Heart of Darkness: A Voyage of Discovery and Self-discovery

“I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire…”
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Chapter I

Written by Conrad on 1890 and set in the jungles of African Congo, The Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow’s journey – a voyage of discovery and self-discovery. The actual narrator of the novel is the man who aboard the Nellie anchored at the mouth of the Thames, who hears Marlow’s story. He sits down and tells the story of Marlow. It is actually a narration in a narration.
The story centers on Marlow, an introspective sailor and a riverboat captain with the Company, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. While he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, he encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations – the native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. He arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager. As his interest in Kurtz grows, his steamboat has been wrecked. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents (pilgrims and cannibals). Not long after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtz’s Inner Station. The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard the steamer. As they steam back downriver, Kurtz's life slowly ebbs away. On his deathbed, he has what seems to be a moment of illumination, of complete knowledge, and he cries out, "The horror! The horror!" before he dies. Eventually, Marlow returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his fiancée who’s still mourning). She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name.
Obviously, there are white/black and light/dark in the story. Traditional interpretations of lightness and darkness tend to correlate lightness with goodness and purity, and darkness with evil and corruption. However, in Heart of Darkness, the definitions of lightness and darkness can be reversed. Darkness means truth, whiteness means falsehood. Darkness can be interpreted to stand for the purity and innocence of the natives’ lifestyle, while lightness can be seen as the corruption, greed, and exploitative ways of the white men.
The native's lifestyles are dramatically changed when their land is dominated by the overpowering white men. The whites expect the natives to follow and comply with their demands once the natives homelands were invaded because the whites considered themselves civilized and thought of the natives as savages. Color of skin is used by the whites to rationalize their actions towards the natives. In the journey, Marlow discovers massacre, turtore, cruelty, slavery, a crew of sickly African workers who have crawled away to die, he sees “a nigger [was] being beaten,” he recognizes that Kurtz, who made himself god to be worshipped, seized ivory from the Africans through violence, brutality, and intimidation, and natives are murdered, killed, and stolen of their ivory. Aside from his discoveries, we, as readers, can also discover and gather evidences and proofs about the evil colonizers. There is a dehumanization when Conrad (or Marlow) describes the native Africans as “moving around as ants.” This kind of dehumanization is harder to identify than colonial violence or open racism. While Heart of Darkness offers a powerful condemnation of the hypocritical operations of imperialism, it also presents a set of issues surrounding race that is ultimately more troubling. He is stereotyping the Africans as savage and primitive who deserve our compassion but not our respect. Also, he is underestimating the natives when he say “I don’t think a single one of them had any clear idea of time…. They still belonged to the begginings of time – had no inherited experience to them as they were.” They may not have watches or clocks but they have their own way of reading the time, days, months and years. We see the Whites completely dominate the Blacks, who were forced to work till physical exhaustion. The blacks are not given any personal traits or uniqueness unless they possess a similarity to the Whites. Even then, we see no glimpse of humanity in their characters. Thus, it is very clear that colonizers or the Whites feel superior because they are civilized, educated and their skin is light and white; and the natives are inferior because they are animal-like, black, uneducated, uncivilized and savages.
In Chapter Two, Whites think they own whaterver land they land on. “Why not? Anything – anything can be done in this country.” As Marlow met Kurtz, he heared him saying, “’My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my –‘ everything belonged to him.” These passages show that they, Whites, seem to own the country because, like possession, you can do anything about it. They are just colonizers, now, they think they have already owned the land? Hence, they are not only oppressing the people but also they take advantage of the situation to own and possess the ‘country’ or the ‘land’. Their so-called reason is to civilized and educate the savages. However, once they get there, they would take advantage of the situation to enjoy and possess the richness and fatness of the people and the land. European colonizers are worst types of “devils” because they are hypocritical about their own evil, perpetrating it in the name of civilization.
It is quite vivid that women or females do not play a very prominent and major role in the novel Heart of Darkness. Whenever woman is part of the conversation, they don’t totally speak (I mean no dialogue is included in the novella, kind of speechless) or if they do, they only speak a bit, only a short phrase. One main reason for this is that a steamboat plodding down the Congo River during the Imperial Age wasn't a popular place for women. Throughout the book, three women are mainly mentioned: Marlow's aunt, Kurtz's intended and Kurtz's African mistress. The mention of Marlow's Aunt came at the beginning of the book in Chapter One when she offers to help him find work on a ship. When Marlow gets the job on the steamboat, he has tea with his aunt to say goodbye. Afterwhich, his aunt comments about how Marlow will be bringing civilization to the savages. In response, Marlow is quick to correct her that "the Company was run for profit." It is here that the reader first learns of Marlow's attitude towards women. He, thus, thinks women are "out of touch with truth" and that "they live in a world of their own," a world, that if exposed to the conditions of man's world would quickly deteriorate.
Later, we notice of Kurtz's intended. Kurtz spoke of her as his Intended – his property. The view of women during this time was that they were extremely fragile creatures and needed to be protected from the dangers of the world. Also, when Kurtz is boarding the steam ship, his African mistress, heavily adorned in ivory is seen standing on the shore. Hence, it is apparent here that Kurtz viewed women as a way to showcase his wealth and success (in both societies).
Conrad's African version of womanhood and sexuality as real and potent while the Intended is a pure Victorian fantasy, a tradition of the English novel which includes such stereotypes of the fair, insipid heroine. Furthermore, by depicting the native woman as speechless, Conrad places her at the center of issues of colonialism.
It is important to take in to consideration the historical context of this book: The Victorian Era when women were viewed as sweet and naïve which is important to the overall meaning of the book, because this naivete is what justifies colonial expansion and empirical economic growth.
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. Kurtz represents what Marlow most fears about himself as he undertakes this journey into the interior of Africa. Kurtz, like Marlow,originally came to the Congo with noble intentions. Kurtz might never have revealed his evil nature if he had not been cornered and tortured by the manager. Both of these men were intrigued by mystery, by the Darkness of the Congo and both are changed from the same aspect of the vast enigma. Kurtz shows us the consequence of inadequate self-knowledge. He journeys to Africa eager to do good, and completely unaware of the dark side of his nature, the side that will respond to the call of the primitive. This is the dark side of every man. Every man has his own Heart of Darkness. It's Marlow who comes to know this side of himself. Marlow learns that he has to acknowledge his own heart of darkness, the call of the primitive in his own nature. This is the spiritual journey that he takes. He is not just journeying physically, but also spiritually – knowing and discovering his self and the darkness within him. Like him, we are on a journey and hopefully in this voyage, we can discover our self and so with our darkness. If you aren't aware of the darkness within you, you won't know how to fight it if you ever need to.