Heart of darkness

Heart of Darkness Themes

Good versus evil

From the minute you wake up in the morning, life is a moral struggle: hit the snooze button, or get up and go for that run you promised yourself you’d take? Put your dishes in the dishwasher, or leave them in the sink for your mom to clean up? Now, imagine that you’re sailing up the Congo in a steamboat, and those daily moral struggles take on a whole new gravity.

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s desire to be good and do good becomes increasingly futile as he’s plunged into a world where no absolute goodness exists and the best he can do is choose between a selection of nightmares. Eventually, we see that the characters become unable to distinguish between good and evil – or between the River Thames and the Congo, or between black and white – until finally we’re left wondering if there’s really any difference at all.

For Conrad, good and evil aren’t as different as they might seem. Conrad often uses light not as a symbol for goodness or enlightenment, but as a foil to a darkness that it eventually collapses into. Bed- but human nature is the same whether it’s shouting “brava” after an operatic aria or chanting along with war drums. In Heart of Darkness, natural forces have a will of their own: they are hostile to the white “pilgrims”, but accepting toward the black “savages.” Conrad suggests that there’s no real difference between the natural world and human nature.

Man and the natural world

More over, Mother Nature: there’s a new wilderness in town. In Heart of Darkness the natural world isn’t a place of comfort or pleasure or even mild neutrality: it’s dark, frightening, and it will basically eat your face off if you so much as look at it cross-eyed. But is civilization really that much better?

Race

Conrad does not exactly want to buy the world a Coke, but he does seem to have some unconventional views for the late 19th century. In Heart of Darkness, he seems to be suggesting that there really isn’t so much difference between black and white – except that this vision of racial harmony becomes more complicated when you consider that he seems to be suggesting that black people are just less evolved versions of white people. Maybe. We’re like 50% sure on that one. As with most issues in Heart of Darkness, the differences between black and white are so confusing as to be almost meaningless. And, in fact, maybe that’s just Conrad’s point.

Despite white Europe’s good intentions towards the Africans and their desire to “civilize” the black man, imperialism proves to be a brutal and callous victimization of the native Africans for the sole purpose of maximizing profits. Despite Kurtz’s brutality, he treats the Africans more civilly and more as equals than the majority of the other white European characters (like the accountant, the manager, and even Marlow). This is why Marlow sees him as the lesser of two evils.

Identity

By the end of his journey into the Congo, Marlow is so mixed up that he might as well be singing, “I Am the Walrus”. Although he starts off with a pretty clear sense of who he is (white, successful, explorer), the jungle and the wilderness pretty quickly get him all mixed up.

Men may go into the interior whole and unscathed, but the hostile wilderness quickly drains them of their humanity. The wilderness only exposes the essential emptiness in every man’s heart.

Power

Everyone wants to be powerful. And the people in Heart of Darkness are willing to do some pretty nasty things to get their way: blow up steamships, behead Africans, and wish untimely and unpleasant illness on their coworkers. The Europeans all see nature, and the Africans, as something to be dominated – but in the end, we can’t help feeling that the real power is still locked up tight in the African interior. In fact, we suspect that Kurtz’s warrior mistress just might be the most powerful one of all.

Kurtz’s power comes from being able to understand and control the native Africans. With access to a large stash of ivory, he wins leverage within the Company. Kurtz’s lack of self-restraint eventually undermines any position of power he manages to hold.

Women and femininity

Sorry, ladies: there's basically nothing for you here. Seriously. Conrad is all about the gentlemen. For Marlow—and presumably for Conrad, too, although we could argue about that—women exist in a totally separate world. Part of the reason the world in Heart of Darkness is so grim for the dudes is that they have to protect women's idealism.

Of course, you could also suggest that the Intended stands in for all of Western civilization, which would mean that Marlow's lie about Kurtz lets us all go on pretending that foreign workers aren't suffering to produce our smartphones and $5 t-shirts, men and women alike.

Questions about women and femininity

• What is Marlow's opinion of women's position in society? Does Conrad seem to agree with this?
• Which characters demonstrate Marlow's claim and which dispute it?
• What characteristics does Marlow associate with women?
• Compare and contrast the wild warrior woman to the Intended. Both are potential love interests for Kurtz. If the Intended is an embodiment of purity and idealism, what does the warrior woman represent? How do these characteristics reflect on Kurtz?
• Although men make up the majority of the authority figures in the book, powerful women are not utterly absent. Name at least two powerful women and state how they exercise their power.

Chew on This: Despite Marlow's disparaging comments about women, a number of women display or exercise a substantial amount of power in Heart of Darkness. All the women within Heart of Darkness reflect the values of their society and are viewed as nothing more than trophies for men. Even the women who seem at first to have power are in fact powerless upon closer inspection.

Exploration

The Company's continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before. And … to brutalize and abuse the native Africans and lands in order to make huge profits off of ivory. Hm, it doesn't sound so noble when you put it like that, does it?

Marlow and others like him might start off as starry-eyed idealists wanting to fill in the map, but, once that map gets filled in, their goals change: now it's not so much about finding new places as about making that last drop of profit from those new places that they can. Heart of Darkness puts a grim spin on the mythology of exploration—one that J. J. Abrams is probably not going to direct. (Although, that sounds truly awesome.)

