Comparison Of Marlow And Kurtz In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is about a man named Marlow telling his shipmates about an expedition he took to the Congo to meet with an ivory trader named Kurtz. During the journey, Marlow faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and comes back to England a changed man. This difference in Marlow is symbolic, and Conrad uses Marlow’s, and later, Kurtz’s, surroundings to show how their morality has rotted away, leaving with only a shell of their former selves after returning from Africa.

Conrad uses the culture of the African tribes to show how Marlow and Kurtz’s humanity has withered away. Victorian-era England was a very proper time, with literature and hygiene being some of the most important aspects of everyday life. However, the

When Marlow first arrives in Africa, he says “the smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur”, Marlow makes a point to describe the jungle as dark and mysterious, symbolizing the dark nature of humanity and the brutality to come during the expedition (525). However, Marlow previously described London in a similar way, saying that it has“A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on Earth.”, showing that even though England seems like a much more proper place than the dark jungles of the Congo, there is still a darkness lurking that cannot be completely eradicated that is within all of us, no matter how much more civilized they appear to be than they actually