Juxtaposition In Heart Of Darkness

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novella that tells the story about a group of young man that sail up Congo River in search of a man named Kurtz. As they head up the river they encounter many cruel acts such as ambushes, attacks with fire arrows, and a mass killing where Kurtz has been staying. Kurtz is said to be a man with great abilities but is believed to have gone mad. When Marlow has to wait to head up river his curiosity about Kurtz grows. The men set off up the Congo on a steam boat with Marlow as the captain. Conrad uses many literary works to help convey what the men went through, some of the one he used was irony, juxtaposition, symbolism.
Marlow gets a taste of the brutality that awaits him when he arrives at the company

station where they have forced the natives of the area to work. The natives suffers from overwork and ill treatment. The way that the Europeans moved in and took over the land and people is a clear example of cruelty. They showed no regard for the natives living there and practically enslaved them to work. They carry supplies to and from the boats to the store the whole day.
They later come across a hut up river with a stack of wood that was left for them, however there is a note the says approach cautiously. After they get the wood on board a dense fog over comes them. When the fog clears up the boat is attacked by natives with fire arrows and spears. The helmsman was the first man that was killed on the trip. In this sense it shows that the europeans have bestowed this fear into them that on sight of them the natives feel the need to attached to protect their land and culture.
They keep moving forward and when they arrive to where Kurtz has been staying and there are bodies and body parts discarded around. They are laying on the ground everywhere you look. The man are able to sense the savitry surrounding them. Cruelty comes into play in many ways here. First the killing of the man and how their bodies were dismembered, and seconded how they were just left here like they are nothing. Marlow soon realized that he had just stepped into a new world what Kurtz was leader of. They started to believe what they had been told Kurtz much have gone mad.
Irony is a very important element in Heart of Darkness. The biggest uses irony is Kurtz he is said to be an intelligent human that wrote a paper about how the whites should suppress the Africans and in the end become like the savages. He wrote that the whites need to change how the natives showed lack of care for human life and had no civilisation. At the end of the novella it re touches on the fact with the line that Kurtz writes “exterminate all the brutes”. He still believes that they should be exterminated even as he has become one. Even after he has become a brutes and lived with them his thought never changed. One would wonder why after living with them his thought may have changed. If he has lived with them he should care about them and not want them to be killed.
The boat and river are both symbols in Heart of Darkness. The men stay on the boat for safety. When they are attracted by the natives the boat's whistle saves them by scaring off the natives. When the man reach Kurtz they stay on the boat at night and most of the day for safety and security. If the natives take the boat or it floats away they are stranded. The river is another symbol. When the men are going up river the current is against them almost like Africa is fighting them and their beliefs. It makes it harder for them to travel up the river to get deeper into the jungle, but then they are heading out of the jungle the river is pushing them out of the jungle.