Heart Of Darkness

Charles Marion Russell once said, “A pioneer destroys things and calls it civilization.” A man can enter a perfectly stable system and ruin it by forcing in his own ideals. He takes what works, complicates or changes it, and ends up making it worse than it once was. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad proves that although white Europeans view themselves as superior to the black Africans in matters of civilization, they are in fact more savage than the natives they have come to civilize.
When Marlow leaves the Company’s station, the first things he notices are natives blasting a cliff and piles of machinery. He sees a black man in tattered clothing ordering around chained prisoners. “I could see every rib; the joints of their limbs were like

knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.” (Conrad 22) Marlow comes across several starving natives and offers one of them a biscuit. The native stares at the biscuit with an expressionless face. The horror that he witnesses in his first few minutes is proof that this place is in shambles.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Location changes, new people arise; but man can always count on mistakes. Conrad uses Kurtz as a surrogate to represent how man may seem mighty on the outside, even though they are actually dying inside. Marlow’s dream after hearing about the mighty Kurtz is just to have a conversation with him. He has not heard the horror that Kurtz is dealing with internally. Nobody has. The natives look up to Kurtz as if he was a god, but he is far from it. As he journeys, Marlow comes to realize, through the many people he has talked with, that Kurtz doesn’t seem to exist. To Kurtz’s cousin, he is a great musician; to the journalist, he is a brilliant politician and leader of men; to his fiancée, he is a great humanitarian and genius. Much to Marlow’s surprise, he is none of these. Kurtz is a suffering man who believes he is the best. He refuses to believe otherwise. “You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my - ' everything belonged to him . . . but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own . . . He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land - I mean literally.” (73) Kurtz remains mad until the day he dies. His final words are, “The horror! The horror!” (105) This is Kurtz’s final judgment on his life, his actions, mankind in general, and imperialism. His work in the jungle is,

according to him, beneficial to civilizing the savage natives that live there. His influence and godly status ended up causing the civilization more harm than good.
Man naturally thinks that his ideals and morals are the ones that everybody should use. He wants others to behave like he does and this can lead to a corrupted way of leadership.