Heart of Darkness
When questioning whether or not Joseph Conrad was an imperialist, a racist or both for that matter, the answer should be quite obvious after reading some of his works, such as, Heart of Darkness. Everywhere you look in this book, there is both imperialism and racism illustrated. Through Kurtz, Conrad's imperialist side breaks through and likewise, through Marlow Conrad's racist views come to life.
According to Dictionary.com, imperialism is "when one nation exerts political, economic, social or military control or influence over another nation or people." During the 19th century, everyone was in search of a better life. They all wanted more money therefore, more power. In order to do so, various people had to travel great lengths to unclaimed lands to set up colonies for the sole purpose of making profits off of the resources at hand. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz went to the Congo for "The Company" in pursuit of ivory tusks that he can sell to the bourgeoisie all over the world. He set up a trading post and became the most prevalent businessman in the area. Kurtz soon ventured away from his European customs and had to resort to his inner "darkness" and abandon all "civilized" forms of being. Even though the men who worked for the Company described what they do as "trade," and that their treatment of natives is a part of civilization, the company did not approve of Kurtz's blatant abuse of power and complete disregard for his actions as the new "god" of that area. Kurtz is open about the fact that he does not trade, he takes the ivory by force, and he describes his own treatment of the natives with the words "suppression" and "extermination." This view of the Company shows how imperialistic the Europeans are at that time. They want the new land to be civilized and claimed under the British flag, but they want it done their way to maintain the order that they have worked so hard to establish.
Conrad's racism is portrayed in the actions and perceptions of Marlow along his trip up the Congo. Marlow's views of the area during the beginning of the trip are given as inhumane, and uncivilized. The Heart of Darkness for Marlow is the ignorance and brutality that he witnesses from natives as well as Whites that are met upon his trip.
Conrad’s interpretation of imperialism is an interesting view of the matter. He successfully portrays his perception of imperialism through his novella, Heart of Darkness. He developed his own impressionistic style within his novel and is coined as one of the most difficult authors to comprehend. His use of the tools within his area of expertise allows the novella to unfold before the readers’ eyes. His ability to manipulate the art of language into an intricately woven design made of simple words is an astounding capability and is a primary reason for the success of Heart of Darkness. In the final chapters of the novella, the protagonist Marlow is sailing away from the dark heart of the Congo with an ailing Kurtz. As the boat makes its decent from the depth of the jungle, symbolically, Kurtz is leaving the savagery in which he was engaged. With each passing mile, he becomes more civilized and ultimately comes to the realization of the error of his ways. Symbolically, as he leaves the darkness of the heart of the river, he becomes sane and civilized and comprehends th...
Conrad’s main character Marlow is the narrator for most of the story in Heart of Darkness. He is presented as a well-intentioned person, and along his travels he is shocked by the cruelties that he sees inflicted on the native people. Though he is seemingly benevolent and kindly, Marlow shows the racism and ignorance of Conrad and in fact of the majority of white people in his era, in a more subtle way. Marlow uses words to describe the blacks that, though generally accepted in his time, were slanderous and crude. He recalls that some of the first natives he saw in the Congo looked at him “with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (80; part 1). Marlow casually refers to the Africans with the most offensive of language: “Strings of dusty niggers arrived and departed…” (83; part 1). To Marlow, and thus to Conrad, the Africans are savages, dogs, devils, and criminals. Even the stories that Conrad creates for Marlow to narrate are twisted and false. The natives that Marlow deals with in the book are described as cannibals, and they are even given dialogue that affirms th...
The Novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is about an Ivory agent, Marlow, who is also the narrator of his journey up the Congo River into the heart of Africa. Marlow witnesses many new things during his journey to find Mr. Kurtz. In Apocalypse Now, the narrator is Captain Willard, who is also on a journey to find Kurtz. The Kurtz in the movie however is an American colonel who broke away from the American army and decided to hide away in Cambodia, upon seeing the reality of the Vietnam War. The poem “The Hollow Men” talks about how humans’ “hollowness” affects their lives and often leads to the destruction of one’s life. These three works all deal with similar issues, and are related to one another in many ways, and also share somewhat similar themes.
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, achieved classical recognition for its depiction of humanity’s struggle to reconcile good and evil. From the very opening pages of the Bible man has wrestled with choice, opportunity, propensity and instinct. The knowledge of good and evil has surely caused us to die to simplicity and burdened us with the curse of self-awareness. At first it was a struggle for me to get from page to page because of Conrad’s intricate details.
In Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness the Europeans are cut off from civilization, overtaken by greed, exploitation, and material interests from his own kind. Conrad develops themes of personal power, individual responsibility, and social justice. His book has all the trappings of the conventional adventure tale - mystery, exotic setting, escape, suspense, unexpected attack. The book is a record of things seen and done by Conrad while in the Belgian Congo. Conrad uses Marlow, the main character in the book, as a narrator so he himself can enter the story and tell it out of his own philosophical mind. Conrad's voyages to the Atlantic and Pacific, and the coasts of Seas of the East brought contrasts of novelty and exotic discovery. By the time Conrad took his harrowing journey into the Congo in 1890, reality had become unconditional. The African venture figured as his descent into hell. He returned ravaged by the illness and mental disruption which undermined his health for the remaining years of his life. Marlow's journey into the Congo, like Conrad's journey, was also meaningful. Marlow experienced the violent threat of nature, the insensibility of reality, and the moral darkness.
