Individuality In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is a novel with a plot immersed in social and political themes, allusions, and messages. Most notably, the novel can be interpreted as an exposition on British imperialism in Africa. At the time of its original publication, “Heart of Darkness” exposed a Western audience to African communities that, while fictitious, were quite representative. Most Western accounts of Africans in the late 19th century and early 20th century characterized Africans as being particularly bestial, primitive, and savage (Hampson 77). Meanwhile, Conrad’s depictions of Africans in the novel challenged these characterizations. Specifically, Conrad depicted Africans, prima facia, as savages, at least in their outward appearances, but …show more content…
Under many psychological conceptions of individuality, the concept is defined in personality terms (Buss 22). That is, individuality is expressed through differential personality traits. Under such a conception of individuality, however, it may be difficult to identify cultural distinctions between individuals. After all, personality traits are heavily dependent on cultural factors. Nonetheless, psychological conceptions of individuality can certainly still be useful when applied to literature. Distinctions in personality traits are almost certain to be expressed in literature through introspective stream-of-thought narratives and considerations of the thoughts of others based on their actions. Marlow in “Heart of Darkness” has many introspective narratives and analyzes the behaviors of others, determining or at least estimating their lines of thought. It is also important to recognize, here, that two important aspects in the psychological conception of individuality are the concepts of empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the phenomenon of being able to feel what others are feeling simply by viewing what others are going through. Sympathy is experiencing a state of emotional understanding of what others are going through by understanding exactly what they are going through (Buss 45). Both empathy and sympathy are important for understanding individuality from a psychological perspective because each allows for a connection to be established between individuals from different cultures. Thus, sympathy and empathy each act to connect members of different cultures, which allows for the recognition of similarities between cultures as well as clear points of distinctions between cultures. The concept of individuality, of course, relies not on determining the similarities between cultures, but the distinctions within cultures. In cases in which individuals from different cultures have