|
Heart of Darkness
The novel begins with an unnamed narrator introducing five men sitting on
board Nellie, a boat docked in the Thames. Then it centers on Marlow, an
introspective sailor, and his journey up the
Congo River to meet Kurtz,
reputed to be a man of great abilities. With help from an aunt, Marlow gets
a job commanding a ship for an ivory trading company. The trip starts form
the Thames as the cargo ship gradually sails into the jungles of the African
Congo. Along the endless coastline, Marlow encounters widespread
inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants
have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from
overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. He is
appalled by the starving and dying blacks. Marlow arrives at the Central
Station where he met the general manager. He finds that his steamer has been
sunk and the repair of the ship will take several months. His interest in
Kurtz grows during this period, for everywhere he hears about this
remarkable person. Then Marlow starts his long, difficult voyage toward
Kurtz into the heart of darkness on the newly-repaired steamer. On their way
up the river they met various adventures that are somewhat linked with
Kurtz. Now Marlow gives an account of Kurtz. Kurtz, once a civilized white
man, has degenerated into a brutal monster exploiting ruthlessly the native
Africans. Like many other colonialists, Kurtz comes to Africa to plunder
ivory. Although Kurtz has established himself as colonial authority over
natives and accumulates big wealth, his integrity as a civilized man erodes.
He sees “on that irony face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless
power, of craven terror, of an intense and helpless despair.” He never lives
happily, but with enormous depression. His last words before death are “The
Horror! The Horror!” Marlow returns to Europe and becomes seriously ill.
More than a year later, Marlow visits the mistress of Kurtz. When she asks
him the last words of Kurtz, he lies to her. The story ends with Marlow
sitting quietly as if contemplating the darkness of the heart.
Heart of Darkness explores the issues
surrounding
imperialism in complicated ways. It can be read in many ways.
One of the ways is the severe criticism of brutal colonialism. By returning
to the primitive world of the Congo, Conrad impresses us with the cruel and
barbarous ways of the imperialist and colonialist rulers to control the
black natives of Central Africa. Kurtz, a man honored as “a first-class
agent”, a “universal genius”…is actually a man who kills many natives to
meet his insatiable greed for ivory. However, on one hand, Kurtz makes all
the natives obey him with respect; on the other hand the madness of natives
is the result of being removed from one’s social context. Thus Kurtz
actually has no authority to which he answers but himself. Here are two
excerpt paragraphs in which Marlow, arriving at Central Station, hears again
about the mysterious Kurtz and his later travel on the river in the African
jungle to meet Kurtz :
“'The chief of the Inner
Station,’ he answered in a short tone, looking away. ‘Much obliged,’ I said,
laughing. ‘And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Every one
knows that.’ He was silent for a while. ‘He is a prodigy,’ he said at last.
‘He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what
else. We want,’ he began to declaim suddenly, ‘for the guidance of the cause
entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide
sympathies, a singleness of purpose.’ ‘Who says that?’ I asked. ‘Lots of
them,’ he replied. ‘Some even write that; and so he comes here, a special
being, as you ought to know.’ ‘Why ought I to know?’ I interrupted, really
surprised. He paid no attention. ‘Yes. Today he is chief of the best
station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and . . .
but I dare-say you know what he will be in two years' time. You are of the
new gang--the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also
recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.’ Light dawned
upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an
unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. ‘Do you
read the Company's confidential correspondence?’ I asked. He hadn't a word
to say. It was great fun. ‘When Mr. Kurtz,’ I continued, severely, ‘is
General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.’”
“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest
beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big
trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.
The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance
of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the
gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks hippos and alligators
sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob
of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert,
and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you
thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had
known once--somewhere--far away--in another existence perhaps. There were
moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have
not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful
and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities
of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness
of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an
implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you
with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any
more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to
discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for
sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew
out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have
ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I
had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the
night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that
sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality--the reality, I tell
you--fades. The inner truth is hidden--luckily, luckily. But I felt it all
the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey
tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective
tight-ropes for--what is it? half-a-crown a tumble—
”
|
