Heart Of Darkness

He is telling his story of his adventure to his job on the Congo, presenting the story inside of a story notion. In the reminiscent story he is telling, he talks about a man named Kurtz, the ivory manager at the company is going to work for in the Congo. He learned about the characteristics of Kurtz, which happened to be the opposite of his. At first, he is slight displeased and shows disgust towards the actions of the other workers’ at the company and Marlow; stopping in plot ever so often to regain his thoughts because it made him upset. However, as he continued deeper in the Congo, he starts to change into Kurtz making Kurtz and Marlow complex. The reader can not tell if they are different people or perhaps the same. Before this transformation, Marlow and Kurtz was already similar in a few ways. For example, Marlow and Kurtz both shared a certain amount of respect for the natives, Kurtz even had a mistress that was native. However, they may have a certain level of respect for them they both feel that they are savage like and they are not equal to the white men. This shows the white man’s burden, of the white man that feels the need to educate the natives. Marlow even ends up agreeing later on in the book that they should be

At first glance, the thematic occurrences of the continent of Africa, the European imperialists, and the natives can also be considered “hearts of darkness”, however these factors can be proven otherwise. The continent of Africa being the “heart of darkness” is too literal and would not work because everything “dark” about the jungle occurs at the hands of the colonists through their depletion of its resources and the

Who is "the flabby devil" who is "running the show'? Why is Marlow so frustrated by what he sees in Africa and by the Europeans he meets?

 Marlow's journey leads him in an urgent search for Kurtz, the one man who can provide him with the truth about himself. Like Marlow, Kurtz came to the Congo in hopes to bring "light" and civilization to a backwards society. He is a highly-educated, refined gentlemen; yet, in the end, the brutal nature of the Congo forces him to resort to the life of a murderer and pilferer. The name Kurtz itself has symbolic meaning. "The physical shortness in Kurtz implies a shortness of character and spirit" (Heart of Darkness: A systematic evaluation). Marlow and Kurtz both symbolize the two conditions of human nature. "Kurtz represents what man could become if left to his own intrinsic devices outside protective society. Marlow represents a pure untainted civilized soul who has not been drawn to savagery by a dark, alienated jungle." (Heart of Darkness: A systematic evaluation). When the two come face to face, each man sees a reflection of what he might have become in the other. In Kurtz, Marlow sees the potential

     The film also depicts the character of Kurtz in a very different light. Conrad builds up the appearance of Kurtz so much that his first scene is intentionally anti-climactic. He is discovered to be an ailing, elderly gentlemen, malnourished and on the verge of death. Marlow himself is simultaneously impressed with and disappointed by Kurtz. He enjoys listening to the old man’s philosophies, but he is let down by Kurtz’s lack of realistic thinking. He has clearly lost his mind, and with it, some of his credibility and mysticism.

Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad and “Apocalypse Now”, a movie directed by Francis Coppola represent two outstanding examples that compare relevant ideas regarding racism, colonialism, and prejudices. The two combine film along with descriptive language to portray their mastery during different eras. For Heart of Darkness, Conrad uses his writing techniques to illustrate Marlow in the Congo, while in “Apocalypse Now”, Coppola uses film editing and close ups on important scenes with unique sounds to identify Willards’ quest for Kurtz. Both portray the idea of colonization in foreign lands that otherwise may have been uninhabited by their own people if left alone.

When the Russian was talking to Marlow, he said, "’I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes-and then he would remain-go off on another ivory hunt-disappear for weeks-forget himself amongst these people-forget himself-you know’"(Conrad 56). Once Kurtz got into the wilderness, he spent a lot of time by himself. Even when the Russian offered to go with, Kurtz would still go off on his own to do his ivory hunting. Marlow even saw the isolation in Kurtz’s life. He said, "’There was nothing either above or below him-and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to piece. He was alone’"(Conrad 65). Marlow knew that Kurtz was alone in his life since he lived in the wilderness. He knew that no one really knew who he really was, "’He was alone’"(Conrad 65).

     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

Marlow described being in the Congo like “traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world…you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert…till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once-somewhere-far away-in another existence perhaps” (Conrad 105-106). Marlow is feeling isolation which shows his abandonment of society and how the id is slowly taking over and moving the superego out of the way. Without society, there is no need for a superego, only the urges of the id.

At the end of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow has has finally returned to Brussels from the Congo, and his interactions with the Intended lead to revelations surrounding the true intentions of Kurtz’s actions. As opposed to Part I, where Kurtz’s words place a veil over Marlow and cause him to seem conflicted in his judgement, Marlow now realizes what he has implicitly contributed to by enabling Kurtz. Marlow initially withdraws judgement and condones Kurtz’s actions due to the persuasive nature of his words; however, this ambivalence eventually transforms to horror as he realizes the grave repercussions of Kurtz’s brutal dominance.

Evil: Morally bad or wrong; wicked. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious. The definition of evil, a term used very cautiously in modern society, is very diverse among different people. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the term evil is articulated through several ways mainly four characters: the cruelty within the people of the Belgian Congo, main mystery of Kurtz, the setting upon which the characters reside, and the atmosphere in which the Belgian Congo produces from the elements prior stated. The smarter Europeans used their intelligence and arms strength to cruelly overcome the weaker

Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart illustrate the different ways of presenting Africa in literature. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad shows Africa through the perspective of the colonizing Europeans, who tend to depict all the natives as savages. In response to Conrad 's stereotypical depiction of Africans, Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart through the point of view of the natives to show Africans, not as primitives, but as members of a thriving society. Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo 's life as he strives for prestige in his community. When European missionaries come to Umuofia, Okonkwo 's clan, Okonkwo tries to protect the culture that the missionaries would destroy in the name of "civilizing" the natives. However his rigid mentality and violent behavior has the opposite of its intended effect, perpetuating the stereotype of the wild African in the eyes of the European readers.

Marlow is the wanderer into the unconscious mind; he is meandering through his deepest understanding of himself. In other words, he is a symbol for the archetype meeting himself in the depths of his unconscious mind. Not only is he initially finding meaning through his encounter with Kurtz but also he is attempting to find meaning through the retelling of his story. Marlow’s voyage ventures “deep into his own personal heart of darkness, where lurks the impulse to savagery that he had never acknowledged while in the deceptive milieu of a sophisticated city” (Spivack 432). Marlow is the principal character through which

Kurtz's whole orientation in the Congo was based on the quest for ever-increasing quantities of ivory. In this lay the weakness of Kurtz, for he wanted something, unlike his Russian companion. Kurtz's intelligence, his ideas, and his plans, were captive to his status as ivory gatherer. Kurtz's rejection of the validity of the 'unsound method' was not the problem. The problem with Kurtz, which Marlow does not realize, is not that Kurtz went native, but that he did not go native enough. In other words, Kurtz did not abandon the ivory-fetish. Kurtz's link with colonialism is therefore his undoing, even in the individual decay he undergoes.

Darkness is everything that is unknown, primitive, evil, and impenetrable.  To Conrad, Africa is the very representation of darkness.  Marlow often uses the phrase, "We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness" (Conrad 68), to describe his progress on the Congo.  By traveling farther and farther down the Congo, Marlow and his crew get closer and closer to the epicenter of this foreboding darkness, to the black heart of evil.  Because of Africa's physical immensity and thick jungles, it appeared to be a land of the unknown where "the silence . . . went home to one's very heart-its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life"(56). This portrayal of Africa as both a romantic frontier and a foreboding wilderness continues to dominate in the minds of Westerners even today.