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literary analysis of heart of darkness
literary analysis of heart of darkness
themes in joseph conrad's heart of darkness
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Heart of Darkness
The dark thoughts, which are usually ignored and not allowed to be brought up in conversation, are pushed back into the remote corners of the mind, but have the ability to run free when man is in his most vulnerable state. Sleep, the unconscious. It is in dreams where twisted stories of malevolence and horror take place. The soul’s core is full of sin from the first minute man is born. Even Adam, the original man, who was born when the earth began its timeline, has sin running through his blood. He was God’s first human creation, but destined to fall into the hands of the devil. Illustrated through chiaroscuro, every man has a heart of darkness that is drowned out by the light of civilization. However, when removed from civilization, the raw evil of untamed lifestyles within his soul will be released. Once the innate evil is released, it has the opportunity to grow stronger, and perhaps, more powerful than reason.
By means of delayed decoding, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness advances and withdrawals as in a succession of long dark waves borne by an incoming tide. It is a night journey into the unconscious and confrontation of an entity within the self. The true night journey can occur only in sleep or in a waking dream of a profoundly intuitive mind. The Heart of Darkness recaptures the past of one man who chose to travel inside himself. The narrative of this extremely ambiguous novella is “trying to tell [the reader] a dream- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation” (pg. 95). Each man’s case is his own, his presence is made up of his past, which
cannot be shared.
Marlow experiences the terror of journeying into the territory of his heart because what ...
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...e presumption of their resting grounds are now “intruders whose knowledge of life was to [Marlow] an irritating
pretense, because [he] felt so sure they could not possibly know the things [he] knew” ( pg. 149) after returning from the heart of darkness. These people want
to look like they live a good life, even though evil pervades every aspect of their being, regardless of the color of skin, for they “are like unto whited sepulchres,
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27). Like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Marlow feels a Buddhist influence from the past, telling him that he must share his elevated wisdom with those, who have been sleep walking through their day to day existence, whose lives have not allowed them the opportunity to travel to such remote corners of the mind.
Marlow is driven by morality and is able to see what is right and wrong; he is not blinded to the truth. The truth that these “civilized men” are destroying countless numbers of people so that they can worship th...
Almost immediately after the start of the passage, the reader is exposed to the prejudices of the white inhibitors. The indigenous people of the area are repeatedly compared to animals, dehumanizing them and depriving them of the common respect that all people deserve, regardless of race or creed. On page 24, Marlow says "A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants." Reinforcing this idea, he lends them other animal-like qualities, calling the sickly ones "creatures" and describing their movements as being "off on all fours...to drink," and even the act of drinking is described as the native having "lapped out of his hand," reminiscent of something a dog would do (28).
The more simple comparison is that between Marlow and a quester. Marlow’s apparent ‘quest’ stems from his childhood interest in maps and exploring the unknown. Though the “...blank spaces on the earth” were later explored, he still took curiosity to the Congo River. He decided he wanted to take a steamboat for trade on it, almost impulsively as he described, “[t]he snake had charmed me”. Being younger and with
Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams et al. 6th ed. vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993. 1759-1817.
Marlow is the raconteur of Heart of Darkness, and therefore is one of the more crucial characters within the plot. He embodies the willingness to be valiant, resilient, and gallant, while similarly seeming to be cautiously revolutionary. He is, seemingly the epitome of bravery, going into the jungle. Marlow’s voyage is, in essence, a “night journey into the unconscious, the confrontation with an entity within the self” (Guerard 38). The ominous coast is an allegory for the idea of the unconscious mind. “Watching a coast as it slips by the ship […] there it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering” (1...
A short novel centering around a multitude of esoteric themes and motifs, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad details how an exploration and colonization expedition is the climactic turning point in a young sailor’s life. The protagonist Charlie Marlow takes an introspective journey as he remembers the horrors he witnessed while working for an English trading company. Though all the themes in the book are relevant in their own ways, the most prevalent is the presence of an intense darkness within the world. There are many types of darkness the main character describes, such as the physical blackness of the jungle, the helplessness of Kurtz in his final moments, and the darkness that Marlow sees everywhere he looks.
Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness.” Norton Anthology of British Literature. 7th Edition. Vol. B. Ed. M. H. Abrams, et. al. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
Marlow’s thoughts are so consumed by Kurtz, that he is built up to be much more of a man than he truly is. In turn, Marlow is setting himself up for a let down. He says at one point, “I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time...the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home...towards his empty and desolate station”(P.32). When Marlow reaches Kurtz’s station, he begins to become disillusioned. He begins to hear about, and even see, the acts that Kurtz is committing, and becomes afraid of him. He sees in Kurtz, what he could become, and wants nothing to do with it. He does not want people to know he has any type of relationship with him, and says in response to the Russian, “I suppose that it had not occurred to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine.” (P.59). It is at this point that he begins to discover the darkness in his heart.
Later, Marlow encounters cannibals who are characterized by restraint. They outnumber the whites “thirty to five” and were “big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences.” Marlow describes them as being utterly capable of simply overpowering and consuming the Europeans. He even considers that he would have as soon expected such restraint fro...
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
Throughout his journey, Marlow discovers that morals as subjective. Marlow is able to make this realization after witnessing
The most basic myth of the Buddha's enlightenment tells of a prince, Sidhartha, who grows up entirely sheltered and content until he finally beholds suffering. Yet, at this same time, he sees an enlightened monk who radiates peace and joy. Sidhartha can not comprehend how in a world with such suffering one could be so happy, and so he leaves home to search for understanding. Marlow, on the other hand, as " 'a little chap... had a passion for maps' " (21). He departs for no better reason than to see wh...
* Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, M.H. Abrams, general editor. (London: W.W. Norton, 1962, 2000)
The imagery, like that of Marlow being able to “see the cage of [the native’s] ribs all astir; the bones of his arm waving”, does not reveal how Marlow reacts to such a traumatic sight and leaves readers to form their own opinions on both what Marlow thinks and their initial impressions (Conrad). Marlow’s actions are also questionable and lack the moral consequence assumed when pursuing an action, which demonstrates that for much of the novel, Marlow is untrustworthy and even fictitious at times, like, when he falsifies Kurtz’s last words “I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?’ The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The horror! The horror!’ ‘His last word—to live with,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!’ ‘I pulled myself together and spoke slowly. ‘The last word he pronounced was—your name,’” (Conrad). By having an unreliable narrator, Conrad demonstrates that by using someone else’s impressions, we are not fully given a chance to understand for ourselves and can only do so when we are in complete isolation from Marlow’s own
Marlow feels that there is a taint of death and a flavor of mortality in lies,