Symbolism Of The River In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

“I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other […] They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.” (Conrad 102). Towards the end of the novel, Marlow also begins to understand that Kurtz was not as brilliant as he had been presented. “…Kurtz really couldn’t write a bit – but heavens how a man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith – don’t you see? - he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything – anything. He wouldn’t have been a splendid leader of an extreme party. “What party?” I asked. “Any party,” answered the other.” (Conrad 104). Conrad shows us what white men are into. It was all about power, prestige and money. Consequently, Conrad’s novel criticizes white men and imperialism and Said sees is as well – “… Marlow unsettles the reader’s sense not only of the very idea of empire but of something more basic, reality itself. For if Conrad can show that all human activity depends on controlling a radically unstable reality to which words approximate only by will or convention, the same is true of empire, of venerating the idea, and so forth.

Heart of Darkness is a story that is split up in three parts and is narrated by the protagonist Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to five men that were all on the boat, journeying up the Congo River into the heart of Africa. As Marlow is telling his story during their excursion, the men and the reader observe that he is an ivory trader and he works with Kurtz, however during the story the reader can notice the racism. However, this created the suspense to the readers because Joseph Conrad showed the “darkness” that was displayed between London and Africa. Also, throughout this story the reader can experience many moods and emotions such as good and evil, fear, and power. The mood is dark, gloomy, and very evil. Throughout, the novel the

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.

The protagonist Marlow believes that: “the mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future” (109). The basis of Heart of Darkness is Marlow's physical journey up the congo river to meet Kurtz. The main character Marlow goes through many physical and psycological changes from the beginning to the end of the story. In the beginning, Marlow is fairly innocent as he goes up the river, he gets closer and closer to Kurtz, and he moves closer and closer he learns more and more about the hearts of men and the darkness. When he eventually reaches Kurtz, Marlow's perception is obstructed and he physically and psychologically, does not know where he is.

Both Kingsolver and Conrad use similar story construction and point of view in these texts. The truly pivotal characters in each text, rather than the narrators, are the mostly unspoken antagonists of the story. In Heart of Darkness, the story is centered on Kurtz and his actions involving the Congo. The true focus of the novella lies not with Marlow, but rather Conrad uses Marlow as a medium in order to examine Kurtz. In the novella, Marlow is an outside observer. The story follows Marlow’s ever-changing perception of Kurtz in order to characterize the unseen character. When Marlow first learns of Kurtz, he is told that he is “a remarkable person…a prodigy” (Conrad 69), but as the story progresses, both Marlow and the reader delve into Kurtz’s true character and discover a tyrant of imperialism.

‘Heart of Darkness’ includes four-month of Conrad in Congo, and his command of a Congo River steamboat. Conrad experienced and saw the violence made by the European explorers and traders in Congo. He created the embodiment of European imperialism in his character, Kurtz. The novel tell the story of Marlow, a seamen who undertakes his own journey into the African Jungle to find the European trader, Kurtz.

In Heart of Darkness, Charlie Marlow’s melancholy tone sets the mood for severity of the abhorrent occurrences he witnessed while in the interior of the Congo Free State, and as the intermediate narrator, is able to re-explore this dreadful experience during his narration, that allows him to represent his thoughts and gives reader’s direct access to his conscious. As the central consciousness of the novella, Marlow is first presented directly by our anonymous first person narrator (a passenger on the ship), but because of the story’s interweaving plot structure, a flashback occurs and Marlow steps in as the narrator, and it becomes our job as readers to understand Marlow through his actions as he himself analyzes his inner-self. Conrad follows

     Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novel about a man named Marlow and his journey into the depths of the African Congo. Marlow is in search of a man named Kurtz, an ivory trader. Though Marlow?s physical journey seems rather simple, it takes him further into his own heart and soul than into the Congo. The setting, symbols and characters each contain light and dark images, these images shape the central theme of the novel.

The African natives in the novella are represented as “nigger”, “cannibals”, “criminals”, and “savages”. European colonizers see the black men as subordinate species, and murder them without fear of admonishment. The novel presents an account of imperialism as it illustrates the white men’s belief that they can arrive into an inhabited country and pillage to its heart content. Kurtz, after many years in the jungle, is presented as a man who has gone mad with power and greed. Conrad used the cruelty acts to extend his criticism of colonialism all the way back to its corrupt

Conrad’s plot and summary do not only strengthen his novel but also attracts a lot of people to his work. The book presents us to Marlow who apparently is the main narrator of what is covered in “heart of darkness” by Conrad. With the quest to navigate the fascinating Congo River he had seen on a map, Marlow gets help from his aunt and embarks on a journey to the great Congo River. With numerous encounters with the natives and other traders from the west who are in the ivory trade, Marlow’s character is put to the light for the reader. The plot displays the narrator’s character using three simple perspectives from the physical journey, space and time journey and from the perspective of self (Conrad, p.5).

In the Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad suggests that when removed from civilization and unrestrained, people succumb to the evil in human nature and regress into savagery. Charlie Marlow, the protagonist of the story, ventures out into the depths of Africa, eager to explore its unknown territories. Despite hoping for success, Marlow learns of the horrors that lie behind the curtain of civilization. Throughout the novel, the author presents this main idea with certain elements of fiction. A key scene that portrays the theme of the story occurs when Marlow follows Kurtz’s path from his steamboat into the wilderness. Kurtz, who represents the result of unchecked ambitions, recalls his experience in the wilderness, and readers learn of his character prior to his downfall. This scene displays the main idea using the author’s style, the point of view, and the characterization of Kurtz.

It seems while on the river and in the Congo people begin to change. When Marlow first arrived, one of his first sights was the natives walking around chained together at the neck, that was his first indication that he is not where he thought he was going. (MLA CITE?). Later in the novel, Marlow starts to figure out that just because Kurtz bringing he most ivory does not mean that he is so great. Kurtz is fully corrupt, he has conformed to the society that surrounds him, he has lied and cheated his way into success and pulled many people into his mischievous plan. Marlow starts to discover Kurtz's true character once he is on the boat taking Kurtz back to Europe and he realizes that Kurtz is not the man he used to be. Kurtz had become so used to the society that he was in and the decisions that he was making

Throughout Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, some major themes are oblivion as well as this idea of natural power. In the novel, Marlow recollects his time travelling up the Congo River in search of the famous ivory trader, Mr. Kurtz. During the novel, Marlow often describes the natural terrain as a king, ruling over the land. This idea of natural power helps the reader clear up the oblivion surrounding the jungle because the natural power talks of a simpler time, one that Marlow understands. The Congo River often represents this simpler time, whereas the Thames River, in London, represents a much more complex period of time, one where people have taken control of the power. The role of the rivers throughout the text helps elaborate on the themes of oblivion and power and when Marlow describes his travels down the Congo River, he shows how little he actually knows while on his travels.

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.