Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, is told in a narrative frame, which is one of the contributions to the complexity of the novel. Conrad employs an unknown narrator who tells the outside picture and Marlo, who tells the inside picture of the novel. Marlow narrates the darkness of the novel as he ventures of into the Congo River as an employee for “The Company” where he collects ivory and meets Kurtz. Upon Marlo’s adventure Conrad employs an extension of incredibly ambiguous, as well as blatantly obvious symbols. Conrad’s usage of symbols exemplifies the pervasiveness of darkness, ambiguity, and a destructive factor of colonization.
The novel begins and ends with a dark ominous setting aboard the Nellie. “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth" (Heart of Darkness pg. 65). Here Marlow underlines England right before he part takes in his tale about the Congo. Next Marlo illustrates the overture of his journey, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (Heart of Darkness pg. 67). This highlights Conrad’s idea that colonizing can be alluring but in the end discrimination takes place, which evidently leads to destruction.
Conrad exploits various symbols to underline the pervasiveness of darkness. The ivory that Marlow collects for “The Company” embodies gluttony for the destructive nature of man kind. “The Company‘s” only concern and hope is to gain endless amounts of ivory, thus leading them to forget about their ethics and their so called plans about civilizing the natives.
Not only does “The Company contribu...
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...’s] soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad. (Heart of Darkness pg. 66). This reveals that Kurtz’s dark side because he no longer is content with himself being a human being or mortal, therefore converting into no longer feels satisfied with just being a mere mortal, so instead transforms himself into a godlike or supreme human. At last, Kurtz's inclination into madness is thoroughly stabilized when he shrieks, "The horror! The horror!"( Heart of Darkness pg. 107).
All in all, Joseph Conrad utilizes symbols to acknowledge and communicate to his audience. Through the complexity of diction and syntax Conrad clearly manifests the pervasiveness of darkness, ambiguity, and the destructive factor of civilization.
Works Cited
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.
Kurtz had seen the true heart of man, and he knew of the evil. In his
The realism movement of the late nineteenth century produced works in literature that were marked by reduced sentimentality and increased objectivity. The goal was to let details tell the story, and remove noticeable bias of the author through scientific and detailed descriptions. While this form of storytelling undoubtedly is most accurate, it creates difficulties for authors to incorporate their themes into the story. This resulted in an increase in symbolism in realist works. The objects and descriptions within the story are the author’s vehicle for displaying the values and themes of the work. Light and darkness are symbols commonly used in literature, and have held specific symbolic meanings for hundreds of years. Simply stated, light commonly symbolizes good, while darkness symbolizes its antithesis - evil. (Cooper) For centuries light vs. dark has been quite possibly the most common symbol in all literature. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad uses detail to create a feeling that transcends the literal text - most notably through his use of light and dark and the inversion of their traditional meanings. The end goal of this inversion is the establishment of the theme that not everything is as it seems. More specifically, Conrad uses detailed imagery of light and dark to show often times white men can be more savage than the natives.
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, symbolism is quite prevalently used to portray the development of the heart of darkness. Conrad used a variety of symbols, including characters, objects, and ideologies.
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.
The novel merely portrays a fictional account of British imperialism in the African jungle, where fiction offers maximum entertainment it lacks in focus. The novel is not a critique of European colonialism and imperialism, but rather a presentation of colonialism and the theme of darkness throughout the novel sheds a negative light on the selfishness of humanity and the system that was taking advantage of the native peoples. In Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, Conrad presents a criticism of British imperial colonization not for the purpose of taking sides, but with aims of bettering the system that was in place during Conrad’s experience in the African Congo. Conrad uses the character of Marlow and his original justification of imperialism so long as it was efficient and unselfish that was later transformed when the reality of colonialism displayed the selfishness of man, to show that colonialism throughout history displaces the needs of the mother country over the colonized peoples and is thus always selfish. Understanding the ideology, practices, and repercussions of imperialism is paramount to interpreting Conrad’s’ viewpoint of imperialism and the colonial experience.... ...
“ The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” (Conrad 65) So stated Marlow as though this was his justification for ravaging the Congo in his search for ivory. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness shows the disparity between the European ideal of civilization and the reality of it as is evidenced by the domination, torture, exploitation and dehumanization of the African population. Heart of Darkness is indicative of the evil and greed in humanity as personified by Kurtz and Marlow.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novel about a man named Marlow and his journey into the depths of the African Congo. Marlow is in search of a man named Kurtz, an ivory trader. Though Marlow?s physical journey seems rather simple, it takes him further into his own heart and soul than into the Congo. The setting, symbols and characters each contain light and dark images, these images shape the central theme of the novel.
