Distilling the Darkness
In analysis of Heart of Darkness, much is made of Conrad’s intentions in telling his tale. People search for a moral lesson, a strict social commentary, an absolution for the evil of the dark jungle. It isn’t there, and that’s not the point.
In works of philosophy (like The Republic), or works of political theory (like
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific), or works of natural science (like The Origin of
Species), this sifting of important and clear ideas from the mess and confusion of experience is what writers like Plato, Darwin, or Engels are doing. They experience the world in all its messy confusion, and then they attempt to abstract from the mess, by careful selection, a system of ordering principles which other people can comprehend and make use of. In more figurative words, they are trying to shed the light of intelligence upon the darkness of experience.
As, primarily, students and teachers, we naturally look for the conveyance of such ideas in any material we encounter. We miss that books like Heart of Darkness are fundamentally different in intent and we continue searching for that lesson from which to make a rational response to the story.
Even literary professionals seem often to fall into the error of neglecting or misunderstanding the novelist's purpose. Consider, for example, the criticism leveled against Heart of Darkness by Paul O'Prey in his introduction to the Penguin edition.
He writes:
“It is an irony that the ‘failures’ of Marlow and Kurtz are paralleled by a corresponding failure of Conrad's technique--brilliant though it is--as the vast abstract darkness he imagines exceeds his capacity to analyze and dramatize it, and the very inability to portray the story's central subject, the ‘unimaginable’, the
‘impenetrable’ (evil, emptiness, mystery or whatever) becomes a central theme.”
Mr. O'Prey's sentence is somewhat impenetrable itself, but his complaint is that
Conrad wants to evoke an abstract notion of darkness, but he doesn't manage to adequately define it or analyze it. He then goes on to quote, approvingly, another critic,
James Guetti, who complains that Marlow “never gets below the surface,” and is “denied the final self-knowledge that Kurtz had.”
In other words, according to Mr. O'Prey and Mr. Guetti, Conrad has somehow failed in his attempt to delineate the horror that is Kurtz's final vision, failed to penetrate the darkness that Marlow evokes, failed to give a precise name and shape to the dark and tragic human condition. Mr. O'Prey and Mr. Guetti want, as all good academics want, clarity, definition, intellectual coherence, order, a well-stated and well-argued thesis; they
basic charge of this criticism can be stated in the words of a recent critic,
The message or theme in the book is that greed will never benefit you in any way but will instead hurt you. Kurtz was overwhelmed by his greed to conquer and take what was most precious to him, ivory. His greed for ivory caused him to become ill and mad. His greed was what caused his “dark heart.” The book states “He died as he lived,” which was ironically true due to the fact that the character stating this was oblivious to how Kurtz really did live out his
Kurtz does not have to adapt to his environment, instead the environment adapted onto him, creating an evil and darker twin. He allows his self-serving greed to control him leading him to his dissolution. It is his imperialistic actions that allowed him to fixate over materialistic things. His obsession with wealth and power leads him to destroy the system he was preaching to the natives. His corruption is made evident as he uses the power he gains to create disorder, leading him to the darkness causing his dissolution.
3. Kurtz, who is not the protagonist or antagonist is a very significant character in the book as Marlow and Kurtz essentially form a team as the novel progresses. He is the chief of the Inner Station and Marlow basically follows him. Kurtz is a man of many talents (he is a talented musician and painter). His abilities are nothing without his charisma and his ability to lead. Kurtz is a man who understands the power of words, and his writings present a complexity that obscures their horrifying message (his writings are often hard to understand, as they are complex in structure, often hiding the morbid message behind them). Although he remains a “puzzle,” e...
...arkness is coming to an end, Kurtz and Marlow are heading back to civilization in England from the Congo. Kurtz is in rough shape. He is mentally and physically exhausted, slowly dying on the boat. Once it is understood that he is going to die, he cries out “The horror! The horror!” The horror that Kurtz is referring to is everything that he has witnessed and done with his life while he was in the Congo. These two words repeated sum up his experiences that we see from Marlow’s perspective. Kurtz’s demise was a product of everything that he had done in the Congo with the company. In the end, all of his hard work was not even worth it. He died and left all of his fortune in the Congo, where he had no one to leave it all to. Kurtz’s reflections on the way he lived his life are essentially all being brought back to him in his final moments as he yells out “the horror!”
