The Horror

Even now, after finishing Heart of Darkness, and discussing it a bit in class, I am unable to believe Conrad is saying mankind is by nature dark and evil. Yes, Marlow (the character he created) is spiteful towards all the ignorant Europeans when he returns, and he likens their lives to a futile game, a worthless jounrey with eyes fixed on a non-existant prize, but I must believe he leaves it up to the reader to peg a word on life. He explores the darkness humans have inside, and the darkness brought out by them into the world, but he never says all people are evil. He says some people fall into the pit and can never get out. He does imply that the darkness is in all of us, but he doesn't insist we are all dark. Is this making any sense? Just because we are capable of these atrocities, doesn't mean we all will commit them. This book is a tool for thought. It is meant to make people see what we are capable, not what we will all become.

In the beginning of the book I was immediately reminded on the Holocaust. Conrad descibred the natives as angles, and as soon as this was referrenced in class I thought of how the Nazis starved the Jews so that they would look less human. I read somewhere that they did it on purpose, so that they wouldn't feel as bad murdering them; if they weren't human, these Jews, if they were creatures to be exterminated, they could be killed without remorse. In this book, the natives are kept looking bony and inhuman- and of course, their differing skin color could not have helped them look European. It is sick, really, how people can come to trick themselves into murder. And, the book was written before the Holocaust. I wish someone had read it, seen the Holocaust coming and stopped it. But perhaps there was no other way, no other way to make people see.

It's horrible the things that have to happen to make people see sometimes.