Term paper on Heart Of Darkness

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Heart of Darkness

In Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness the Europeans are

cut off from civilization, overtaken by greed, exploitation, and

material interests from his own kind. Conrad develops themes of

personal power, individual responsibility, and social justice. His

book has all the trappings of the conventional adventure tale -

mystery, exotic setting, escape, suspense, unexpected attack. The

book is a record of things seen and done by Conrad while in the

Belgian Congo. Conrad uses Marlow, the main character in the book, as

a narrator so he himself can enter the story and tell it out of his

own philosophical mind. Conrad's voyages to the Atlantic and Pacific,

and the coasts of Seas of the East brought contrasts of novelty and

exotic discovery. By the time Conrad took his harrowing journey into

the Congo in 1890, reality had become unconditional. The African

venture figured as his descent into hell. He returned ravaged by the

illness and mental disruption which undermined his health for the

remaining years of his life. Marlow's journey into the Congo, like

Conrad's journey, was also meaningful. Marlow experienced the violent

threat of nature, the insensibility of reality, and the moral

darkness.

We have noticed that important motives in Heart of Darkness

connect the white men with the Africans. Conrad knew that the white

men who come to Africa professing to bring progress and light to

"darkest Africa" have themselves been deprived of the sanctions of

their European social orders; they also have been alienated from the

old tribal ways.

"Thrown upon their own inner spiritual resources they may be

utterly damned by their greed, their sloth, and their hypocrisy into

moral insignificance, as were the pilgrims, or they may be so corrupt

by their absolute power over the Africans that some Marlow will need

to lay their memory among the 'dead Cats of Civilization.'" (Conrad

105.) The supposed purpose of the Europeans traveling into Africa was

to civilize the natives. Instead they colonized on the native's land

and corrupted the natives.

"Africans bound with thongs that contracted in the rain and

cut to the bone, had their swollen hands beaten with rifle butts until

they fell off. Chained slaves were forced to drink the white man's

defecation, hands and feet were chopped off for their rings, men were

lined up behind each other and shot with one cartridge , wounded

prisoners were eaten by maggots till they die and were then thrown to

starving dogs or devoured by cannibal tribes." (Meyers 100.)

Conrad's "Diary" substantiated the accuracy of the conditions

described in Heart of Darkness: the chain gangs, the grove of death,

the payment in brass rods, the cannibalism and the human skulls

on the fence posts. Conrad did not exaggerate or invent the horrors

that provided the political and humanitarian basis for his attack on

colonialism. The Europeans took the natives' land away from

them by force. They burned their towns, stole their property, and

enslaved them. George Washington Williams stated in his diary,

"Mr. Stanley was supposed to have made treaties with more than

four hundred native Kings and Chiefs, by which they surrendered their

rights to the soil. And yet many of these people declare that they

never made a treaty with Stanley, or any other white man; their lands

have been taken away from them by force, and they suffer the greatest

wrongs at the hands of the Belgians." (Conrad 87.) Conrad saw...