Joseph Conrad uses the literary device of foreshadowing in his work, Heart of Darkness, to set the mood and set the stage for his ironic plot to unfold. The foretelling begins when Marlow, the novel’s main character, narrates a brief reflection “… of very old times, when Romans first came here” to carry out their conquest of England, suggesting that this Roman conquest was similar to the Belgian efforts to colonize Africa (p. 1635). Conrad, a sailor at the young age of seventeen, tells his story through the character of Marlow who recounts the adventures during his quest to retrieve the bones of a murdered sailor. Marlow’s experiences are much like the Roman’s conquest as they both faced the darkness of a treacherous path, overrun terrain, untamed natives, and personal self-doubt.
The novel, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is literally about Marlow’s journey into the Belgian Congo, but symbolically about the discovery of his heart and soul during his journey, only to find that it is consumed by darkness. He realizes that the man he admired and respected most, is really demonic and that he may be just like him. He is able to come to this realization however, before it takes the best of him.
Vague Descriptions in Heart of Darkness. A dark, unfamiliar setting and a suspenseful plot give Heart of Darkness the characteristics of a good novel, but what really stands out is Conrad's writing. The story is full of vague imagery and descriptions that the reader must contemplate in order to fully understand. Writing so vividly was an impressive feat for Conrad, who was actually not a native English speaker.
Joseph Conrad created a character called Marlow. Marlow narrates the journey that he was taking. However, it is through this journey that the entire story of Heart of Darkness is narrated to us. This book is not entirely a fictitious story because the reader partly gets to know the authors own experiences. This book mainly talks about colonization and is often taken as a voice against colonization. However, the book is on many levels a story about ambiguity because of the words used, the incidents, narration and the mixed feeling of Marlow.
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.
Heart of Darkness is a kind of little world unto itself. The reader of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness should take the time to consider this work from a psychological point of view. There are, after all, an awful lot of heads and skulls in the book, and Conrad goes out of his way to suggest that in some sense Marlow's journey is like a dream or a return to our primitive past--an exploration of the dark recesses of the human mind.
Throughout Chapter II of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow goes on a long voyage to gain the guidance of the all-knowing, enlightened ivory trader named Kurtz. Marlow, in the tumultuous environment of the African jungle, challenges the human condition.
When writers write, it is often to convey a deeper meaning or truth to it readers. With this in mind, we should first take the book at face value then analysis the story to see the point that the writer revels. In The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad does this very well. The story goes from what we originally thought as just a story of a journey into Africa to a story of indeed a journey to the hearts of men. Conrad’s truth in The Heart of Darkness is multi-layered in dealing with imperialism and colonialism, but leads us to a critique of humanity as a whole. The biggest issue that Conrad shows in this book, is his philosophy of the dark nature of man. This paper will explore the evidence for the nature of man theory and then look at the proposed solution subtlety given by Conrad.
Upon meeting Kurtz’s wife, Marlow decides to lie to her, attempting to protect her from the darkness. As Kurtz’s fiancé begs for Marlow to repeat Kurtz’s last words, Marlow lies: “The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due…but I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether…” (Conrad 72). Marlow lies to Kurtz’s fiancé in an attempt to protect her from the darkness. After witnessing the darkness of imperialism, Marlow realizes heaven does not fall for the darkness of mankind, so it will not fall for a lie. Upon this realization, Marlow becomes aware of the darkness not only in the jungle, but also back home. As Marlow completes his story, his lie to Kurtz’s fiancé causes Marlow to realize the unavoidable darkness for humanity. After completing his story, Marlow looks up, only to understand how unavoidable darkness really is: “The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness” (Conrad 72). As a result of telling his story, Marlow realizes the darkness of mankind is not only a result of imperialism, but also a result of existence. Lying to Kurtz’s fiancé completes Marlow’s realization of
His first statement is that “Literary criticism is a description and evaluation of its object” (Brooks 19). The literary critic reports on the work that he is criticizing and picks out the meaning that he deems important, which might be different from what the next critic would pick out. To describe the work it is therefore already a subjective exercise, such as in Doctor Faustus, in the A-version of the text, some people ...