Exploration of Darkness in Heart of Darkness
Uploaded by VitruvianGirl on Feb 14, 2006
“Into the heart of an immense darkness” (72)
Light versus darkness is a common archetype that appears as a struggle between good and evil. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a novella that is cloaked in darkness, both literally and figuratively. It is the narrative of the journey of a steamboat captain, Marlow, into Africa as he searches for Kurtz, a famed chief of the Inner Station. Heart of Darkness is a novella that explores the physical and figurative darkness in the world and inside oneself.
The “heart of darkness,” the completely ambiguous title of the book, is the reader’s first reference to the darkness of and in the story. At first glance, one might assume the “heart of darkness” is simply the African jungle that Marlow and Kurtz are in-merely the location of the story. Also, it may be the inherent evil within a person and the darkness within one’s heart. A more literal heart could be represented with Kurtz as the heart and the ivory as the driving force that fuels him. However, Conrad allows room for many interpretations of the vague title of this novella and never explains or gives much insight into the true meaning.
Conrad forces the reader to wade through the murky imagery that surrounds every aspect of the book. The setting of the book itself is dark. The narrator tells the story in the black of night: “it had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another” (24). When the story opens on the Thames River in England, even when the sun is shining brightly, the story takes place in a “mournful gloom” (1). Brussels, a “whited sepulcher,” contains the Company’s offices on “a narrow and deserted street in deep shadow” in which two women knit “black wool” (7). As if the description weren’t enough, the reader notices two women who seem uncannily like the Fates of mythology which weave destiny and lead only to death, or perhaps hell. The main setting of the Congo River is most definitely sinister and Marlow says that river is “fascinating-deadly-like a snake” (7). The African jungle is notoriously dark, from the physical darkness of the natives to the spiritual darkness of these so-called savages. The general darkness of the setting...