Questions about exploration

• What captures Marlow's curiosity about Africa? About Kurtz? What is similar about these two obsessions?
• Why does Marlow insist at first that he's not interested in Kurtz? Is he telling the truth at the time? Does he only get interested later?
• How does Marlow's curiosity compromise his integrity and bring about dire consequences? Or is his curiosity actually harmless?
• How does Marlow explore Kurtz? Is the human mind a legitimate path for exploration? How does this make his sense of right and wrong more flexible?

Chew on This: Marlow's journey up the Congo River parallels his exploration of the human psyche: as he plunges deeper into the African interior, he goes deeper into the nature of good and evil. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad suggests that exploration is a negative force.

Madness

There's method in this madness: Kurtz has gone from noble conqueror to deranged slaver because his power and greed have been totally unchecked. Ergo, if you want to stay sane, don't swoop into an African village and start passing yourself off as a god. Point taken.

But that's where things start to get hazy. Is madness just another name for imperialism—the idea that white men can swoop into Africa and claim it for themselves? Or is madness what happens when civilization tries to conquer the wilderness?

Questions about madness

• How does Conrad define madness? How is Kurtz the ultimate embodiment of madness?
• What symptoms accompany the onset of madness in Heart of Darkness? What human faculties begin to break down? Does Marlow become a little crazy himself?
• Is madness caused by the trip up the Congo River and into the interior? Or is it something that is born into man, regardless of his environment? In other words, is madness caused by inherent nature or environment and experience?
• Can the harlequin be seen as a bridge between madness and sanity? How do his words make sense yet seem like folly to Marlow? How does Marlow relate to the harlequin? What does this say about Marlow's state of sanity?

Chew on This: Isolation and life in the wilderness cause Kurtz's madness; in other words, there is something inherently madness-inducing about the African interior. One of Conrad's main messages is that madness is not caused specifically by living in the wilderness, but that the seeds of madness—ambition, obsession, and greed—are always present.

Language and communication

For someone who wrote a lot of big words, Conrad seems to have some serious doubts about the power of language. In Heart of Darkness, words are always trying and failing to live up to their big, impressive goal: ensuring that two people can understand each other. For Kurtz, language is a way to justify white man's superiority over the Africans. For Marlow, language represents a way out of madness by establishing a connection with other humans. For the Africans—well, who knows? To Marlow, their words aren't even language. We might say the same about you, Mr. Conrad.

Questions about language and communication

• What is significant about the manager's and the brickmaker's characteristic blabbering? What does it say about their characters?
• How does Marlow receive information about Kurtz? Are these sources reliable? What expectations does Marlow form about Kurtz based on this hearsay?
• What is Kurtz's relationship to language? How does his troubled psyche manifest itself in his words? What is Marlow's opinion of all this and how does it affect his own relationship to language? Does he see it as a cure for madness?
• What is Marlow's style of narration? Does the fact that he is telling the story compromise our belief in its validity? Is he a reliable narrator? What might be his goal in relating the story to his fellow passengers?

Chew on This: Linguistic expression—through either speech or text—represents one way out of madness, but they also represent a way into madness. Kurtz's handle on language helps make him go crazy. In Heart of Darkness, problems with words give us a clue to character defects.

Fear

The white pilgrims go into the interior in constant fear of their surroundings. Their trepidation is so strong that they develop a paranoia of the wilderness – its eerie silences and sudden blinding fogs, its impenetrable darkness and shadowy savages. Being so far removed from any vestige of civilization as they know it only adds to their sense of helplessness. Their fear makes them do foolish things on impulse. Fear also contributes to their eventual madness. It pervades the entire novel and seems to seep into the environment itself so that everything is not only terror-inducing, but morally disturbing as well.

Questions about fear

• What exactly do the white men fear about the black native Africans? How is this enhanced by the jungle environment?
• What do the men fear about Kurtz? What makes them go after him anyway? Why does Kurtz pose such a big threat to them?
• How does Conrad enhance our fear and awe of Kurtz? What physical and mental characteristics does Kurtz display that render this man particularly disturbing to our sense of normality and morality?
• What does Kurtz fear? What exactly is "The horror! The horror!" that he dies fighting?

Chew on This: Conrad stokes readers’ fear of the interior by narrating the death of Fresleven, imposing Marlow’s discomfort, and rendering nature a hostile force to the white pilgrims. Kurtz strikes readers as particularly frightening because of his eerie combination of human and ghostly features and his strangely logical, yet brutal, flow of thought.

Fate and free will

Marlow’s journey toward the interior and toward Kurtz seems inevitable, as if Marlow is drawn nearer and nearer to the heart of darkness by his own morbid curiosity and by his childhood drive to explore. Indeed, the two women knitting in Brussels represent the Fates of ancient Greek mythology. With their appearance, Marlow begins to feel as if his journey is ill-starred – yet he forges on anyway. The interplay between fate and free will informs the action of the plot, calling into question whether Marlow could have avoided his descent into madness, his corruption, and his subsequent revelations about human nature.

Questions about fate and free will

• How are the two old knitting women embodiments of Fate? Why does Marlow envision them at the end?
• Are all the accidents that keep delaying Marlow’s journey into the interior truly incidental?
• How is Kurtz a product of fate? To what extent do his personal choices affect his descent into madness? Could his demise have been prevented?