Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella (published 1902) by Joseph Conrad. Before publication, it appeared in a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine (1899). This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame tale, narrated by a man named Marlow to a group of men on a ship at dusk and on into the evening. It details an incident earlier in Marlow's life, a visit up what we can assume is the Congo River (although the name of the country Marlow is visiting is never specified in the text) to investigate the work of Kurtz, a Belgian trader in ivory in the Congo Free State.
The story within a story device actually descends three levels: Conrad writes the story we read, which is the account of an unnamed narrator relating Marlow's yarn of his journey down the Congo river to meet and examine the central character Kurtz. (Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein used a similar device, but the most influential example remains Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes)
Background
To write Heart of Darkness, Conrad drew heavily from his own experience in the Congo. Eight years before he wrote the book, he served as a sea captain for a Congo steamer. On a single trip up the river, he had witnessed so many atrocities that he quit on the spot.
Conrad's experiences in the Congo and the historical background to the story, including possible models for Kurtz, are recounted in the historical work, King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.
Themes
The theme of "darkness" from the title recurs throughout the book. It is used to reflect the unknown (as Africa at the time was often called the "Dark Continent" by Europeans), the concept of the "darkness of barbarism" contrasted with the "light of civilization" (see white man's burden), and the "spiritual darkness" of several characters. 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 ought to be (in various senses) on the side of "light" is in fact mired in darkness, and so forth.
To emphasize the theme of darkness within ourselves, Marlow's narration takes place on a yacht in the Thames tidal estuary. Early in the novella, the narrator recounts how London, the largest, most populous and wealthiest city in the world, where Conrad wrote and where a large part of his audience lived, was itself in Roman times a dark part of the world much like the Congo then was. The theme of darkness lurking beneath the surface of even "civilized" persons is further explored through the character of Kurtz and through Marlow's passing sense of understanding with the Africans. Like Marlow himself, the astute reader emerges from the tale with an expanded comprehension of the darkness within his own mind.
In the opening passages of the novel, Conrad repeatedly describes London in terms of its darkness and "gloom," and later describes Belgium as a dark place. This could suggest that Conrad is critical of the supposedly enlightening civilisation that is colonising Africa and that London itself is the "Heart of Darkness".
Themes developed in the novella's more superficial levels include the naïveté of Europeans—particularly women—regarding the various forms of darkness in the Congo; the Belgian colonialists' abuse of the natives; and man's potential for two-facedness. The symbolic levels of the book expand on all of these in terms of a struggle between good and evil, not so much between people as within every major character's soul.
Through the novel, Conrad stresses the importance of restraint. Restraint in his view, is a person’s "primitive honour" against his or her basic impulses. From the perspective of existentialism, people who do not have restraint will be trapped in the destructive cycle and their lives will be absurd and insane. Having restraint can save them from the cycle and keep them sane.
Controversy
Some literary critics, most notably author and professor Chinua Achebe, the writer of Things Fall Apart, have criticized Conrad for having a racist bias throughout the novella despite the book's intentions to expose the atrocities in the Congo. In particular, critics have objected to the depiction of Africans as primitive, irrational people and of Africa itself as a savage, dark continent. First appearances of controversy over Heart of Darkness appear in Achebe's 1975 lecture "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness."[1] In this lecture, Achebe emphasized the implications and explicit statements of the inferiority of African people. According to Achebe, his opinions were met with dismay and outrage from some peers: "After I delivered my lecture at Harvard, a professor emeritus from the University of Massachusetts said, 'How dare you? How dare you upset everything we have taught, everything we teach? Heart of Darkness is the most widely taught text in the university in this country. So how dare you say it’s different?" [2] Despite the alleged racist overtones, Heart of Darkness is considered to be a literary classic and is widely read in educational institutions around the world.
Others, such as Cedric Watts in A Bloody Racist: About Achebe's View of Conrad, refute Achebe's critique. (A quick 'Point by Point' refutation of Achebe's critique to Watts' rebuttal was done by one Alexis and Carla.) Other critiques include Hugh Curtler's Achebe on Conrad: Racism and Greatness in Heart of Darkness.
In the arts
- 1972 -- Aguirre, The Wrath of God, a German film directed by Werner Herzog, is remarkably similar to Conrad's novella -- like Conrad's book, it mocks European colonialism and mimicks the trip in to the jungle with the madness and depravity of the characters increasing the deeper they go in to the wilderness.
- 1979 -- John Milius based his script for Apocalypse Now on the novel. It was filmed by Francis Ford Coppola.
- 1993 -- Nicholas Roeg filmed Heart of Darkness for television with Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz.
- 1993 -- Animaniacs parodied both Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness in a segment in episode 20 called Hearts of Twilight.
- 2004 -- Dead Ringers parodied John Kerry's campaign in the 2004 US Presidential Election using a Apocalyse Now/Heart of Darkness setting.
- 2005 -- King Kong has many references to Heart of Darkness, including a scene where Jimmy holds a copy of the book and says “It’s not an adventure story, is it?”, suggesting that Conrad meant to explore human cruelty towards others as much as he meant to explore the Belgian Congo—and thus also the film is more than an adventure story but also explores the human will to exploit others. [3]
See also
- 1912 - In The Sea and the Jungle by H. M. Tomlinson, a non-fiction travel narrative classic, Tomlinson recounts the first English "tramp steamer" to traverse the Amazon river in 1905, it contains many of the same themes as Heart of Darkness
- 1966 - The Crystal World, a science-fiction novel by J. G. Ballard, is published. It has some points of contact with Conrad's novel, notably the setting in a dark forest and the voyage of desperate character into its depths.
- 1980 - Cannibal Holocaust, an Italian exploitation film that deals with Westerners inflicting atrocities on natives of the Amazon Rainforest and vice versa.
- 1991 - Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a documentary about the making of the film Apocalypse Now
- 1993 - Headhunter, a novel by Timothy Findley which recasts Kurtz and Marlow as psychiatrists in an apocalyptic version of Toronto
- 2003 - Shatterpoint, a Star Wars book that was heavily influenced by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.
- 2005 - The First Casualty, a novel by Ben Elton, follows the same storyline where a British police detective investigates a crime in the midst of the First World War, and gradually becomes painfully acquainted with the horrors of war. He is given the false name of Christopher Marlowe (cf Charlie Marlow), and he makes references to the Belgian colonisation of the Congo.
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