Each person has a different definition of what the term ‘remarkable’ means; each unique definition, holds a significant link to the other. This link is that the term is always given to a person that holds certain characteristics that are superior to the average individual. The set of characteristics that are observed tend to subscribe to the specific set of values of the person issuing the remark. Marlow, the main character in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is able to assert that Mr. Kurtz was a remarkable man.
Throughout Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad points to the hypocrisy and horrors associated with colonialism. The half-English, half-French Kurtz is the main vehicle used to convey his theme of European colonialism, as “all [of] Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (Conrad 164). It was Kurtz who goes to Africa for the "sake of loot, and thus becomes a great literary symbol for the decadence of colonialism" (Zins 63). With his help, Marlow dissects the reasoning behind colonialism, eventually seeing its evil nature.
The novel, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is literally about Marlow’s journey into the Belgian Congo, but symbolically about the discovery of his heart and soul during his journey, only to find that it is consumed by darkness. He realizes that the man he admired and respected most, is really demonic and that he may be just like him. He is able to come to this realization however, before it takes the best of him.
“Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision-he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror!”
Light, unlike in A Christmas Carol, is not necessarily virtuous in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The narrator is on Nellie, and beginning at sunset, Marlow suddenly starts, “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth,” (pg. 2, para. 5) while stranded on the flooded Thames River. He tells about his dark journey to the heart of darkness (outside meaning the center of Africa). He takes over another person’s responsibility to visit the Interior and meets two women knitting black yarn. He then meets a doctor who asks if there was "ever any madness in [Marlow's] family," (pg. 9, para. 1). Later, he hears that Kurtz, the man he is meeting, is a man of greatness and it sounds like he has more ivory than any others in the world. Marlow also informs us that he scorns lies. He finally sets off and into the journey, and on the way there, they have several delays and one anticipated attack on their ship, killing a helmsman. Marlow finally arrives at the station, and meets a person that reminded him of a harlequin. The harlequin told him that Kurtz “enlarged [his] mind,” (pg. 48, para. 2) and that people don’t talk with Kurtz, they listen to him. He then hears snippets of conversation from Kurtz: “Save me! –save the ivory, you mean…Why, I’ve had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I’ll carry my ideas out yet—I will return. I’ll show you what can be done… I will return. I…” The night before they plan to take Kurtz away, he tries to run away so he cannot be taken away by Marlow and the Company. He does not succeed; however, because he is already weak and frail from sickness and madness, and Marlow finds him and successfully takes him to the ship. Ha...
Since its publication in 1899, Joseph Conrad?s Heart of Darkness has undergone a great deal of controversy. Some have found the novel a great masterpiece of Western literature, while others take offense to its contents. One of the most controversial themes of the novel is that of racial degradation. Throughout Heart of Darkness we see a great deal of racism, and I believe this is due to him trying to point out the racism in society. In the novel, Conrad was trying to call attention to the problem of racism through his depiction of racial degradation of the African natives. Conrad was subject to racial tendencies due to the time period, but it is obvious through his actions and feelings of the character Marlow that his overall purpose of the
I have to agree with the statement that ‘the novel Heart of Darkness has two contradictory sides in its treatment of the African characters and land’. I can see the reasons why it is said that while Joseph Conrad writes about the feeling of sympathy he felt for the native Africans in the novel, at the same time he actually writes the novel from a Eurocentric point of view. I cannot deny it that there are positive things that show some of the Europeans are not too good that were being portrayed in the novel, but for me it was just so that the readers would not realize the fact that it was written from a Eurocentric point of view. In this essay, I will provide some details and quotations from the novella and also from other sources in order to make my opinion concrete on why I agree with the statement. From what I have read, Joseph Conrad wrote the novel using his own experiences from his early life in Congo. In addition, in the novel, Marlow is the main character so I assume that Marlow is actually the representation of Joseph Conrad himself.
Marlow's idea that the English are capable of competently approaching imperialism has no supportive evidence. In any case, the savage and inefficient methods of the Belgians prove that the idealistic claims of European imperialism are far from true. In this, it is likely that Conrad's experience in the Congo changed his outlook on imperialism, just as it did Marlow.
A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, describes a life-altering journey that the protagonist, Marlow, experiences in the African Congo. The story explores the historical period of colonialism in Africa to exemplify Marlow's struggles. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is most often read as an attack upon colonialism. Marlow, like other Europeans of his time, is brought up to believe certain things about colonialism, but his views change as he experiences the effects of colonialism first hand. This essay will look at Marlow's negative view of colonialism, which is shaped through his experiences and from his relation to Kurtz. Marlow's understanding of Kurtz's experiences show him the effects colonialism can have on a man's soul.
“ The Marxists hate imperialism and consider it as the highest stage, the peak of capitalism and coincidently Heart of Darkness has been considered as an anti-imperialist work, so the work invites a Marxist approach in itself.” (Sardar) The natives were basically stripped of their agency and were forced under the European influence to do hard labor with the ivory. “This imperial relationship between Europe and the underdeveloped world as defined by Lenin is certainly detectable in the historical setting of Heart of Darkness.” (Sardar) They weren’t given the same opportunities as the others. “European imperialism would suggest that this is a utopia considering they can exploit the African masses for maximum gain and they believe that they bring civilization and light to a dark and savage area…” (Rodarte101litcrit 1) And this is kind of topsy turvy because Marlow dreamed of having a utopia. Now that he has met Mr. Kurtz and has seen, and personally worked with his many wonders that he so powerfully possessed, he’s convinced that what he is doing is right. Marlow was naive and hopeless, and Mr. Kurtz seemed all powerful and glorified. Yet we see through the hands of Mr. Kurtz, power is not to be dealt with people who do not know how to control