Penetrating the Darkness of the Congo

What do you make of the strange episode of the fire and the hole in the bottom of the watering pail? What does this event contribute to Marlow's and the reader's sense of European life in Africa?

Heart of Darkness creates a prejudice way of presenting Africa, Joseph Conrad shows the African Congo through the perspective of the colonising Europeans, who describe all the natives as savages, which perpetuates the stereotype of the uncivilised African in the eyes of the European readers.

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

This isolation lends Marlow a sort of objectivity, allowing him to keenly assess the true damage Europe has inflicted upon the Congo. Unbound by friendships or any close ties, Marlow is able to survey the Congo and its colonists from an outsider’s perspective. As previously noted, he refers to them as “pilgrims” as a means of detaching himself. He comments on how when attacked by natives, “The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush” (Conrad 41). By distancing himself from the others, Marlow is able to recognize the pointlessness of the chaotic violence the Europeans perpetuate. Though his distaste for European methods is not always well defined, it is definitely evident, seeming to escalate as he travels further along the Congo. Perhaps, then, the “heart of darkness” that Marlow so frequently says he is journeying into is not the jungle itself, but rather the truth about European brutality. At the core of this heart, both physically and symbolically, lies the Inner Station, where Marlow finds Kurtz. When Marlow first hears about Kurtz, he is fascinated. The colonists rave, “He is a prodigy…He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else” (Conrad 22). These colonists are naïve, uninformed, beholding Kurtz as

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.

The novella, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, is a piece that pushed the envelope of its time due to an oppositional stance on the forced imperialism of primitive and/or impoverished countries. The protagonist of this story is the self-proclaimed explorer, Marlow, who decides to leave the heart of light and purity (Europe) and take a job as a steamboat captain in the dark jungles of the Congo Free State in Africa. Upon his arrival, Marlow begins to see the impact of Belgium’s intrusion on the Congo by means of implementing slavery, commandeering ivory (a valuable resource), and presenting a negative attitude toward the primitive population. Marlow eventually becomes obsessed with an ivory

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild is a sweeping and often revolting account of the atrocities of the Belgian colonization of the Congo and its aftermath. Using a variety of writing techniques, Hochschild creates an engrossing narrative which not only unveils a dark chapter in our global history, but also fosters an empathy in the reader to the victims of the barbarity of the time.

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.

The presence of Europe in Africa in the late nineteenth century was one of extreme power. The countries of France, Britain, and Germany had especially large claims to the African continent during this time. The motives of imperialism for these countries greatly define Europe at this time. Insatiable desires for economic markets, power and political struggles, the motivating belief in Social Darwinism, and the European idea of superiority were the driving forces at the European home front in the late nineteenth century. Many of the causes for imperialism in Africa were evident in Joseph Conrad’s turn of the century novel, Heart of Darkness.

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.

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.

In Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, the interpretation of pre-colonial times is interesting in a way that supersedes other books I’ve read because it’s very honest with how the world worked it that era. The central aim which the shipmates in Heart of Darkness are pursuing is the expansion of their home countries’ empires. Yet many people are hurt in this enterprise, and it’s not only the colonized territories that are impacted negatively by imperialist Europe. Europe’s explorers that go to the Congo are constantly dying of sickness. Compare the ways in which the consequences of imperialism affect the different groups of people in the book, the more one can understand about characters’ actions.

The description shows the bleakness of the Congo compared to the outside world, is one of the first representations of the civilized (or outside) world contrasted to the Congo. The uncivilized/civilized comparison and the descriptions of darkness heighten when Conrad increases the contrast by moving Marlow into an oasis of civilization, the Main Station, a port outpost on the coast of Africa, owned and commanded by white Europeans, but kept alive by the slave work of black natives. Upon setting foot on shore,

Imperialism and its oppressive processes have affected societies as well as individual lives for centuries. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, oppression through imperialism demonstrates how a certain civilization, the Congolese, is affected negatively by imperialism. By focusing on Africa, it allows for a graphic recount of the many years spent reigned by foreign oppressors and tyrannies. In Heart of Darkness, the Congo is oppressed by the imperialists economically and geographically. As well, the oppressed people are taken advantage of spiritually. Conrad describes how the ruling tyrant is affected by the process of conquering a local people and this draws a parallel to the ruling empire. Conrad, through his novel, attempts to

In the beginning, one of the main characters, Marlow, sets out on a voyage to explore a white spot on the map service of an ivory trading company. His route is through the river Congo (although in the novel the name of the river is never expressed). Marlow is a good-hearted, noble man from Europe. Morally he is a fair character with good intentions. Throughout his travels he slowly starts seeing that not everyone is so kind and not everyone cares about being good to their fellow-beings. It is full of sinister signs that Marlows final destination will be even worse that