Essay/Term paper: Heart of darkness

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Cliff Notes

The framing narrative

of Heart of Darkness is presented by an unnamed,

undefined speaker, who is one of a group of men, former

sailors, now professionals, probably middle-aged, on the

deck of a yacht at the mouth of the Thames River, London

England. The time is probably contemporary with the

writing and publication of the novel, so around the turn of

the 20th century. One among the group, Charlie Marlow, a

mysterious figure who is still a sailor, tells the story of

something that happened to him several years before, when

he drove a steamboat up a river in Africa to locate an agent

for a Belgian company involved in the promising ivory

trade. Most of the novel is Marlow's narration, although

Conrad sometimes brings us back to the yacht and ends

the novel there. Also, as in Wuthering Heights, the

technique of a framing narrative brings up questions of

memory: how a story is reliable when related by someone

many years after the fact, then reported by someone else.

The structure of Heart of Darkness is much like that of the

Russian nesting dolls, where you open each doll, and there

is another doll inside. Much of the meaning in Heart of

Darkness is found not in the center of the book, the heart

of Africa, but on the periphery of the book. There is an

outside narrator telling us a story he has heard from

Marlow. The story which Marlow tells seems to center

around a man named Kurtz. However, most of what

Marlow knows about Kurtz, he has learned from other

people, many of whom have good reason for not being

truthful to Marlow. Therefore Marlow has to piece together

much of Kurtz's story. We slowly get to know more and

more about Kurtz. Part of the meaning in Heart of

Darkness is that we learn about "reality" through other

people's accounts of it, many of which are, themselves,

twice-told tales. Marlow is the source of our story, but he

is also a character within the story we read. Marlow,

thirty-two years old, has always "followed the sea", as the

novel puts it. His voyage up the Congo river, however, is

his first experience in freshwater travel. Conrad uses

Marlow as a narrator in order to enter the story himself and

tell it out of his own philosophical mind. When Marlow

arrives at the station he is shocked and disgusted by the

sight of wasted human life and ruined supplies . The

manager's senseless cruelty and foolishness overwhelm him

with anger and disgust. He longs to see Kurtz- a fabulously

successful ivory agent and hated by the company manager.

More and more, Marlow turns away from the white people

(because of their ruthless brutality) and to the dark jungle (a

symbol of reality and truth). He begins to identify more and

more with Kurtz- long before he even sees him or talks to

him. Kurtz, like Marlow, originally came to the Congo with

noble intentions. He thought that each ivory station should

stand like a beacon light, offering a better way of life to the

natives. Kurtz's mother was half-English and his father was

half-French. He was educated in England and speaks

English. The culture and civilization of Europe have

contributed to the making of Kurtz; he is an orator, writer,

poet, musician, artist, politician, ivory procurer, and chief

agent of the ivory company's Inner Station at Stanley Falls.

In short, he is a "universal genius"; however, he also

described as a "hollow man," a man without basic integrity

or any sense of social responsibility. Kurtz wins control of

men through fear and adoration. His power over the natives

almost destroys Marlow and the party aboard the

steamboat. Kurtz is the violent devil whom Marlow

describes at the beginning. Kurtz might never have revealed

his evil nature if he had not been spotted and tortured by

the manager. A major theme of Heart of Darkness is

civilization versus savagery. The book implies that

civilizations are created by the setting of laws and codes

that encourage men to achieve higher standards. It acts as a

block to prevent men from reverting back to their darker

tendencies. Civilization, however, must be learned. While

society seems to restrain these savage tendencies, it does

not get rid of them. The tendency to revert to savagery is

seen in Kurtz. When Marlow meets Kurtz, he finds a man

who has totally thrown off the bondage of civilization and

has reduced to a primitive state where he cheats everybody

even himself. Conrad recognized that deception is the

worst when it becomes self-deception and the individual

takes seriously his own fictions. Kurtz "could get himself to

believe anything- anything." His friendly words of his report

for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage

customs was meant to be sincere, but a deeper meaning of

it was rather "Exterminate all the brutes!" Marlow and

Kurtz are two opposite examples of the human condition.

