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Motifs
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—"The horror! The horror!"
T. S. Eliot's use of a quotation from The Heart of Darkness—"Mistah Kurtz, he dead"—as an epigraph to the original manuscript of his poem, The Hollow Men, contrasted its dark horror with the presumed "light of civilization," and suggested the ambiguity of both the dark motives of civilization and the freedom of barbarism, as well as the "spiritual darkness" of several characters in Heart of Darkness. This sense of darkness also lends itself to a related theme of obscurity—again, in various senses, reflecting the ambiguities in the work. Moral issues are not clear-cut; that which traditionally placed on the side of "light" is in fact mired in darkness, and vice versa.
Africa was known as "The Dark Continent" in the Victorian Era with all the negative attributes of darkness attributed to Africans by the British. One of the possible influences for the Kurtz character was Henry Morton Stanley of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" fame, as he was a principal explorer of "The Dark Heart of Africa", particularly the Congo. Stanley was infamous in Africa for horrific violence[1] and yet he was honoured with a knighthood. However, an agent Conrad himself encountered when travelling in the Congo, named Georges-Antoine Klein (klein means 'small' in German, as Kurtz alludes to kurz, 'short'), could have possibly served as an actual model for Kurtz. Klein died aboard Conrad's steamer and was interred along the Congo, much like Kurtz in the novel.[2] Among the people Conrad may have encountered on his journey was a trader called Leon Rom, who was later named chief of the Stanley Falls Station. In 1895 a British traveller reported that Rom had decorated his flower-bed with the skulls of some twenty-one victims of his displeasure, including women and children, resembling the posts of Kurtz's Station.[3]
Duality of Human Nature
But theory is one thing, practice is another. Idealism, which has a Utopian quality, is inappropriate in a world where corrupt interests abound and where there are many who go on all fours. The last sentence in the report, an added footnote--"Exterminate all the brutes"--refers us to the dark other side of his identity, "the soul satiated with primitive emotions"; it shows a descent from high to low, and that his civilizer's concern for the distressed savages has turned to hatred--a Jekyll-to-Hyde turn. Of particular relevance in this respect is the significance of the portrait he has painted, the blindfolded torchbearer against the black background, which could be said to suggest, among other things, the simplicity of the ideal and the complexity of reality, the illusion of light and the truth of darkness. The monstrous prevails, and the human and artistic potential miscarries. There is a downward tug in Kurtz's involvement with the wilderness and he descends into a brute existence. He is reduced to madness, and his aggressive impulses take control of him —[4] |
To emphasize the theme of darkness within all of mankind[4], Marlow's narration takes place on a yawl in the Thames tidal estuary. Early in the novella, Marlow recounts how London, the largest, most populous and wealthiest city in the world at the time, was itself a "dark" place in Roman times. The idea that the Romans, at one time, conquered the "savage" Britons parallels Conrad's current tale of the Belgians conquering the "savage" Africans. The theme of darkness lurking beneath the surface of even "civilized" persons appears prominently, and is further explored through the character of Kurtz and through Marlow's passing sense of understanding with the Africans.
Kurtz embodies all forms of an urge to be more or less than human. He employs his faculties for aims in the opposite direction from the idealism announced in his self-deconstructing report as a civilizer. His writings designate in Marlow's view an "exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence" and they appeal to "every altruistic sentiment." His predisposition for benevolent sympathy is clear in the statement "We whites...must necessarily appear to them[savages] in the nature of supernatural beings....By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded". The Central Station manager quotes Kurtz, the exemplar: "Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing". Kurtz's inexperienced, scientific self in the fiery report is alive with the possibility of the cultivation and conversion of the "savages." He would have subscribed to Moreau's proposition that "a pig may be educated".[4]
Themes developed in the novella's later scenes include the naïveté of Europeans—particularly women—regarding the various forms of darkness in the Congo; the British traders and Belgian colonialists' abuse of the natives; and man's potential for duplicity[disambiguation needed]. The symbolic levels of the book expand on all of these in terms of a struggle between good and evil (light and darkness), not so much between people as within every major character's soul.
- Introduction
- Background
- Plot summary
- Motifs
- Readings
- Historical context
- Reception
- Adaptations
- Notes
- References
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