The Reality Of Evil Within Us

Joseph Conrad's short novel Heart of Darkness (first published in 1902) is undoubtedly critically acclaimed, moreover, it is considered to be one of the greatest English novels. Conrad, who is of Polish ancestry, is as well considered to be an outstanding storyteller and a great stylist of modern fiction (Achebe 2). Even though this novel was written more than hundred years ago, it still draws many people's attention. The plot of the novel revolves around the main character, Marlow, and his journey to the heart of Africa (the Congo River). Marlow accepts to work as a steamship captain for a Belgian ivory-trade company and seeks to meet Kurtz, another important character in the novel whom many people admired, including, to a point, Marlow. On

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.

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness portrays an inappropriate image of Africa that is dark, mysterious, and barbaric. Marlow thinks of Africa as a mystery, in fact on his journey towards Africa, he described it as the darkest places on earth. Marlow often uses the phrase, “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” (40), to depict his progress on the Congo with a feeling of unknown coming towards him. The anonymous continent of Africa, a land where history was preserved. Marlow describes his journey similar to traveling in a time machine; “Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world when vegetation rioted on the earth and the trees were kings”(42). Marlow describes the river while leaving Congo; “The brown

Good and Evil were currently planning on going to war, fighting with all their might. This happened frequently, located at the center of a person’s character- the heart and soul. The armies fought countless battles and this one was no exception. The war would be named later, with all the human’s friends repeating the gruesome details of the battle. The human would be known and categorized by this and whether Good or Evil prevailed in his heart.

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinion.” We all have opinions on things that are not an actual reflection of the reality. We have opinions that are different than what is real. Miss Adela Strangeworth is a 71-year old woman with blue eyes and pretty little dimples. She lives in an ancestral house where her parents and grandparents lived. She often thought that the town belonged to her since her grandfather built the first house on the Pleasant Street. She knew everyone in the town and was highly respected. Also, she was very famous for her roses that were planted around her house, but she never gave any of her roses away. Through her personal and

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.

Does the problem of evil pose a challenge for theists and the existence of God? The problem of evil argues that there is so much suffering in the world that an all-good and all powerful God would not allow such suffering to exist. Therefore, a God with those characteristics does not exist. Unless the suffering is necessary for an adequate reason. Some people argue that suffering is necessary for there to be good and for us to able to understand what good is. In this paper, I will argue that suffering does not need to exist in order for good to exist, because the existence of good does not depend on suffering. I will then argue that good and suffering are not logical opposites. Finally, I will conclude that since evil is not justified, then the God that we defined does not exist.

The problem of evil is the notion that, how can an all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God exists when evil seems to exist also. The problem of evil also gives way to the notion that if hell exists then God must be evil for sending anyone there. I believe both of these ideas that God can exist while there is evil and God is not evil for sending anyone to hell. I believe hell exists in light of the idea that God is holy and just. The larger is how anyone can go to heaven. I will try to answer the problem of evil with regards to the problem of heaven and hell.

If we are living in a world that was created by a perfect being, why are there imperfect aspects? If this ultimate being or creator (I will say God for purpose of this paper) is fundamentally good and moral, and is even unable to create evil, then how did evil come to be in the life we are living? According to the problem of evil, if there is a God, there is no evil. But because there is evil in the world, the conclusion can be drawn that there is no God (Sober). At first glance, this argument is perfectly logical. However, this claim may be reversed. For if one is indicating that there is evil in this world, they are believing that there has been a “line” drawn somewhere to separate the good and the bad. This “line” is known by many, if I dare say all, yet nobody actually determined what was considered bad. The reversal of the problem of evil can lead to the argument of God and evil both existing in the same world. But, it seems as though if there were a perfect God, there would be no evil in the world, as He would not be able to create it or He would be moral enough to see it happening and stop it. Can we really live in a world that contains evil, which was created by a perfect God that is not capable of creating evil/capable of stopping it? This question may even lead into the following question, assuming that God and evil do exist together: if there is a God, why is there (allowed) evil in the world? However, before we are even able to begin to understand why there is

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 story about a man named Marlow and his Journey into the African Congo. By reading the novel and understanding all the imagery Conrad has inserted, we can get a better understanding of the

A reason that ascriptions of perverse can be particularly injurious or dangerous is that it isn 't always visible what companions mean when they use the term ‘evil.’ As Eve Garrard clown it “the general privacy encompassment the term constrain some thinkers very backward to appeal to the consideration of evil”(Garrard 2002, 322). For instance, some people believe that to say that someone complete an bad deed involved that that person execute out of malice (see e.g., Kekes 2005), while others believe that evildoing can event from many different sorts of spur, even admirable motivation (see e.g., Card 2002). Given this ambiguity, it might be unclear whether an assignment of wicked attributes despicable psychological attributes to an

One contemporary view of evil action is defined by the actor who derives pleasure from his evildoing. It is important to note that sadism is a key factor in defining evil, but even when violence is not sadistic, the act can still be evil. For example, most of the soldiers that partook in the My Lai killings were not sadistic; they were following orders, yet, the murders of innocent Vietnamese civilians are still considered evil. Another contemporary view of evil action is foreseeable harm. This differs from intent because intention is not always to cause suffering, and as Gill puts it, “Often, despicable harm is a “means to an end” – not “the ultimate purpose”. The shortcoming to this definition is, as Claudia Card is noted believing, analyzing the perpetrators motives for causing harm takes focus away from alleviation of the suffering. Yet another definition of an evil act is genuine ignorance that causes harm. The example given by Calder is from Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorion Gray; in this case, the act of harm is excusable because of its accidental

The conception of evil is an inevitable topic that has been argued for centuries and will be for more to come. But what is immorality? Friedriche Nietzche believed that turpitude is solely dependent on one’s own personal perception and is stimulated by one’s desires. In British Literature we are commonly introduced to characters that have developed from foulness as an outcome of obtaining what they want. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “man is naturally good” (Notes); Humans have no darkness within themselves in their natural state, but are corrupted by depravity in the world (Notes). Evil is obviously prevalent throughout society, as a result human beings derive malevolent traits throughout their life based on their experiences and circumstance. Hobbes advocated the pessimistic viewpoint on human nature and attributed moral vileness with humans’ primitive instincts. The characters of Macbeth, Grendel, and the Dragon support the different theories of Nietzche, Rousseau, and Hobbes by describing the nature of turpitude and the motives behind its foundation.

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.