Heart Of Darkness Syntax Analysis

In the book Heart of Darkness, a sailor named Marlow describes his past journey thought the Congo during the Industrial Era, focusing especially on how the natives were treated by the Europeans. Joseph Conrad portrays Marlow’s first experience as dreadful and appalling through dismal diction and detail, and syntax. This demonstrates how people will often turn away from their respectable intentions to malevolent morals.
The use of disheartening diction at the beginning of the passage allows Conrad to set the tone for the rest of the book. As Marlow is stepping through the forest, he notes of the dying people “… nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.” This is Marlow’s initial response when he saw of what became of the workers. Conrad’s addition of “disease and starvation” makes it seem as if a famine had occurred where Marlow is and the people themselves looked like the products of misery. This allows Marlow to remark of how tirelessly the workers are being pushed and they are making their own

Marlow emphasizes the human labor in “The work was going on. The Work!” to show that the colonists were not willing to stop their murderous work and turned away from empathy for the natives. Conrad intended for the reader’s to realize of how poorly the natives were treated and shoe the indifference for miserable human life. Marlow asks rhetorical questions by saying “He had a tied a bit of white worsened round his neck-Why? Where did he get it? Was is a badge-an ornament-a charm-a propitiatory act?” Marlow asks these questions because he is wondering of how the natives were the property of the Europeans and that they were easily discarded when they were inefficient. Conrad wanted the readers to know how chained the natives were to their work, such that they were still treated as property even when they were about to