Theme Of Cruelty In Heart Of Darkness

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad cruelty plays an important role in the theme of the story being told by Marlow. Darkness is shown throughout as what has become of the people who 've dared to venture within the heart of the thing. Darkness is a describing factor in the story, it 's showing you what happens when you loose yourself to the greedy heart of it. There becomes victims and perpetrators motivated towards their own goals.

In the case of the perpetrator, the environment is a major factor in the cruelty displayed. Kurtz seems to be very charismatic and a natural born leader from the way everyone around him talks about him. The Russian is very loyal to Kurtz and would do anything for him so is Kurtz 's Intended. She speaks so highly …show more content…
The victims in this story are the natives, savages, African Americans, Canibals or anything else you may see them written as. It 's portrayed that anyone who isn 't white in color is known as lesser because of it. The Africans are mentioned many times at the station as dying people. They resemble death to Marlow as he remembers them as sickly thin, unnervingly exhausted, and overworked. They are living to die and it 's easy to tell, it 's also known that they are harmless people. "They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom." The black men have no hope and know the world and the Europeans only as cruel beings and how could they not with the way the are treated. In the case of the Cannibals, they seem to have restraint against the cruelty of their environment. They are given little more than copper wires to survive, which prove to be quite useless, and yet they still choose to be peaceful. The cannibals outnumbered the pilgrims easily and could very likely overtake them, but they don 't. They think rationally, knowing that if they tried to harm the pilgrims on the boat, they would be left in unfamiliar territory with nothing. Even when the savages are attacking the steamboat, the cannibals stay clam while the pilgrims immediately go to their guns. Maybe this goes to show that trying to take over unfamiliar territory affects the European men greatly. While the ones who are native to areas like this or this area specifically seem to be more peaceful people, being used to the environment, the pilgrims are the opposite. The pilgrims are power hungry and want what isn 't theirs, but in the process of taking it, they themselves become the "savage" figures in the