Heart Of Darkness 11 Essay Research Paper

Heart Of Darkness 11 Essay, Research Paper

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is at its core the story of two men, Marlow and Kurtz, and their experiences with the evil that resides within mankind’s soul. In many ways, Marlow and Kurtz are the light and dark selves of the same person. Marlow is what Kurtz might have been; Kurtz is what Marlow could have become. Both Marlow and Kurtz begin their stay in the Congo as idealists of some kind, Marlow in the adventure that he expects to find and Kurtz in his plans to “civilize” the natives. Both find themselves irrevocably changed by their journey into the jungle and the darkness that they find there. Kurtz embraces this evil and willingly sacrifices a part of himself in exchange for the power that it offers him; he becomes an agent of that evil and, in the end, is wholly consumed by it. Marlow on the other hand, is able to resist the temptations that doomed Kurtz; he leaves the Congo with a greater understanding of the mysterious and impenetrable darkness that dwells there yet is, frustratingly, unable to really quantify it in any specific or explicit manner. Marlow’s inability to give more than a generalized description of this central subject parallels a corresponding incapacity in Conrad. The vast, abstract darkness that he envisions is too complex and overwhelming to be reduced to a clear or explicit truth. Instead, the truths of the world that Conrad creates in Heart of Darkness are, like those of the real world, necessarily messy, suggestive, irrational, and general.

In a sense, it is trying to explain the unexplainable brings Marlow to the Congo in the first place. Like a knight searching for adventure, Marlow was drawn to the Congo, “the biggest, the most blank, so to speak” (p 71) place on the map. Once there, Marlow discovers firsthand the horrors of colonialism as well as an even greater pull in the figure of Kurtz, a mysterious and startlingly efficient agent living deep within the African jungle. Kurtz is first introduced quite casually to Marlow by the Accountant, who describes him as “remarkable” and “first-class” (p 84). At the Central Station, Marlow’s vision of Kurtz is fleshed out to include such descriptors as “prodigy”, and “an emissary of pity and science and progress” (p 92). When Marlow finally reaches Kurtz at the Inner Station, his first description of him is as “a voice … grave, profound, vibrating.” (p 136). In the end, Kurtz embodies for Marlow the same issues with meaning and understanding that are present in the rest of the book. He is a word, then a set of ideals, and finally a voice. Never does he truly become a flesh and blood person; he always remains an abstraction. He is given definition only by what others make him out to be; Marlow himself notes that, “All of Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.” His importance lies not so much in himself, but in the effect that he has upon Marlow. At first, this influence manifests itself as merely a slight curiosity for a man who appears to embody the same moral principles that Marlow himself has. He was, as he puts it, “curious to see if this man, who had come out here equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and what he would do when he got there.” (p 99) As Marlow’s journey takes him deeper into the Congo, however, Marlow latches on to Kurtz as a source of enlightenment and understanding, as someone beyond the hollow pilgrims, and managers, and Papier-Mache Mephistopheles that he had thus far encountered. So strong did Marlow belief in Kurtz’s revelatory powers become, that when he thought that he would not have a chance to hear Kurtz speak after all, he felt as if he “had been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life…” (p 120).

Unfortunately for Marlow, Kurtz is not the great prophet that Marlow makes him out to be, at least, not in the sense that Marlow expects. At the Inner Station, Marlow discovers the answer to his earlier question of “just what such a man [Kurtz] would do when he got to the top,” when he realizes that Kurtz had set himself up as a god to the natives. Here as in most of the rest of the book, Kurtz is portrayed, not as an individual person, but as an agent of some greater force or belief. The seventeen page pamphlet in which he writes that “we [white men] must necessarily appear to the savages as supernatural beings.” (p 123) is a statement of a commonly held European view, as evidenced by Europeans’ treatment of the natives in Heart of Darkness as inferior beings. Kurtz merely takes the idea one step further in actually becoming a god to the area’s native inhabitants. In essence, Kurtz embraces the darkness, allowing it to enter into him in exchange for the power that it offers. As Marlow describes, ” The wilderness had patted him on the head …it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initation.” (p 121) By the time Marlow finally reaches Kurtz, he is also at the apex of his dark powers. His command over the native population is absolute, as symbolized by the shrunken heads which adorn the posts surrounding his hut and the piles of rotting ivory that fill it to bursting. At the same time, however, he is at the nadir of his existence. He has been almost completely consumed and is now no more than “an animated image of death carved out of old ivory” (p 135).