Theme Of Madness In Heart Of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, showcases a steady decline of one 's sanity, through the voyage that the main character, Marlow, takes through the Congo River; this is shown by the french ship firing into the jungle, Kurtz’s letters, and the stops at the three stations: the outer, center, and inner. The first showcase of madness in this novella is when Marlow is about to enter the congo and he sees a French war ship firing randomly into the jungle. The French have a French warship firing into an uninhabited land, so they can battle the natives that live the congo. The idea of using a warship to try to fight people in an uninhabited land is absurd. A reader could see no point in the random bombardment of the land, but to people who had been in the congo see nothing astray with this attack on the natives. This attack gives the reader a sample of the madness that the main character is about to experience in his trip down the Congo River, after this Marlow ventures to the outer

This is where the natives of the land worshiped a man who just so happened to take control of their land. To worship a man as a god after he did something like this to the people of the land makes no sense. The only reasonable explanation to this is that Kurtz was in charge of the white men who came and took over their land. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you” (Friedrich Nietzsche). This quote best describes Kurtz, since he went in to try and help the savages become more civilized. Due to the fact that Kurtz stayed too long with the savages in the end, Kurtz is changed. Kurtz lets the madness take control of him during his descent down the river. The horror of the jungle takes over Kurtz’s ethics and changed them to ones of