Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
At a company station Marlow hears mentioned the name of Mr. Kurtz, presumed the best agent of the Company, who has set up his encampment in the very heart of ivory country. Marlow’s attempts to take a boat of his own up the river are blocked by the mysterious sabotaging of his vessel, which takes weeks to repair. Marlow learns that Kurtz has been taken ill and that the other ivory agents, who are envious of his success, expect he does not recover. After much impediments, Marlow at last sets off on the final part of his journey up river to Kurtz’s station. The closer he gets to Kurtz the more he is assailed by a sentiment of dread, an emotion intensified by the surroundings forest and its natives, which give Marlow a feeling of travelling back to the earliest beginning of the world.
His ship in attacked by aggressive tribesmen and a member of his crew is killed. Further upriver Marlowe encounters a young Russian sailor whom he discovers is a devoted follower of Kurtz’s teachings. The Russian tells him how Kurtz has become like a god to the natives. As the ship approaches Kurtz’s camp, Marlowe finds the riverbank lined with rows of severed human heads, along with other proof of human sacrifice, all of which tells him that Kurtz has gone beyond the limits of civilisation, that he has vanished his mind.
He attempts to capture Kurtz and take him back, but Kurtz, weakened by his illness, dies on the return journey. His last words are “the horror, the horror”. Kurtz has seen into man’s heart of darkness and the experience has destroyed him. Yet he makes Marlowe promise on his return to tell his girlfriend that the last word he spoke before he died was her name.
Conrad wrote “Heart of Darkness” in a rich, vivid prose style, with a narrative technique that makes skilful use of breaks in linear chronology. Conrad learned English as an adult and was captivated by the language to the point of deciding to use it to write his texts, fascinated by the richness of its vocabulary in numerous idioms, the force and musicality of the words. Therefore his prose is characterized by a constant awareness that was to become a defining feature of modernism.
Conrad makes frequent use of personification and figurative language which often creates very suggestive atmospheres. His narrative technique too is extremely original. In “Heart of Darkness” we have a first person narrator, who introduces the story to give voice to Marlow, who becomes the actual teller of the story.
Many of his stories draw upon his sea-faring experience and have imperialism as a central theme. Different critics have seen Conrad either as “pro-imperialist” or a “critic of imperialism”. “Heart of Darkness” itself, because of its complexity, has been given widely differing interpretations.
On one hand, it has been interpreted as a story about imperialism and a continuity of imperialism fiction. But, on the other hand, it has also been read a denunciation of the mechanism of empire.
From the very beginning of the text in fact Marlow has to deal with the destructive process of colonialism in Africa, its cruelty and exploitation. His comments may reveal Conrad’s desire to destroy the idealistic view of colonialism which has shared by many of his contemporaries and which was can be summarized as a project of civilizing primitive peoples.
“Heart of Darkness” can therefore be seen as a text which challenges many conventions of imperialist travel writing and adventure fiction of the time, which ideologically supported the growth of the British Empire. We must remember that British imperial activity abroad flourished to the point that Britain ruled one quarter of the world, and adventure fiction contributed to help justify imperialism. It did this by stressing the virtues of the explorer ant the colonialist who was always very brave, strong and fearless. In this way, by justifying intrusion and expansion, colonialism was presented to the readers as a natural and morally acceptable thing.
Marlow, however, is a different type of hero. He is much more ambivalent and problematic than the typical adventure hero. During his journey up the Congo, he has to face difficulties connected with the “dark” environment and the “dark” nature of people, both white and black. His journey is into the “heart of darkness”, namely into exploited yet still untamed Africa, but, at the same time, it is a journey into the darkness of human nature, an “interior journey into human consciousness”.
Enzo Sardellaro
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