Introduction Of Heart Of Darkness

Introduction

“Heart of Darkness” is a novella written by Joseph Conrad and was published in 1899. The novella is a story about a character Charles Marlow and his experience as an ivory transporter on the Congo River located in Central Africa. The text is Marlow sharing a story with some fellow sailors about to take off on another voyage. Charles had been a sailor for years prior but always took a special interest in Africa, an unexplored place that fascinated him as a boy. Under that motivation he finds a post for a European trading company to take a steamboat to the center of Africa. When he arrives at the mouth of the river he sees African men who have been enslaved and put to work. While there, Charles hears of and becomes obsessed with meeting a man named Kurtz who had previously gone into the jungle to find ivory and had ideas of “taming” the African people and bringing European civilization to African people who were considered to be savages. Charles undertakes the treacherous journey only to find that Kurtz’s ideas had failed and he had become a savage himself. Kurtz had been seen as a God by one tribe and had begun raiding surrounding villages for ivory and participated in brutal and savage practices. Marlow gets Kurtz to the boat and attempts to bring him back to civilization, but Kurtz was too sick and died leaving Marlow with his affairs and documents.

Conrad did acknowledge that “Heart of Darkness” is in part based off of his own experiences as a captain of a steamer on the Congo River in the 1890’s, where he witnessed horrible treatment of African natives and the imperialism thrust upon the people by European companies there.

The book is a bit ambiguous, but its themes are clear and the contrast of two very differ...

... middle of paper ...

...er than learn they assumed everything was wrong with their culture and societies then they commenced to pillage and slaughter.

Conclusion

It was a great thing to be able to read “Heart of Darkness” again (since I was much more eager than when I read it in High School). I really like the book and feel it is a very interesting story. I feel that it is culturally significant for people to see just how harmful the consequences can be if we enter culture ethnocentrically and how we in turn can be harmed by our ethnocentric judgments. At times I wish that there was more information about the African natives and their culture and society since in the story there is much information about them. However I believe Conrad uses that as a tool to portray how easy it is to not understand a culture and then act as if we understand what is best and trample over existing customs.