Kurtz represents what every man will become if left to his

own intrinsic desires without a protective, civilized

environment. Marlow represents the civilized soul that has

not been drawn back into savagery by a dark, alienated

jungle. The book implies that every man has a heart of

darkness that is usually drowned out by the light of

civilization. However, when removed from civilized society,

the raw evil of within his soul will be released. The

underlying theme of Heart of Darkness is that civilization is

superficial. The level of civilization is related to the physical

and moral environment they are presently in. It is a much

less stable or state than society may think. The wilderness

is a very significant symbol in Joseph Conrad's Heart of

Darkness. It is not only the background in which the action

of the story takes place, but also a character of the story in

and of itself. The vastness and savagery of the wilderness

contrast with the foolishness of the pilgrims, and the

wilderness also shows the greed and brutality that hide

even behind the noblest ideals. The wilderness is not a

person as such, but rather an omnipotent force that

continually watches the invasion of the white man. The

activities of the white people are viewed throughout the

book as insane and pointless. They spend their time

searching for ivory or fighting against each other for

position and status within their own environment. Marlow

comments: "The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was

whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying

to it . . . I've never seen anything so unreal in my life" In

contrast, the wilderness appears immovable, and

threatening. During Marlow's stay at the Central Station, he

describes the surrounding wilderness as a "rioting invasion

of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested,

ready to . . . sweep every little man of us out of his little

existence" It is difficult to say, however, what the intentions

of the wilderness actually are. We see the wilderness

entirely through Marlow's eyes, and it remains always an

open question. It is "an implacable force brooding over an

inscrutable intention" . The natives, who are too simple to

have false motives and pretenses, live perfectly at peace

with the wilderness. At some places in the story their voices

can be considered the voices of the wilderness. Especially

when they are crying out in grief through the impenetrable

fog, their voices seem to be coming from the wilderness

itself. ("...to me it seemed as though the mist itself had

screamed...") The natives reflect the savage but very real

quality of the wilderness. Consider Marlow's description of

the natives in the canoes on the coast: "...they had bone,

muscle, a wild vitality, and intense energy of movement,

that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast.

They wanted no excuse for being there" . The people who

are successful in fighting the wilderness are those who

create their own structured environments. For example, the

chief accountant of the government station preserved

himself by maintaining an impeccable appearance. Marlow

says of him, "...in the great demoralization of the land he

kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched

collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of

character" . On the whole, the white men are successful in

fighting the influence of the wilderness. They are either too

greedy and stupid to realize that they are under attack, such

as the pilgrims who are hunting for ivory, or they have

managed to protected themselves with work, such as the

accountant. There is, however, one notable exception.

Kurtz stops resisting to the savagery of the wilderness. He

gives up his high aspirations, and the wilderness brings out

the darkness and brutality in his heart. All the principles of

European society are gone away from him, and the

passions and greed of his true nature are revealed. He

collects loyal natives who worship him as a God, and they

raid surrounding villages and collect huge amounts of ivory.

The chiefs must use ceremonies when approaching Kurtz

which Marlow feels disgust of. Marlow says, "...such

details would be more intolerable than those heads drying

on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows... . I seemed at

one bound to have been transported into some lightless

region of subtle horrors . . ." The degradation of Kurtz has

implications for more than just himself. It also comments on

humanity. At his death, he sees the true state of mankind.

His gaze is "piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that

beat in the darkness" His final statement of "The horror!

The horror!" is his judgment on all of life. The wilderness

brings Kurtz to the point where he has a full awareness of

himself, and from there he makes his pronouncement about

the mankind. Heart of Darkness explores something truer,

more fundamental than just a personal narrative. It is a night

journey into the unconscious, and confrontation within the

self. Certain circumstances of Marlow's voyage, looked at

in these terms, has new importance. Marlow insists on the

dreamlike quality of his narrative. "It seems to me I am

trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because

no relation of a dream can convey the dream - sensation."

Even before leaving Brussels, Marlow felt as though he

"was about to set off for center of the earth," not the center

of a continent. The introspective voyager leaves his familiar

rational world, is "cut off from the comprehension" of his

surroundings, his steamer toils "along slowly on the edge of

a black and incomprehensible frenzy." As the crisis

approaches, the dreamer and his ship moves through a

silence that "seemed unnatural, like a state of trance; then

enter a deep fog." In the end, there is a symbolic unity

between the two men. Marlow and Kurtz are the light and

dark selves of a single person. Marlow is what Kurtz might

have been, and Kurtz is what Marlow might have become.