Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness represents this overwhelming divide between what we namely think of as civilized people and those who are not encroached by rules and regulations. Surprisingly, the sailor retelling his journey in Africa, Charles Marlow, realizes that in fact, there is little that separates himself from the natives living within tribal territories in the jungle. Furthermore, Conrad ironically denotes this fear that we all have of being free from society’s chains placed upon us. Throughout the narrative, Marlow expresses his apprehension of venturing into the unknown, a worry that actually may lie within each of us. Marlow may actually symbolize a lingering voice inside us that remains trapped. Heart of Darkness first takes …show more content…
Marlow is shocked by the Company members’ abuse towards what Marlow visually perceived as the uncivilized natives. These individuals were forced to do the hard labor while being chained. On his quest down the river, Marlow also encounters different tribal groups screaming and making uncharacteristic gestures. Initially, Marlow sees these foreign groups as threatening and impressively uncultured. But he realizes soon after that they really were not as distinctly benighted as he had previously molded them up to be as he recognizes. In fact, these inhabitants were not that different from him, which was even more terrifying for Marlow as he claims. Marlow must be wondering how really dissimilar these natives are compared to him. Yes, they do not wear the same clothes as Marlow and it is true that they express themselves in a much more obvious way, but is he and are we not the same? I know that in the privacy of my home I act in a way most would deem much less civilized than to the public eye. There are norms that I must uphold to be considered sane or lawful. It is really society’s influence on us that forces individuals to follow rules of conduct. If given the same opportunities, maybe Marlow would have acted similarly to that of the shouting natives. Maybe all of us would have acted this way. This is what scares Marlow. How can the Company be mistreating these natives so badly even though those …show more content…
Throughout Marlow’s story, we anticipate this extraordinary man to give us hope that there is at least someone who cares at a deeper level for the inhabitants. Marlow and I are sprayed with disappointment when the person we expect to be noble and stoic ends up being mentally ill and quite brutal, taking advantage of his power as a leader and using the inhabitants’ naivety to help him conquer more areas of land for ivory whilst also caring very little for the natives, ironically declaring, at the end of a written statement to the. It is interesting that through all of this anticipation of meeting Kurtz, Marlow is left quite empty. His encounter with Kurtz further exacerbates and perpetuates Marlow’s view that if Kurtz, who has been claimed to represent all that is good, can be brought down to his most basic primitive nature, then we all have in us the same instincts that these natives have and openly