. The whiteness of ivory, therefore, cannot denote the positive, pure associations normally used by writers. Most critics believe "the story is set in light and dark polarities" (Ong 61), but clearly, there is vagueness and ambiguity throughout the novel. If one attempts to answer any such questions, still more arise. Watts validly concludes that the title offers "a certain disturbing mysteriousness through the immediate possibility of alternative glosses" (55).

    Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness portrays an image of Africa that is dark and inhuman.  Not only does he describe the actual, physical continent of Africa as "so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness" (Conrad 94), as though the continent could neither breed nor support any true human life, but he also manages to depict Africans as though they are not worthy of the respect commonly due to the white man.  At one point the main character, Marlow, describes one of the paths he follows: "Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the imperialism of Africa is described. Conrad tells the story of the cruel treatment of the natives and of the imperialism of the Congo region through the perspective of the main character, Marlow. Throughout the novel, Marlow describes how the Europeans continuously bestow poor treatment to the native people by enslaving them in their own territory. Analyzing the story with the New Criticism lens, it is evident that Conrad incorporates numerous literary devices in Heart of Darkness, including similes, imagery, personification, and antitheses to describe and exemplify the main idea of cruel imperialism in Africa discussed throughout the novella.

They weren't 'dark' until the coming of the 'light'. The reader is presented with conflicting and complex meanings, and is affected accordingly. They become sympathetic toward the natives, despite the fact that they are supposed to be evil and uncivilized. Similarly, the metaphor of light representing the white man's nature of civility and goodness is flawed. The white man is civilized, but is that really a good thing? The reader can see that although the white men are civilized, they are brutes that are interested only in capital gain. The ivory that they hoard is white too. Again, the contradictory nature of these metaphors produces interesting effects on the reader. They pity that which is dark, which is only in darkness because of the light. They pity that which they are not really supposed to pity, and they are being asked to all throughout the text. It can be seen then, that the darkness and lightness as metaphors in regards to the natives and the white men, creates effects for the reader that are only strengthened, as they get further through the text.

Throughout the novella, it seems as if the narrator is describing the Africans as being almost human, but not quite. There seems to be a line drawn between African and European that is much thicker than country borders. In a description of a sick boy, the narrator says, “the man seemed young—almost a boy—but you know with them it’s hard to tell” (17 Norton). This statement may seem harmless, but it is completely unnecessary. It reveals how few interactions Marlow had with the Africans, and his use of the word “them” creates a ethnical barrier. Along with negative descriptions of Africans, Marlow also uses a great amount of racial slurs when speaking

The true purpose of the book is to reveal to the European people that Africa is being raped by the ivory traders. Kurtz, the villainous ivory hunter, is portrayed in a captivating manner due to his eloquence. Kurtz is a representation of all European ivory traders, specifically Belgium, who journey to Africa in hopes of striking it rich. Europeans come to take the ivory, but while there, they destroy the land and kill the people. Marlow then meets an accountant after arriving at his post in Africa. The accountant seems to be a representation of the trading companies due to the fact that he is an accountant and dressed immaculately in all white. The trading companies just like the accountant only care about the money being made off of the ivory. The accountant is dressed so perfectly, however is corrupt on the inside.

Marlow tells a story of his first trip to Africa on a steamboat with a company that gathers ivory. The real adventure begins as he goes on a journey to the Congo to find a man known as Kurtz, who he has a weird obsession with upon hearing about him. Like the framing device of the novel, the idea of the Company and trading of ivory seems structured from an outside point of view. The Company appeases their journey by calling it “economic trade” and “civilization” for the savage. But through the journey, Marlow witnesses the cruelty of the Company. The structure’s underlying chaos and corruption gives rise to the hypocrisy of imperialism in the novel. The “economic trade” and “civilization” relates to the frame of the novel while Kurtz and the actual