Joseph Conrad, in his long-short story,
³Heart of Darkness,² tells the tale of two mens¹ realization of the hidden,
dark, evil side of themselves. Marlow,
the ³second² narrator of the framed narrative, embarked upon a spiritual
adventure on which he witnessed firsthand the wicked potential in
everyone. On his journey into the dark,
forbidden Congo, the ³heart of darkness,² so to speak, Marlow encountered
Kurtz, a ³remarkable man² and ³universal genius,² who had made himself a god in
the eyes of the natives over whom he had an imperceptible power. These two men were, in a sense, images of
each other: Marlow was what Kurtz may
have been, and Kurtz was what Marlow may have become.
Like a jewel, ³Heart of Darkness² has many
facets. From one view it is an exposure
of Belgian methods in the Congo, which at least for a good part of the way
sticks closely to Conrad¹s own experience.
Typically, however, the adventure is related to a larger view of human affairs. Marlow told the story one evening on a yacht
in the Thames estuary as darkness fell, reminding his audience that
exploitation of one group by another was not new in history. They were anchored in the river, where ships
went out to darkest Africa. Yet, as
lately as Roman times, London¹s own river led, like the Congo, into a barbarous
hinterland where the Romans went to make their profits. Soon darkness fell over London, while the
ships that bore ³civilization² to remote parts appeared out of the dark,
carrying darkness with them, different only in kind to the darkness they
encounter.
These thoughts and feelings were merely
part of the tale, for Conrad had a more personal story to tell, about a single
man who went so far from civilization that its restraints no longer mattered to
him. Exposed to the unfamiliar emotional
and physical demands of the African wilderness, free to do exactly as he chose,
Kurtz plunged into horrible orgies of which human sacrifice and cannibalism
seemed to have formed a part. These
excesses taught him and Marlow what human nature was actually like: ³The horror!² Kurtz gasped before he
died. Marlow¹s own journey from Belgium
to the Congo and thence up the river then took on the aspect of a man¹s journey
into his own inner depths. Marlow was
saved from the other man¹s fate not by higher principles or a better
disposition, but merely because he happened to be very busy, and the demands of
work were themselves a discipline. The
readers perceive, too, that other white men on the Congo refrained from such excesses,
if they did so, only because they had lesser, more timorous natures which did
not dare to express themselves completely.
Marlow felt that he had taken the lid off something horrible in the very
depths of man which he could not explain when he returned to the world where
basic instincts had been carefully smoothed over. Faced by a crisis, he even denied what he had
seen to Kurtz¹s Intended, though he was appalled by his lie as bringing with it
a betrayal of truth which was essentially a kind of death.
In ³Heart of Darkness² the sense of human
waste that pervaded the story was best unfolded in the ivory itself. It was an object for the rich - in
decorations, for piano keys and billiard balls - hardly a necessary item for
survival, or even for comfortable living.
In a way, it was evil, a social luxury , an appurtenance to which people
had become accustomed; and it was for evil, for appurtenances, that the Congo
was plundered and untold numbers of natives were beaten and slaughtered
brutally or casually. This view of evil
was part of Marlow¹s conception; a utilitarian object like copper or iron would
have had its own reason for being.
Kurtz¹s evil propensities (he collected natives¹ heads, he sought the
³evil² ivory) made him so contemptuous of individual lives; for evil and life
have traditionally clashed. Beauty for
the few was gained with the blood of the many.
Where evil ruled, it was a form of
power. The evil took on magical significance, becoming a kind of
totem and treasure. Perhaps consciously
aware of this, like the evil he had become, Kurtz gained his power, indeed his
identity and being, from the ivory he coveted.
In a world of evil, the most greedy collector was often supreme. Cruelty was indistinguishable from the vision
of Kurtz, a vision of power and control which the ivory provided for him. Ivory, and thus evil, was merely a base on
which he grew rich and powerful. Kurtz
had risen above the masses standing on his pile of ivory. Kurtz, evil, and ivory were interconnected: he was
ivory:
He [Kurtz] looked at least seven feet
long. His covering had fallen off, and
his
body emerged from it pitiful and
appalling as from a winding-sheet. I
could see
the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones
of his arm waving. It was as though an
animated image of death carved out of
old ivory had been shaking its hand with
with menaces at a motionless crowd of
men made of cloth and glittering bronze.
The interconnection of Kurtz, evil, and
ivory had far-reaching ramifications in Marlow¹s tale. ³Heart of Darkness,² was ostensibly a
journey, Marlow¹s, to the source of evil and power up the Congo; and yet the
reader recalls mainly stagnation. Time
and space were halted in that jungle outpost, and Kurtz, that demon of energy,
was ill, passive, awaiting death even as he made plans. The scenes of his final hours were images of
futility and apathy. His evil impotence,
the root of both his power and powerlessness, was incorporated into both tone
and theme.
Marlow¹s adventure in the Congo was an
experience that led not only to philosophical conclusions but to a physical and
nervous collapse. Marlow¹s health was
ruined. He was profoundly shocked by the
exploitation of the natives, and the dark, primitive jungle chaos haunted his
imagination. Witnessing the evils in the
jungle allowed Marlow to do what Kurtz had failed to do: he was able to repress the evil side of his
nature and force his mind into safer, moral channels of thought. He kept his sanity by suppressing the sense
of horror which had dominated Kurtz and forced him to become evil. Marlow saw the sickness in the whole account
of the exploitation of the natives, and the savagery he felt within himself, in
the hypocrisy of men who wanted to both improve the brutes and to exterminate
them. Since everything that was
necessary to Marlow¹s sanity was parallel to Kurtz¹s, he could not crawl out of
Kurtz¹s mind for even a second. Hence
the difficulty he had in putting down the heathen in himself intensified.
It is evident that Conrad¹s ³Heart of
Darkness² is a story of the recognition of, in Marlow¹s case, the potential of
evil corruption in himself; in Kurtz¹s case, the recognition and
acknowledgement of the evil he had become.
It is a tale of the acceptance of a hidden evil side in everyone. Marlow and Kurtz were alike in their
recognition of this evil, yet they differed in the manner with which they dealt
with it. Marlow peered over the brink of
the abyss that Kurtz opened before him.
Marlow judged Kurtz a moral hero for his direct stare into the heart of
darkness, and for his candid judgment of its horror. As Marlow found himself looking into the
abyss, he was able to turn back, and reject his own potential to become what
Kurtz had become.
As he judge Kurtz¹s proclamation of;
horror to be a kind of ³affirmation,² a ³sort of belief² expressed with a
terrible candor and ³vibrating² with a ³note of revolt,² so we might judge
Marlow¹s expression of his indignation and contempt to be a kind of moral
heroism.
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