"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad is one of the most famous writers who dealed with the agressiveness, seen as a man's natural instinct, and the racism.

LIFE.

His real name is Jòref Teodor Konrad Naclez Korzeniowski. He was born in 1857 in the Ukraine, the son of Polish noble parents, both of whom died when he was twelve. He lived for some years with a maternal uncle in France. In 1874, because of his dream to travel on the sea, he went to Marseilles and joined a French merchant ship. After four years he joined the British Merchant Navy. He learned the British language and sailed all over the world, especially to the Far East. In 1886 he took the Master Mariner's Certificate and in 1890 he went up the River Congo, an experience that disturbed him deeply. In 1895 he retired from the sea and married Jesse George. In the same year he published his first novel: "Almayer's Folly". He settled in the south-east of England where he devoted himself to writing until his death in 1924.

He wrote three great novels, that are "Nostromo", "The Secret Agent", "Under Western Eyes", and short stories (or novellas) like "Heart of Darkness". However, his works didn't bring financial success.

Because of his life at sea, most of his works deal with adventures and exotic countries but he's not a romantic writer. In fact he doesn't have a positive opinion about man's life: his characters have to ht both with hostile external forces and their unstable inner nature. The result is a suffering and uncertain existence. So, pessimism pervades much of Conrad's fiction together with a careful study of the human soul and its psychological individualism. For these reasons, we can say that Conrad is one of the modern novelist, even if his style is still traditional. In his works he tries to underline the little importance and the little validity of social values and conventions in a different situation from our society like in exotic foreign places, where man puts in evidence his more brutal and instinctive aspects. Conrad mostly uses the first-person narrator to represent human consciousness convincingly and vividly. Besides, he wants to show how each person interprets the reality in a different way and that everybody has an own mentality behind an external facade. So, the person who tells the story generally lives in the novel and doesn't express Conrad's point of view. Conrad often uses a "double character": he creates two characters who are different but at the same time similar. In fact one could represent the dark and unconsious side of the other (for example Kurtz is what Marlow can have become in different situations). Conrad gives a great importance also to details and exactness, influenced by Flaubert's style.

HEART OF DARKNESS.

"Heart of Darkness" is considered one of Conrad's masterpieces, based on his personal experience. He sailed up the River Congo in 1890 and this travel helped him to know his own personality in a better way and after that he became pessimistic about the nature of the "civilised" man.

PLOT.

The story is set at the end of the 19^th century and it's told by Marlow, a mariner who is waiting, with other men, to left London on a boat called "Nellie". He talks about his travel in the Congo with a Belgian company for the ivory trade. Once in Africa, at the Company station near the coast, he's horrified by the cynicism and the cruelty of the colonists and disappointed by their inefficiency.

Company's best agent, Kurtz, who stays in the heart of the continent, seems to be seriously ill and so Marlow has to bring him back to civilization.

Around this man there's a sort of legend: every person talks about him in a positive way. For example, they say that he's "a very remarkable person", "an emissary of pity, and science and progress". He has also become an idol for the natives through strange savage rites. Finally, Marlow, fascinated by this ure, meets him and they go back to the coast. However, Kurtz dies before arriving. The last words he says are: "The horror! the horror!". When Marlow returned to Belgium, he talks with Kurtz's fiancée about what had happened but he lies to her, saying that Kurt's last words were her name.

In his story, Conrad underlines the hypocrisy of the colonists who are with Marlow. While, at the biginning, they adore Kurtz like a perfect and wise man, now that he has realized what the colonisation really is, they want to get rid of him. Western society have created the idea of the civilising mission of the white man only because it's useful for its own wealth and prosperity.

When Conrad went to Congo with a Belgian Company, King Leopold II of Belgium pursued his economic interests in the Congo in the hypocritical name of philanthropy and anti-slavery, "to reduce the primitive barbarism".

The title "Heart of Darkness" is refered to the dark and unknown continent that is Africa but also to the mistery and profundity of man's soul and personality. So, Conrad wants to analyse and discover the phenomenon of colonialism but at the same time he wants to put in evidence the true self of the white man, that is savage and instinctive. We have a "journey into the self".

Kurtz, who lives far from our society, destroys all the values and conventions commonly accepted and satisfies his basic instincts, subjecting the black population. He loses self-possession and abandons himself to the "darkness": this is an example of moral nihilism.

So, we have the colonist's duplicity: they're divided between the humanitarian ideology and the economic exploitation, but also between the power's fascination and the savage life's one.

Most of the story is narrated in the first person by Marlow but it's begun and ended by another mariner who is listening to him on the "Nellie". Besides, some events are narrated by some colonists or by Krutz. So, we have a complex structure, with continuous changes of point of view. It permits to have a psychological realism. There are a lot of symbols, in parallels (between Marlow and Kurtz) or in oppositions (black and white, light and darkness).

For Marlow, black has positive connotations: it's refered to a primitive environment and its people. White is associated with the colonialism and its violence and hypocrisy.

Language is characterized by idiomatic speech, by irony and also by Marlow's difficulty in explaining his experiences, that is underlined by the use of vague and disturbing adjectives like "unspeakable", "unimaginable", "inscrutable" and so on. These words create a sense of mistery and horror: it seems impossible to discover the meaning of the evil Marlow sees. We can also interpret Marlow's voyage as "the quest of the mythic hero" (Kurtz) who faces obstacles and acquires knowledge for himself and his people.

This penetration into man's most primitive self, which connects the civilized and the primitive, is an anthropological element that anticipates psychoanalysis and the Modernism.

ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT AT E 418.

Line 1 : brown: symbol of darkness and mistery, it creates a gloomy vision of the landscape;

heart of darkness: the centre of the continent is seen like the heart of mistery;

ran swiftly: the characters seem to escape from a threat;

Line 4 : inexorable time: refered to Kurtz's life: It's used to underline the tragedy of the situation;

Line 5 : impenetrable darkness: refered to Kurtz's conciousness. It's ed to the dark   

continent;

Line 6/7 : a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines: this is the

situation of Kurtz who has espressed his more savage and violent part and now is

persecuted  by the sense of guilt. He discovered "the horror" he has inside;

Line 7/14 : Marlow tries to work and be busy not to be oppressed by this sense of horror and

mistery;

Line 15 : candle: symbol of uncertainty;

Line 18 : transfixed: sense of impotence;

Line 19 : the change that come over his features: Kurtz's despair is evident;

Line 21 : I was fascinated: Kurtz represents what man really is out of society;

It was as though a veil had been rent: we have like a sudden revelation that makes

Marlow realize the horror of the human mind;

Line 22/23 : the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror, of an intense and

hopeless despair: it's Kurtz's complex state of mind, with his worse aspects and his

final and total despair;

Line 24 : desire, temptation, surrender: the instinctive aspects of human soul;

Line 28 : "The horror! The horror!": the key-words of the story, that contain all its meaning;

Line 32/33 : He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths

of his meanness: the great hypocrisy and cruelty of the colonists is evident;

Line 40/41 : there was a lamp in there-light, don't you know-and outside it was so beastly, beastly

dark: Marlow needs light, the symbol of certainty and interior peace, while the

situation he has around him is oppressive and puts him in a state of terrible anxiety;

Line 52/53 : He had summed up-he had judged."the horror!" He was a remarkable man: Marlow

admires Kurtz, in spite of his mistakes and guilts, because he admitted and judged

them. Kurtz is not hypocritical like the other colonists.