Maliciousness Exposed in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

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Foolishness and Maliciousness in Exposed in Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad paralleled the Eldorado Expedition in his novel Heart of Darkness with the Katanga Expedition of 1890-1892. By doing so, he illustrated the folly and malevolence of the leaders of the Katanga Expedition and of Imperialist profiteers in general.

The foundations for the Katanga Expedition were laid in 1883 when King Leopold proposed that he would leave the Congo state to Belgium in his will if he could borrow 25 million francs without interest to finance development of the area. In 1890, Prime Minister Beernaert ensured that Leopold got the loan (Pakenham 399). Through German adventurers and British missionaries, Leopold soon learned of both the riches Katanga had to offer in terms of natural resources and of its unusual native warlord, Msiri. With hopes of gaining raw materials, Leopold launched the Katanga Expedition in 1890 (Pakenham 400).

Conrad’s "Kurtz" in Heart of Darkness is based on Georges-Antoine Klein (Sherry 9), although there are many similarities between him and Msiri, the native chief of Katanga, as well. Like Kurtz, Msiri was fond of keeping tight control of everything in his area, and he was partial to showing off his collection of human heads (Pakenham 400). As Kurtz had no qualms about shooting his supporters (such as the Russian) over trivial matters (Conrad 56), Msiri frequently cut off appendages of any of his subjects who displeased him (Pakenham 403). As Msiri was huge, "six-foot and fourteen stone," (Pakenham 403), Kurtz "looked at least 7 feet long" (Conrad 59). When Msiri’s enemies became bolder, huts filled with Msiri’s supplies were burned down (Pakenham 406). This is analogous to the incident in Heart of...

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... at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe," (Conrad 33). Through Marlow, Conrad was pointing out the evil ambitions of the Katanga Expedition. In the Katanga Expedition, there was no true goal of "enlightening" the "savage" natives. The members of the expedition cared only about money and riches. They did not care about what happened to the native people of Africa. Conrad was disgusted with the way Belgium treated people of the Congo, and he blatantly illustrated this repugnance with his portrayal of the Katanga Expedition thinly veiled as the Eldorado Expedition.

Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc, 1988.

Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa. New York: Random House, 1991.

Sherry, Norman. Conrad’s Western World. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

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