Two Themes in Heart Of Darkness

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Two Themes in Heart Of Darkness

There are many themes that run through the novel Heart of Darkness.

There are however two main and significant ones. These are the theme of

restraint and man's journey into self.

The importance of restraint is stressed throughout Heart of

Darkness. In the novel Marlow is saved by restraint, while Kurtz is doomed

by his lack of it.

Marlow felt different about Africa before he went, because the

colonization of the Congo had "an idea at the back of it." Despite an

uneasiness, he assumed that restraint would operate there. He soon reaches

the Company station and receives his first shock, everything there seems

meaningless. He sees no evidence here of that "devotion to efficiency"

that makes the idea work. In the middle of this, Marlow meets a "miracle".

The chief accountant has the restraint that it takes to get the job done.

He keeps up his apearance and his books are in "apple-pie order." Marlow

respects this fellow because he has a backbone.

"The cannibals some of those ignorant millions, are almost totally

characterized by restraint." They outnumber the whites "thirty to five"

and could easily fill their starving bellies. Marlow "would have as soon

expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a

battlefield." The cannibals action is "one of those human secrets that

baffle probability." This helps Marlow keep his restraint, for if the

natives can possess this quality Marlow feels he certainly can.

Kurtz is the essence of the lack of restraint Marlow sees

everywhere. Kurtz has "kicked himself loose from the earth." "He owes no

allegiance to anything except those animal powers, those various lusts,

those unpermitted aspirations lurking in the darkness of his inner station.

Marlow also responds to these dark callings, and he almost becomes their

captive. He confuses the beat of the drum (the call to man's primitive

side) with his own heartbeat, and is pleased. Yet he does not slip over

the edge as Kurtz does. Marlow keeps to the track. When he is confronted

with the ultimate evil where a man "must fall back on (his) own innate

strength, upon (his) own capacity for faithfulness," he is able to do so,

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