What might the title represent—the heart of darkness—what is
this referring to?
It seems to me that there are two hearts of darkness in the
book. The first one that is encountered (and probably the one people first
associate with) is that the heart of darkness is the interior of the Congo. The
first time it comes up is one page 112 in the Enriched Classic edition. Conrad
writes “I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in
the forest, the creek, the mud, the river—seemed to beckon with a dishonouring
flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking
death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.” The darkness
is the evil hidden in that jungle. Then on page 116, Conrad writes “We
penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.” This said when Marlow
is sailing up the river. Again on page 168, “The brown current ran swiftly out
of the heart of darkness.” And this is what people think of typically. But
there is another.
On page 135, when talking about Kurtz, Conrad writes “The
point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one
that stood out preëminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was
his ability to talk, his words… the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful
flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.” In this passage, Kurtz is a
man with a heart of darkness. See also page 169 when Conrad writes “[his voice]
survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren
darkness of his heart.” This is important because Kurtz was not a good person.
He put heads on stakes, caused a lot of pain, and did irreparable harm to the
company he worked for. His soul is free out in the wilderness and it is evil.
But he talks his way out of everything.
The jungle isn’t evil—it just allows the evils of others to
exist.
I love your closing comment about the jungle. I really enjoyed reading this blog and it contains some very good points. You address in your blog how there are two types of evil- the dark setting and the dark hearts. When you combine the two, you get a very nasty combination. When something is dark, it conceals things very well. The evil goes unnoticed. When a light is shown, however, the creatures of darkness scatter in fear. One is best able to "get away with murder" when there is a cloud of darkness all around them. It is not the dark itself that is bad or that commits the acts, but the people hiding their hearts in the shadows.
ReplyDeleteYour closing statement, I believe, clearly indicates the nature of the book. Africa is not evil because it is uncivilized, nor are it's inhabitants, Marlow's accounts of the natives depict them as more civilized than those coming to bring the "savages" the gift of "civilization." Africa amplifies Conrad's idea of the absurdity of imperialism by juxtaposing the natives and Western people. The natives who live there are used to being "uncivilized" but once the Western people come and are exposed to the raw nature they are lost and blindsided by their own ambitions for greatness.
ReplyDeleteIt is strange how you said the jungle itself is not evil, and that it just allows evil to exist. Because if it allows evil to exist so easily, why aren't the natives evil? From what I gathered from the book is the natives are not evil, they are just different than the Europeans, and continuously get bullied. Perhaps what sets the two apart are the roles each have. The natives are simply the victim in the the campaign, while the Europeans are there for resources and to "civilize" the natives. I believe this could be related to the psychologist's, Phillip Zimbardo's, Stanford prison experiment. Basically the goal of the study was to prove how human's conform to the roles given to them; for example, guards and prisoners. I believe "Heart of Darkness" could somewhat resemble that. Instead of guards and prisoners, there are Europeans and natives. The Europeans take the role of the guards and start conforming with their power role and begin asserting their power on the natives, or prisoners. Thus giving the Europeans in the role of power makes them simply more susceptible to corruption. The jungle simply acts as the place where the Europeans can freely assert this dominance, and ,like you said, allow the evil of others to exist.
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