Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness" Illuminates the Tenebrous Core of Mankind

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.

Written in the late 1800’s, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a novella about one man’s travel into the Congo Free State by way of the Congo River. The title “Heart of Darkness” actually holds two different meanings. Heart of Darkness is both a metaphor for a psychological “dark side” of man, and an allusion to Africa. The title suggests both a physical and mental reference.

What makes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness more than the run of the mill adventure tale, is its moral complexity. By the end of the novel, we find a protagonist who has immense appreciation for a man who lacks honest redemption, the mysterious Mr. Kurtz. It is the literal vivaciousness and unyielding spirit of this man, his pure intentionality, which Marlow finds so entrancing and which leaves the reader with larger questions regarding the human capacity. Therefore, Heart of Darkness is profoundly different given its character complexity and ambiguous narrative technique which ultimately deliver home a message of the complex motivations and capabilities of mankind.

Although the author Joseph Conrad never met the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who died more than a century before Conrad’s birth, their distinct philosophies still have numerous points of intersection, suggesting some fundamental truths within the structure of the human reality. Through the novella, Heart of Darkness, Conrad details his perspectives on the faults of man and reality as a whole, with views often coinciding with many of Leibniz’s own, as found in his numerous philosophical works. Consequently, the two perspectives combine together, like a cyclopean image, to enhance and deepen each of the two men’s philosophies on humanity.

Marlow shares details of the setting as he travels on the Congo, creating an uncertain and unfamiliar atmosphere for the audience. Conrad infuses Heart of Darkness with imagery of nature to show the true damage imperialism causes to native peoples. Instead of a beautiful, peaceful, paradise, the African jungle is described with words that suggest death and suffering. The quote supports the theme criticizing the negative effects of imperialism, and the hypocrisy of the imperialists’ actions. While they claim that they are improving the lives in Africa, the imperialists have actually damaged the jungle.

Inherent inside every human soul is a savage evil side that remains repressed by society. Often this evil side breaks out during times of isolation from our culture, and whenever one culture confronts another. History is loaded with examples of atrocities that have occurred when one culture comes into contact with another. Whenever fundamentally different cultures meet, there is often a fear of contamination and loss of self that leads us to discover more about our true selves, often causing perceived madness by those who have yet to discover their own self.  Joseph Conrad’s book, The Heart of Darkness is a story about Man’s journey into his self, the discoveries to be made there and about

The title alone, Heart of Darkness, can be interpreted in a few ways and ties into a couple of themes throughout the book. The two most common themes are those of racism and that of good versus evil. This is not just a tale of the Congo and all it holds, but more-so of a quest of one’s personal ignorance regarding their view on a race different from their own.

Heart of Darkness, a greatly revered piece of literature for its condemnation of imperialism written by Joseph Conrad, has a lot of symbolism throughout it. One of the most important symbols that is a recurring theme is the darkness and what it represents. For Kurtz, a character that gets carried away by greed, the darkness would represent all the unspoken deeds he was able to commit in the Congo without the eyes of civilization watching him.

Throughout the novel, Joseph Conrad uses darkness in Heart of Darkness to show us man’s inhumanity to man in a way to show us that White or European people’s main reason to take over a small and weak country is that for their main resources. Heart of Darkness is about a man named Charlie Marlow who is telling his story about what he has experienced and what he saw in the Congo. The key characters that form the base of this book are Marlow, Colonel Kurtz, and the group of people who are hearing the story. The main events that show man’s inhumanity to man are when the White conquerors are saying that the natives in Africa are savages. The second event that shows man’s inhumanity to man is when the steamboat captain before Marlow beat up an old

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.

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 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.”