Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 


Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - read by millions, reviewed by thousands. Is it possible for me to come up with anything even approaching originality for this classic? I think not. Thus, I've confined myself to commenting on several select passages.

"Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like."

Marlow pictures the Romans who came to what is now England as viewing the River Thames in much the same way as he viewed the river in the Congo - as the heart of darkness. Marlow is keenly aware what passes for civilization is an extremely relative term. Conrad's novella breaks new ground in its harsh criticism of colonialism and, more generally, Western Civilization.

"Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks—these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast."

Faces like grotesque masks, you say? Why? Because they do not possess the familiar features of white Europeans? Doesn't this speak to our all too human tendency to see those not like ourselves as "the other"?

"I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking...They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages."

Marlow repeatedly refers to the Africans as savages. Is it any wonder Chinua Achebe notes when reading Heart of Darkness he realized he was "not on Marlow's ship" but was, instead, one of the unattractive beings Marlow encounters. Achebe goes on to say how Conrad describes an African working on the ship as a "dog wearing trousers". Achebe judges Conrad's language of description of Africans as inappropriate. "I realized how terribly terribly wrong it was to portray my people — any people — from that attitude."

“Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks."

Marlow (and Conrad) never once has an African speak language; rather, the Africans in the novella merely grunt, howl, screech or babble. Is this the tacit message: these Africans are not entirely human?

On one level, Heart of Darkness can be read as a tale of returning to our human origins, indeed, to even a time deep and dark prior to homo sapiens making their appearance on earth. Although a good number of Christian theologians, priests and ministers recognize evolution as the way God created man, many fundamentalists reject evolution entirely. Perhaps their seeing humans evolving in Africa, the dark continent, the "heart of darkness" as completely unacceptable.