Heart of Darkness
( reviewed by Leszek Berezowski )
At the threshold of the twentieth century, when exploitation of colonies was still widely spread and the problem of abuse of natural resources and native inhabitants was largely ignored, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness invites us to reflect on and ask ourselves when does progress and expansion become rape.Joseph Conrad presents us with this, unfortunately, ageless book. It sheds a bright light onto the inherit darkness of our human inclinations, stripped of pretense, in the middle of the jungle where those savage tendencies are provided with a fertile ground.
The combination of greed, climate and the demoralizing effect of frontier life brought out the worst in people. They were raping the land, practically stealing the ivory from the natives, whom they were treating like slaves, or even worse than slaves, for slaves in America were an expensive commodity and therefore it was in the best interest of slave-owners to keep them well fed and healthy; these poor chaps, however, were allowed to starve to death once they fell ill.And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. They were dying slowly - it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the cast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air - and nearly as thin. (Conrad 14)
The natives were cannibals, but in contrast, had higher moral standards than some of the raiders, who were plundering their country and even though they were paid "royally", for their services, with useless wire with which they were expected to procure food, they did not stoop so low as to threaten the lives of the pilgrims, even when they were bordering on starvation.
They had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in river-side villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn’t want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reasons. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. ... - ... Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn’t go for us - they were thirty to five - and have a good tuck in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. (Conrad 37)
Technology and progress, in contrast with simple existence of the indigenous inhabitants of the land, afforded the colonists a God-like powers over the natives. Hidden behind a veil of lofty ideas like expansion and progress, colonists were committing unspeakable atrocities, not unlike the treatment of Native Americans in our own country.But there is hope. At the time when racism wasn’t even a pejorative term and belittling attitude toward the "savages" was just an ordinary fact of life, you can see the change taking place in Marlow’s attitude toward the natives; he misses his helmsman, a man, whom he called "improved specimen" (Conrad 33), who was watching the steam boiler of the boat and who was killed by Kurtz follower’s spear. Marlow surprises himself thinking of this man as his equal.
Many of us, today, would benefit from just such a change of outlook. It seems as though time is standing still and even today, we are ridden with hate and prejudice toward each other based on foolish ideas and ideals.
SYNOPSIS OF COMRAD'S TEXT
Heart of Darkness is a novel of indescribable horrors and actions that lie outside the human mind. It describes a mans (Marlow) voyage on a west African river to find an a man named Kurtz. The actual journey truly is towards the “heart of darkness”, where it takes Marlow by evidence of European indignity towards the natives. He wants to see this land for himself, he does not quite believe in himself of what is really there.
This story hints at horrors that Marlow is incapable of describing, which leaves the reader to imagine actions that are outside of normal everyday life. The voyage that Marlow has taken has been long and exhausting. It’s an adventure for him. He has experienced a great deal of confrontation with the natives, jungle dangers and savagery. There is no interest of the humans who live here and they are extremely mistreated. To them this is normal human behavior. Nothing has been done differently. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particular impression, but there was general sense of wonder. “It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares”. This describes Marlow’s voyage to the “heart of darkness”, the literal heart of darkness: Africa. He was fully warned and well-aware of the evil he would encounter, however he chose to ignore that in effort to satisfy his curiosity.
The author is also saying something about human nature. Human curiosity about an unknown place can make him cross the line of civilized human behavior.
Theme
Heart of darkness which at the same time is the main theme of Comrad's masterpiece, tries to deliver and tells the experiences of the main character, Marlow, during a journey up the river Congo in Africa as a commander of a steamer for a Belgian trading company. The experience he tells itself to different levels of interpretation. The darkness of the title, in fact, refers both to the physical journey into Africa and to a journey into Marlow’s unconscious, whereby the more he penetrates into Africa the more he gets a deeper understanding of himself and the world surrounding him.
There are several themes and issues which are highlighted in both his text and the movie.
1). Collonialism
We can approach the theme of colonialism in Heart of Darkness from different starting points. First of all, the novel can be analysed as Conrad’s personal point of view about colonialism because the plot itself develops from Conrad’s personal experience in Congo in 1890, when he was given a job as a pilot of a steamboat up the River Congo. What Conrad experienced during those fifty days shocked him profoundly and shook his view of the moral basis of all exploring and trading in newly discovered countries and indeed of civilization in general. He discovered the nature of his own personality and came to a pessimistic conclusion about the nature of the civilized human being, which is almost what happens to the major character of the novel, Marlow. Marlow can be the projection of the author, as it can be figured out from a passage at the beginning of the novel, which is almost a transcription of a passage from A Personal Record by Conrad’s.
The novel says:Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all looked that) I would put my finger on it and say, “ When I grow up I will go there”.
Personally, I belive that, Kurtz really personifies colonialism and its paradoxes. Living at the core of darkness, he has become a murder (it is significant on this point the description of the natives’ heads on the stakes) but through the novel he is described to Marlow by various characters as a first-class agent; a remarkable person, an emissary of pity, and science and progress, a gifted creature, a man who made people see things. All these expressions are given by people who share his original point of view on the colonialist cause. It is also very significant the following sentence: his mother was half English, his father was half French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz. It means that Kurtz is merely a product of Western culture and consequently all his brutal actions are justified in a way, because they are the consequences of the Western ideals about colonialism. He is not only a man, but a whole culture.
2). HORROR !!!
In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz's final words as he lay dying are, "The horror! The horror!" (pp. 1415) Some interpret these final words as the horror of one culture decimating another in the name of religion, civilization or greed. Others may believe that Kurtz had at that moment fully recognized what he had become, "the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, or craven terror..." (pp. 1415)
I believe that Conrad tells us what the real horror is-life. "Droll thing life is-that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself-that comes too late-a crop of unextinguishable regrets..." (pp. 1415) To the very end Kurtz was proud and unrepentant. It was not the recognition of just his wrongs, but the recognition of life's wrongs, terrors, and disappointments that caused Kurtz to cry out. The recognition of life's horrors is what Marlow terms "a moral victory". (pp. 1416) In the course of Marlow's travels, he saw countless people too dull or too blinded by their greed or their "cause" to take the time to stop and think about who they were becoming; about what they were doing to others; about why they were doing the things they were doing. Kurtz's identification of "the horror!" is the "moral victory". He had plundered and killed and destroyed, but in the end he acknowledged the cruelty of life and had judged it-more than can be said about the countless others that die daily in the "heart of darkness".
CONCLUSION / PERSONAL COMMENTS
All in all, in Heart of Darkness I believe that Conrad tells us what the real horror is-life.The "heart of darkness" is the unexamined heart of man. Through the narration of Marlow, Conrad challenges his readers to examine themselves to gain the "moral victory" before it is too late.
submitted to
ENCIK AIRIL HAIMI B. MOHD ADNAN
TSL 570 Course Tutor,UiTm Perak.
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