Heart of Darkness

I’ve not written about how I perceived the end of the book; I took ample notes, yes, but haven’t really put anything together concretely. This wasn’t because I didn’t have anything so say, but rather I wasn’t sure how to say it. I’ve decided that informal would probably be better. Sometimes an “RTL” like piece is too contrived and is just appropriate.

Throughout the reading of this short novel I have tracked Conrad’s use of the words “dark” and “black”. Of course that in turn allowed me to take special note of his uses of the words “light” and “white/ivory” but mostly I looked at the first two. I was especially taken by his description of the “intended”, as Conrad wrote,

“She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk…The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, the pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me” (160).

I was confused by his description of her as he seemed, at one moment, to be describing the angel of death, and the next, a poor helpless girl. When he later describes her pain and the ‘darkness’ of death that has taken her beloved, and her, he writes,

“The sound of her low voice…the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of eternal darkness…but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before the great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her- from which I could not even defend myself” (Conrad, 162)

Conrad makes a point in both of these pieces to pay special attention to the light and dark aspects of her face, the room, and the metaphorical darkness, symbolizing sadness and pain. I could pluck countless more uses of these words throughout the novel, but the point has already been made: shadows and the absence of light lead us to immediately picture mysterious danger and death, and Conrad has used this to, quite effectively, set his scene.

Another thing I found interesting about this book was how in the beginning, Conrad initially calls the natives shades, shadows, acute angles, and phantoms, but later calls them human. In similar form, he starts by calling the Europeans human, but by the end, he describes perhaps the two most quintessential Europeans (Kurtz and his Intended) as a phantom and a shadow. Perhaps this was an inadvertent switch but I really think he was trying to show what the darkness of mankind had done to them. It had turned them into nothing, just as the natives had been viewed as nothing. They became inhuman because the darkness took all their good-intentioned vibrancy. Well, perhaps Kurtz wasn’t originally good intentioned in terms of wanting to civilize people just because he found them uncivilized, but I feel the goal was initially meant to be noble. Many people argue after reading this book (classmates of mine I mean) that Conrad is saying all civilization is bad. I disagree. He is showing the battle, the fine line, between the good of civilization and the bad. He is showing how power and corruption and humans’ innate desire to own has brought the darkness out from within. Conrad shows the struggle Marlow has with condemning Kurtz because he sees the man behind the mask, the man who came to Africa to help the people. In the end, Marlow, and arguably Conrad, find sympathy for the man who lost himself along the way. Yes, he committed numerous atrocities (those heads on stakes outside his hut...etc....) but isn't it worse to lose yourself? No matter what he did to everyone else, he hurt himself the most and this is why Marlow so pities him and his fiance.

In the end, Marlow spares the intended from the truth, almost as an attempt to smother the darkness within her. He knew if he told her the depressing truth, she would be unable to recover, and would be completely and utterly succumbed by the darkness of mankind for the rest of her days. In this way, he gave her light and life in his lying. The reader is left with a feeling of sadness, remembering Kurtz’s depressingly lonely and ‘horrifying’ death. But the reader is also left with a flicker of hope, knowing Marlow has been able to save at least one person.