The Landscape In Heart Of Darkness And Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

Cormac McCarthy, in his seventh novel, delves into the realm of a post-apocalyptic era in which a father and son journey to survive. McCarthy is known for his dark writing style and vivid imagery in his writings. He uses these to develop the characters and the themes of his novels. In his bestselling novel The Road, McCarthy uses this imagery and dark writing style to develop the characters of the father and son, their struggle to survive, and the themes of morality, isolation, and love.

Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, describes a life-altering journey that the protagonist, Marlow, experiences in the African Congo.  The story explores the historical period of colonialism in Africa to exemplify Marlow's struggles.  Marlow, like other Europeans of his time, is brought up to believe certain things about colonialism, but his views change as he experiences colonialism first hand. This essay will explore Marlow's view of colonialism, which is shaped through his experiences and also from his relation to Kurtz.  Marlow's understanding of Kurtz's experiences show him the effects colonialism can have on a man's soul.

Cormack McCarthy’s novel, The Road, is set in a post apocalyptic world, where humanity is struggling to survive. Through his simplistic writing style and powerful symbolism, McCarthy tells a story about the human condition as well as what it truly means to be human. Though it is set in a wasteland this novel still manages to project hope through the love of a boy and his father. The following passages are quotes that spoke to me stylistically or symbolically while I was reading.

The unknown and uncharted topography of the African continent first beckoned Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, into its depths in his boyhood: “Now, when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration” (Conrad, 5). When Marlow was grown and Africa was no longer a blank space on the map, but rather “a place of darkness,” there was still one river there that drew him especially, “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land” (Conrad, 5-6). This same deep place that had seduced Conrad’s ivory hunting Kurtz into the horrors of its savage embrace had, in 1890, lured Conrad himself into adventure that turned him from sailor to writer (Smith, 25) and severely effected his health for the rest of his life (Conrad,v). As the voyage up the Congo proved fateful for the development of Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, it was equally fateful for Conrad’s individuation, as he reflects in his letters “Before the

The book The Road Cormac McCarthy creates a darkened mood when he puts this son and father into a destroyed world. McCarthy created this concept of a world to intensify the meaning of the piece all together. This darkness in the world creates to fear and the isolation for characters to realize that this is how life is from now on. The son in this novel comes to the realization of the world due to certain events within the novel that manipulation the view the son has on the world.

There is an abundance of literature in which characters become caught between colliding cultures. Often, these characters experience a period of growth from their exposure to a culture that’s dissimilar to their own. Such is the case with Marlow, Joseph Conrad’s infamous protagonist from ‘Heart of Darkness’. Marlow sets off to Africa on an ivory conquest and promptly found himself sailing into the heart of the Congo River. Along the way he is faced with disgruntled natives, cannibals, and the ominous and foreboding landscape. Marlow’s response to these tribulations is an introspective one, in which he calls into question his identity. This transcending of his former self renders the work as a whole a

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.

     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.

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.

Marlow tells his shipmates on the boat (the Nelly) that the natives passed him “within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (16). Marlow’s story of his experience exhibits how the Europeans captured the natives and forced them to work; to strip their homeland of its resources and natural beauty. When the Europeans colonize Africa, they do not want to help the African people, but exploit them and put them to work for their own desire of obtaining ivory, rubber, and other resources and goods. As the Europeans imperialize the area, they do not build culture or assist in the development of the Congo region, but break down culture as they enslave the natives and take away their rights, along with stripping the area of resources and natural, earthly beauty, which is conveyed through the cruel physical treatment towards the natives. This treatment is also presented through the literary devices that Conrad decides to use to reveal the experiences of the natives to the

Marlow’s aunt characterizes the Africans as “those ignorant millions,” playing into the civilizing mission ideals of the time, the justification for colonization as spreading civilization to uncivilized people, a typical rationale used for the colonization of Africa. The description that this statement by his aunt causes Marlow to feel uncomfortable illustrates the fact that he does not agree with the civilizing mission sentiments or his aunt’s statement about the “ignorant millions” who are the Africans. Recounting his journey on the Congo River, Marlow describes, “The smell of mud, of primeval mud by Jove, was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek,” (Conrad, 26). The use of the word “primeval”, which means, “of or resembling the oldest ages of history in the world,” suggests that Marlow sees Africa as a place that has been around since the beginning and holds a rich past. The diction of this statement proves that Marlow sees Africa as a place with a vast history in the culture, landscape, and

Marlow says that, "They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-- nothing to boast of."(p.58 Heart of Darkness) . Marlow compares his subsequent tale of colonialism with that of the Roman colonization of Northern Europe and the fascination associated with such a voyage. However, Marlow challenges this viewpoint by illustrating a picture of the horrors of colonialist ventures as we delve deeper into the novel. White Europeans are used as symbols of self-deception, and we find that Marlow sees colonization as "robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as it is very proper for those who tackle darkness."(p.58 Heart of Darkness) This shows how Conrad feels about colonialism through Marlow, because Marlow feels strongly adverse to the actions of the whites in the Congo.

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.

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,

The conquering of a place and its people does not just affect the land and its resources; it also affects those inhabiting it. Marlow describes the Congolese’s spirituality being oppressed, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking is away from those who have a different complexion of slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” (Conrad, 69). Marlow discusses his aunt’s thoughts on the process, “She talked about weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways.” He watches the Europeans using their own laws to control and oppress the people of the Congo, for example, he sees an ugly chain-gang at the first station, which does not seem as though they are criminals. Nevertheless, the European law had decided for the natives, Marlow describes, “like shells from the man-of-war, like an insoluble mystery from the sea. (Conrad, 12). The Congolese appointed to work on his ship, he describes as, still belonging, “to the beginnings of time,” but “as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live. (Conrad, 33-34). Skulls of then men judged by the European law were set on stakes around Kurtz’s