| Term Paper Title | An Analysis Of Heart Of Darkness |
| # of Words | 1260 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 5.04 |
An Analysis of "Heart of Darkness"
Joseph Conrad, in his long-short story, "Heart of Darkness," tells the tale
of two mens' realization of the hidden, dark, evil side of themselves. Marlow,
the "second" narrator of the framed narrative, embarked upon a spiritual
adventure on which he witnessed firsthand the wicked potential in everyone. On
his journey into the dark, forbidden Congo, the "heart of darkness," so to speak,
Marlow encountered Kurtz, a "remarkable man" and "universal genius," who had
made himself a god in the eyes of the natives over whom he had an imperceptible
power. These two men were, in a sense, images of each other: Marlow was what
Kurtz may have been, and Kurtz was what Marlow may have become.
Like a jewel, "Heart of Darkness" has many facets. From one view it is an
exposure of Belgian methods in the Congo, which at least for a good part of the
way sticks closely to Conrad's own experience. Typically, however, the
adventure is related to a larger view of human affairs. Marlow told the story
one evening on a yacht in the Thames estuary as darkness fell, reminding his
audience that exploitation of one group by another was not new in history. They
were anchored in the river, where ships went out to darkest Africa. Yet, as
lately as Roman times, London's own river led, like the Congo, into a barbarous
hinterland where the Romans went to make their profits. Soon darkness fell over
London, while the ships that bore "civilization" to remote parts appeared out of
the dark, carrying darkness with them, different only in kind to the darkness
they encounter.
These thoughts and feelings were merely part of the tale, for Conrad had a
more personal story to tell, about a single man who went so far from
civilization that its restraints no longer mattered to him. Exposed to the
unfamiliar emotional and physical demands of the African wilderness, free to do
exactly as he chose, Kurtz plunged into horrible orgies of which human sacrifice
and cannibalism seemed to have formed a part. These excesses taught him and
Marlow what human nature was actually like: "The horror!" Kurtz gasped before
he died. Marlow's own journey from Belgium to the Congo and thence up the river
then took on the aspect of a man's journey into his own inner depths. Marlow
was saved from the other man's fate not by higher principles or a better
disposition, but merely because he happened to be very busy, and the demands of
work were themselves a discipline. The readers perceive, too, that other white
men on the Congo refrained from such excesses, if they did so, only because they
had lesser, more timorous natures which did not dare to express themselves
completely. Marlow felt that he had taken the lid off something horrible in the
very depths of man which he could not explain when he returned to the world
where basic instincts had been carefully smoothed over. Faced by a crisis, he
even denied what he had seen to Kurtz's Intended, though he was appalled by his
lie as bringing with it a betrayal of truth which was essentially a kind of
death.
In "Heart of Darkness" the sense of human waste that pervaded the story was
best unfolded in the ivory itself. It was an object for the rich - in
decorations, for piano keys and billiard balls - hardly a necessary item for
survival, or even for comfortable living. In a way, it was evil, a social
luxury , an appurtenance to which people had become accustomed; and it was for
evil, for appurtenances, that the Congo was plundered and untold numbers of
natives were beaten and slaughtered brutally or casually. This view of evil was
part of Marlow's conception; a utilitarian object like copper or iron would have
had its own reason for being. Kurtz's evil propensities (he collected natives'
heads, he sought the "evil" ivory) made him so contemptuous of individual lives...Read entire document
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