Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad

Introduction

In “Heart of Darkness” Joseph Conrad puts a very complex and diverse theme for the readers at the same time. He used the metaphysical themes in his novel to describe colonial Africa’s historical setting, along with the concern of gender, nationality, and race. Due to the great fictional meaning of the Heart of Darkness, it earned great fame in the entire world. The author uses the main theme of the hypocrisy of imperialism, the irrationality of evil, and the madness that was the result of imperialism (Brantlinger, 4363-3856).

Discussion

The “Heart of Darkness” is a novella means it is between a novel and a short story in both scope and length. The author uses the genre of colonial literature, frame story, symbolism, adventure tale, and even romance in its insistence on the supernatural and heroism. The author uses the English language for his novella and for defining the characters. The author uses two narrators in this short story, one is the Marlow that shows the character of the author itself, and in the novella Marlow is a middle-aged ship’s captain (Sayeau, 20-33). The other one is the passenger on that pleasure ship, whose captain is Marlow.

The author uses the “Heart of Darkness” to refer to imperialism as, at that time, Europeans were busy expanding their colonizes, and moreover, they wanted to capture the land. The term imperialism refers to an action by which a state extends its power by acquiring the inhabited terrain through diplomacy or military forces. Moreover, the author’s novella can be determined as illustrating racism due to the usage of the word primitive or savages instead of referring to the first person for the Congolese. The same words are being used in the story, which shows that the Europeans considered themselves superior, and they considered the Africans as natives and wanted to turn them into a civilized person. The author uses the tone of Ambivalent in his novella, as Marlow is revolted by the cruelty of the company and horrified due to Kurtz’s disintegration, and the author also claims that any person would be drawn in the same manner.

The setting of the story is in the latter part of the nineteenth century, most probably between 1876 and 1892. In the novella, Marlow is telling the story on the Thames River outside London, and the main events of the story take place at the company office in Brussels, in the Congo and in Belgian territory. The author uses a different image of Kurtz and Marlow to show the main conflict of civilized Europeans and their inducement to unrestraint morality as they left the context of European society. The author expresses the corrupt ideology of the Western societies for their pretending to help the Africans who are less privileged to improve their living standards (David, 1165-1183). However, on the dark side, their interest was not to get those African living standards. Instead, they had their own personal values and interests in that effort. The author called the Europeans criminals and livid or outraged laws, and it was shown how the bursting shells came towards them from over the sea.

The author presented the impression of the whites as they wanted the land instead of only colonizing and wanted to treat the Africans as slaves, and they beat the slaves, which is quite trivial because of how weak all of them were (Said, 5-19). Furthermore, the author expresses the perspective of whites and how they want to engage themselves in power and want to dominate all the other nations.

Additionally, the author says that how the whites are capable of the exploitation of the blacks by their impression of superiority. The author also states the fact of superiority, how the whites believed that they were a supreme race among every other race of the world, and how they believed that civilizing the Congolese meant the savage was their responsibility. Besides, the author presented himself as a Marlow character in this story. He tells how he learned about imperialism, as men always dreamed of expanding their territory. Conrad shows the theme of white imperialism through his visit to Congo. Also, Conrad speaks about the British conquest n the ancient Romans. They captured the areas by using brute force (Hawkins, 286-299). He referred to this conquest as the “robbery with violence,” which demonstrates the British conquest and how they murdered on a larger scale.

The author, as a character Marlow in the story, demonstrates the evil that negative imperialism has caused and declares this as unnecessary. As Marlow states about the mission of heavenly civilizing in the novella, his intentions were in favor of the Africans, as he wants Africa to progress and advance in life. Also, Marlow, in the novella, states that he is phony in a foreign land, but besides that, he wants to stick to his true moral values. As he states “their enemies” in the novella, he talks about the reality of Europe and its citizens. Moreover, as Marlow travels towards the outer station in the story, he comes to view some serious cruelty and slavery, which shows the imperialism and the racism of the citizens by the Belgians. Imperialism is attached to slavery, due to which this slavery gives the idea of imperialism in the story.

Conclusion

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness shows in what way the European deliberated themselves the greater among all the other races of the world and how they reflected themselves as more cultured than others at that time. While on the other hand, the Africans were considered primitive and inferior. In addition, the Story demonstrates that European intentions were not only colonialized the African areas but wanted to capture their land too. The main purpose of this colonization of Africa was not to make them civilized, but rather, European interest was their land, and then they made them their slaves. Europeans believed that the Africans had no comparison for them, as they were more civilized and had a better appearance than the Africans, which they think makes them superior.

Works Cited

Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British literature and imperialism, 1830–1914. Cornell University Press, 1990.

Sayeau, Michael. “Work, Unemployment, and the Exhaustion of Fiction in” Heart of Darkness”.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 39. No. 3. Duke University Press, 2006.

David, Paul A., and Bronwyn H. Hall. “Heart of Darkness: modeling public-private funding interactions inside the R&D black box.” Research Policy 29.9 (2000): 1165-1183.

Brantlinger, Patrick. “Heart of Darkness”:” Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?.” Criticism 27.4 (1985): 363-385.

Hawkins, Hunt. “Conrad’s Critique of Imperialism in Heart of Darkness.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (1979): 286-299.

Said, Edward W. “Two Visions in Heart of Darkness.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations (2008): 5-19.