Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness '

Another great irony in the novel is the attitude Marlow ultimately adopts towards Kurtz. Marlow's beginning impressions from the various reports he has heard about Kurtz are very adverse. Yet, after the events have taken place, Marlow becomes an admirer of Kurtz harboring strong feelings of respect and friendship. The reader would expect Marlow to continue to react to Kurtz in the same adverse manner as the start of the novel, but the opposite occurs. Marlow becomes so attached to Kurtz that he uses all his powers of persuasion to bring Kurtz back to the ship. Marlow then tells the reader that he could “not betray Mr. Kurtz—it was ordered I should never betray him—it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice” (94). Thus Marlow has now become almost a follower of Kurtz knowing the full extent of the evil that prevails in Kurtz. Evidently, Marlow's own primitive instinct have come to the surface resulting in a bond between Kurtz and himself. So another civilized European man who is an embodiment of reason and sanity has fallen victim to the influences of savagery.

     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.

Marlow is able to come out of the jungle unchanged and Kurtz is not. This is because of Marlow’s abilities of self-restraint. Marlow was able to see the evil in the forest and therefore he was able to detach himself from it. Marlow witnessed Kurtz’s lack of restraint, which led Kurtz to his demise. Kurtz had no restraint against the dangers of Africa; he threatened to kill the Russian, one of his only friends for a small amount of ivory.

Long ago, a battle raged. In the great prairies of Greater __________, knights shed their blood in a bloody, gruesome battle against an undefeatable army of tens of thousands of creatures who yearned for the blood of their enemies. The creatures couldn’t stop; wouldn’t stop until they could lay their hands on the greatest treasure of all. A treasure greater than any mortal man could fathom. A treasure so great that it could absorb men into itself where they would stay until summoned by the owner of the treasure. The treasure even had the ability to grant immortality to the most pure of heart. If destroyed, this treasure could enable the destroyer to render dark magic more dangerous and evil than what was known the people of ______________.

There once was a story of a girl set apart, for inside her she carried a great light, so great in fact was this light that all who came in contact with it were changed, however because of this great light shining within her she was forced to see the world as it was. From a young age she understood to be covered in a powerful darkness with all the evil and the hate which that entails.

The novella Heart of Darkness gives a diverse view of life in Africa during the time of colonization. The main character Marlow, a somewhat naïve man, enters Africa to fulfill his dream of meeting Mr. Kurtz, a prominent man who is said to have a vehement way of speaking. Throughout Marlow’s journey to meet Kurtz, Marlow is required to travel along with other pilgrims, or other white men traveling into the Congo, or as Marlow would like to call it, the heart of darkness. Along the way Marlow is tested and must endure the wilderness that surrounds him, and the natives, who wish to hinder the rescue Kurtz from his own madness, but in the process of saving Kurtz, Marlow is losses his self in his own perdition.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness depicted women and savages in the same manner, which indicated that in the eyes of the government that the two were essentially the same in their rights and supposed value. They should be seen not heard. In Heart of Darkness, the company functions like a government. Every plan, action, and and decision that is made to some extent is done for the good of the company, or at least for a while. I chose the passage where Kurtz lover appeared by the steamer before he died and I will apply Marxism theory. When we look at this passage through this lens we must ask two questions: what social classes do the characters represent? Also what social or societal values are being presented?

Heart of Darkness is an exploration of Marlow’s reactions to a world of hypocrisy, ambiguity, and moral confusion. As an idealistic Marlow is forced into either allying with the rule-defying, malevolent Kurtz or the malicious colonial business, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no correct choice. Rather, the world is filled with undeniably ambiguous situations. In this way, the novel examines Marlow’s choice between the lesser of two evils: Kurtz or the bureaucracy. Marlow condemns the Company because of its hypocritical and dishonest behavior while siding with Kurtz because his upfront nature.

Heart of Darkness begins on the Thames river where an unknown narrator describes a night spent on a ship. He and several other men are on the deck of a ship when Marlow, a captain, begins to tell the story of an adventure he had on the Belgian Congo. Marlow had always wanted to travel to Africa and up the snakelike Congo River. With the help of his aunt in Brussels, Marlow gets a job as a boat captain on the Congo River with a company that deals in ivory. After getting his assignment at the office in Brussels, he travels to the mouth of the Congo River in a French steamer. When Marlow arrives at the mouth of the Congo, a Swedish captain takes him to the Company’s Inner Station on a smaller boat. Outside of the station he sees Africans

The novella Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, ultimately refers not to the impenetrable wilderness of the African Congo with which the European colonists are confronted, but rather to the primal and insurmountable darkness of the human heart. In the “civilized” world of the Europeans, man has driven this darkness back into his subconscious, and instead presents a façade of virtue and good intentions. Africa, on the other hand, which is seen as a “primeval” environment, its people a less evolved version of their white counterparts, is fully in touch with this darker, more elementary dimension of human nature. In many ways, since the African natives are often portrayed as a living extension of the wilderness itself, it symbolically is the

Joseph Conrad’s treatment of race in “Heart of Darkness” differs significantly from Neil Bissoondath’s “I’m Not Racist But…” From Neil Bissoondath’s perspective, racial discrimination occurs everywhere and is conducted by everyone, either willfully or ignorantly. Bissoondath’s attempt is to inform the reader of the connection between stereotyping and racism and in turn condemns such acts. Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” however, exposes the brutality of the Europeans on Africans. While Bissoondath’s work addresses the sensitivity of racial judgement and racial superiority intended to bring hatred or abuse used against any given group of individuals, Conrad’s work describes how the Africans are racially judged and brutally treated by the European settlers. According to Conrad, the European settlers suppressed Africans from their freedom and supplied no medical care nor food. By dominating over the Africans, the European settlers in Africa are not only able to use the Africans as cheap labours but are also able to exploit the African’s raw materials with less restriction. Nevertheless, both Bissoondath and Conrad condemn the community on their approach to racial treatment.

 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

After reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and after hearing and reading about the feminist perspective on it, I have decided to focus in on that specific theme in the novelette. While many have speculated about what Conrad is saying when it comes to woman, it has become clear to me that Conrad was in fact critiquing the way woman were treated in the 1900’s. He portrays woman as weak and incapable and out of touch through Marlow’s perspective, however, Conrad finds sly ways to make the reader rethink the stereotypes placed on the woman in the novel and women in living in the world overall.

However, when an outsider (Marlow) is brought in to be captain of one of the steamboats he starts poking holes in Mr. Kurtz 's character. Marlow is a relatively young man who lets curiosity drive all his conversations. When Marlow went to the Congo he was filled with nothing but questions about the infamous Kurtz. As Marlow keeps questioning people about Mr. Kurtz the audience starts to notice that not everyone likes Kurtz. While the tribal people seem to adore him others are extremely jealous of him. This is when Conrad lets the audience see some of the flaws with Mr. Kurtz, Conrad starts to show that

We as readers note that Marlow already knows Kurtz’s fate as he is telling the story, which means that in some ways, he still admires the man. In some ways, he might even recognize himself in the other, with the difference that Marlow was able to hold onto his morality and goodness, whereas Kurtz was not. However, who is to say that if Marlow had stayed in Africa longer, that he wouldn’t have followed the same path as Kurtz? After all, they did have similar way of thinking and Kurtz is what Marlow is afraid of becoming.