Exploring the Horror of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad, in his novel Heart of Darkness, uses the contrasting places of Europe and Africa in order to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the entirety of the work. This journey back in time, “to a prehistoric earth” illustrates Marlow’s physical journey as well as relates to his emotional and spiritual experience. Marlow characterizes events, ideas, and locations that he encounters in terms of light or darkness. Marlow continuously equates light with knowledge and civility and darkness with mystery and savagery. When he begins his narrative, Marlow evokes light and, therefore, civility, with reality, believing it to be a tangible expression of man's natural state. Similarly, Marlow uses darkness to depict savagery as a vice having escaped with nature. However, as he proceeds deeper into the heart of the African jungle and begins to understand savagery as a primitive form of civilization and, therefore, a reflection on his own reality, the metaphor shifts, until the narrator raises his head at the end of the novel to discover that the Thames seemed to 'lead into the heart of an immense darkness.'' The alteration of the light-dark metaphor corresponds with Marlow's awareness that the only reality, truth, or light about civilization is that it is, regardless of appearances, is instead darkness.

Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad is dramatic tale of an arduous trek into the darkest part of Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. The story follows the protagonist Marlow, an English marine merchant, as he travels through the African jungle up the Congo river in search for a mysterious man named Kurtz. Through Marlow's narration, Conrad provides a searing indictment of European colonial exploitation inflicted upon African natives. Through his use of irony, characters, and symbolism in the novel, Conrad aims to unveil the underlying horrors of colonialism. By shedding light on the brutality of colonialism in Heart of Darkness, Conrad shows that European values have been irrevocably eclipsed by darkness.

Individuals are constantly saying that the human condition is the pursuit of happiness. The true human condition is continual fear, and yet most people will choose not to believe this truth. In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, the narrator listens as Marlow describes an experience he had while traveling through Africa and how it changed his perception of life's meaning. The efforts to colonize and capitalize Africa and exploit its resources had a lasting impact on Marlow. His contact with African natives, his inspirational hero Kurtz, and his return to a ‘civilized’ environment all wrought great change in Marlow’s perceptions of reality.

    Literature is never interpreted in exactly the same way by two different readers. A prime example of a work of literature that is very ambiguous is Joseph Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness". The Ambiguities that exist in this book are Marlow's relationship to colonialism, Marlow's changing feelings toward Kurtz, and Marlow's lie to the Intended at the end of the story.

Due to man’s ability for evil, both Conrad and Leibniz argue that a deterioration of these morals exist when in penetrating and corrupt circumstances despite the commonality or “justice” in a structured civilization. The greatest motive for working in the Congo is the grand opportunity to obtain ivory. Meeting Kurtz in the Inner Station, Marlow experiences a “heavy, mute spell of wilderness” that draws him “to the pitiless breast” all by the “awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified [...] passions” (Conrad 82). Conrad alludes that such force has caused Kurtz to dwell and reside to savage manners. Although it may seem like only the powers of darkness assaulted Kurtz, no “devil is too much of a devil” and it is indeed with the significant combination of the personal, overwhelming desire for Ivory that lead to his deterioration. In “Opinion on the Principles of Pufendorf”, Leibniz believes it is self-evident that desire always drive the man drives

     While sitting and talking to the man on the pier, Stevens questions his life, realizing that his entire method of thinking has been wrong. He realizes that he has not been living as a human being, but rather as simply a butler.

Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.

Passage Analysis In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the journey of the main protagonist Marlow, working as a ivory transporter is depictive of one man’s struggle to answer the persistent questions posed by the ethics and moralities of this life. Marlow’s depiction of his journey travelling the river provides a glimpse into his experiences that gave him this purpose. To provide context for this passage, it is just at the start of chapter two. It begins at “ Going up that river…” and ends at “half-a-crown a tumble-”

“[T]he heavy, mute spell of the wilderness—that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions…this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations” (Conrad 99). Every person faces the temptation to sin, but many times people are compelled to suppress those temptations by certain outside forces, such as social rules, family, and religious institutions. How would people act in a place where those restraints are removed? For the 19th century Europeans, the Congo was such a place. The ivory trade was thriving, and the natives took the consequences for the Europeans’ lack of restraint. In his book Heart of Darkness, Joseph

Beyond the shield of civilization and into the depths of a primitive, untamed frontier lies the true face of the human soul. It is in the midst of this savagery and unrelenting danger that mankind confronts the brooding nature of his inner self.  Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, is the story of one man's insight into life as he embarks on a voyage to the edges of the world. Here, he meets the bitter, yet enlightening forces that eventually shape his outlook on life and his own individuality. Conrad’s portrayal of the characters, setting, and symbols, allow the reader to reflect on the true nature of man.

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the physical journey that tells the story throughout the book plays a central role as a guide to the overall meaning. The journey adds meaning to the book by using both the literal movement throughout the journey, as well as the themes throughout the book that help tell the story. Three themes that helped shape the movement of the journey include Exploration, Good vs Evil, and lastly, the theme of Uncertainty. All three of these themes add to the journey and help the reader better understand the basis of the book.

The constant change in scenery throughout the Heart of Darkness contributes heavily to the meaning of the novel as a whole, for it allows the novel’s author, Joseph Conrad, to expand on the effects the physical journey of travelling through the Congo has on the inner mentailites of the characters- Marlow and Kurtz- in the novel. Conrad’s continuous comparisons between characters, their surroundings, and the plot, create the genuine progression of the novel, while the physical journey that is taken allows the characters to make their own discovery of humankind. As Kurtz’s destiny and the struggles he overcomes go on to deeply affect the two characters’ journey through the story’s plot, as everything in the Heart of Darkness is linked or comes back to Kurtz and all the wrongful actions he has committed in the Congo- as he was the perpetrator of all the darkness in the novel to begin with.

Kurtz, a mystery throughout the whole novella, is known as a prodigy by the people back home. Marlow first hears of him when he goes to accept the job that his aunt arranged for him. Since evil is not a universal constant, it changes according to each observer and the

Heart of Darkness is written by Joseph Conrad and published in 1899. It is a novella written in the early modernism literary period.

The two major themes of Heart of Darkness are the conflict between “reality” and “darkness,” and the idea of restraint and whether or not it is necessary. Conrad’s passage describing the restraint of the hungry cannibals exemplifies both themes:  It describes how reality shapes human behavior, and contrasts the characters of Kurtz and Marlow.  “Reality,” as it is used here, is defined as “that which is civilized.”