Heart Of Darkness Imperialism Analysis

Crafted by the god of the forge, yet worn and gifted by the messenger god, the Talaria were sported by Perseus on his quest to slay Medusa. This pair of winged sandals not only initiated Perseus’s journey to decapitate the gruesome Gorgon, but they guided him along until it was his time to deliver the death-bringing blow to Medusa on his own accord. Charles Marlow too steps into his own pair of shoes upon the commencement into the Congo in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. As opposed to Perseus’s Talaria, Marlow’s shoes are not of benevolent guidance; they are of the perverted guidance of imperialism, which is the root of European colonization of Africa, and must be cast aside if Marlow and his auditors are to understand the haze of life in …show more content…
Marlow prefaces his exhaustive tale to come by delving into the stream of history preceding his upcoming tale to the group of men before him and notes the tendency of history to repeat itself. In telling his listeners of when the Romans first came to England and conquered its people as a prelude to how he and others, under European instruction, would stride forth into Africa, Marlow provides a connection to the actions he and other Europeans took in Africa with the imperialistic aspirations of the Romans in the rest of Europe. Heart of Darkness, as narrated by a presumed man who listens to Marlow retell his story on the Nellie, is the quest not just into the depths of Africa, but a quest into the heart of man wherein the realization at the moment of death, either firsthand or observed vicariously, elucidates the necessity of living according to personal truth and meaning. Marlow shares how he came to inherit his position as a steamboat captain and learned from such defining instances in the jungle. The late Dane, Fresleven, described as “‘gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs,’” held the the Captain position Marlow would come to take over