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.
A story that uses a decent amount of ambiguity is like reading half of a story, in the sense that the reader can "fill in the blanks". The author leaves several details out in order for the reader to make his or her own interpretations. Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad, expresses ambiguity in a variety of ways. These include several details throughout the story, themes such as dark and light, and in characters including both Marlow and Kurtz. Conrad was one of the first writers to use this technique and by doing so, inspired many other 20th century writers to do the same. The story takes place when strong countries in Europe were taking over parts of Africa and imperializing every place they found. This novel is seen as a bridge between the 19th and 20 century writing styles because of the modern techniques and approach. The use of ambiguity in the themes and archetypal images in Heart of Darkness is how Conrad allows his readers to connect with the story on a personal level.
Conrad also employs the literary device of symbolism to further display the theme, the duality of human nature in his novella Heart of Darkness. Three major examples of symbolism are evident in this novella. These examples include, light and dark, the Congo River, and ivory. Similar to Stevenson, Conrad uses light and dark symbolism throughout his novella. Yet curiously in Heart of Darkness, light does not symbolize genuine goodness nor does dark symbolize pure calamity. Marlow proves this when he says as a comment to the Nellie’s sailors that, “I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too” (Conrad 1944). The true essence of the light and dark symbolism is portrayed when Marlow compares the white men to the black men, concluding that these men are all the same. In Heart of Darkness, the symbolizing of light and dark actually represents the duality of human nature, a universal condition, which affects all men despite their skin color. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s voyage up the Congo River represents Marlow’s own inward journey. As Marlow advances up the river in search for Kurtz, he begins to learn more and more about himself. Nearing the end of his voyage up the Congo River, Marlow realizes he has more in common with the natives than with the European imperialists. At the end of his journey, when Marlow finally reaches Kurtz, he has learned that everybody has a dark side, but some people learned how to conceal it better than others. The third example of symbolism is ivory. In Heart of Darkness, ivory symbolizes greed and the calamitous nature of man, or the evil side. All throughout the novella the agents and managers of the Company are consumed by obtaining ivory. So much so, that they abandon all their moral principles and...
Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.
Heart of Darkness describes a voyage to Africa, common for the British still, despite the horrific treatment which was apparent of colonization. The chaotic, stream-of-consciousness style Conrad took on helped to display the confusion, and made the reader have to interpret for themselves what they thought the writer meant. Conrad experiments with this style, leaving some sentences without ending: "not a sentimental pretense but an idea;…something you can set up…and offer a sacrifice to…." (Conrad, Longman p. 2195), a very choppy form of literature and causes the reader to fill in the holes and interpret themselves, alone. Conrad skips about from talking of the "two women knitted black wool feverishly" at the gate of the city (of hell), to his aunt which he feels women are "out of touch with truth," to how the British are as "weak-eyed devil(s) of a rapacious and pitiless folly" (Conrad, Longman pp. 2198, 2199, & 2202). Conrad's mind moves about as ours do along a large duration of literary monologue to convey to the reader the author's ideas, as interpreted by the reader.
A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, describes a life-altering journey that the protagonist, Marlow, experiences in the African Congo. The story explores the historical period of colonialism in Africa to exemplify Marlow's struggles. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is most often read as an attack upon colonialism. Marlow, like other Europeans of his time, is brought up to believe certain things about colonialism, but his views change as he experiences the effects of colonialism first hand. This essay will look at Marlow's negative view of colonialism, which is shaped through his experiences and from his relation to Kurtz. Marlow's understanding of Kurtz's experiences show him the effects colonialism can have on a man's soul.
Conrad's excellence in style is very controversial; some believe that he is "a literary genius" (Adelman 16), while others "criticize him for being limited, pretentious and vague" ((Adelman 16). Throughout the novel, Conrad uses ample amounts of descriptive language, vivid imagery, and powerful symbolism. The vague part is that he leaves it up to the reader to interpret his mysterious and 'unspeakable' enigmas. Conrad's descriptive language in Heart of Darkness is present from the beginning to the end. With the opening paragraphs d...
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a great example of a Modernist novel because of its general obscurity. The language is thick and opaque. The novel is littered with words such as: inconceivable, inscrutable, gloom. Rather than defining characters in black and white terms, like good and bad, they entire novel is in different shades of gray. The unfolding of events takes the reader between many a foggy bank; the action in the book and not just the language echoes tones of gray.