Heart of Darkness Post #14

Discuss the concept of light and dark throughout the novel? What do they symbolize? How do they shift? Cite specific passages.

            Light and dark are elements very deliberately utilized by Joseph Conrad in his novel Heart of Darkness.  The title of the novel itself includes the word “dark.”  The most evident utilization of this light and dark contrast is the difference between the white European and the black African.  From the imperialist’s side, the white men attempt to “purify” (whiten) a (darkened) savage Africa, when in the end the white men were savagely darkening the simple tribal life.  One of Marlow’s explorer acquaintances even exclaims, “When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages—hate them to the death.”   Conrad associates civilization with white and savagery with dark yet spends the rest of the novel calling this concept into question.  This leaves the separation between “savage” and “civilized” to be quite ambiguous.  The end of the novel sees a definite shift seen in the main character, Marlow’s view of darkness and light, as exemplified in his comment that “"sunlight can be made to lie, too."  The more Marlow and his crew members “penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness,” the less distinct became the separation between the darkness and light.  By the end of the novel, this “heart of darkness” consumes the explorers, and a quote that Marlow states in the beginning of the novel rings even more truth: “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”