Issue Seven

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

“The earth seemed unearthly. We were accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there–there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were–No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it–this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity–like yours–the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you–you so remote from the night of first ages–could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything–because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.”

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is rumination on the relationship between civilization and barbarity. He reminds us that civility is not innate; that the values and beliefs we possess as human beings, although passed down through countless generations born into civilization, are not intrinsic. Furthermore, he implies that, if submerged into a place of barbarity for a length of time, a civil man might succumb to the powers of darkness found in each one of our hearts. Marlow, the narrator of the story, says that because we are constantly surrounded by civility, this idea is naturally difficult to fully comprehend. He affirms that “when [civilization is] gone you must fall back upon your own inner strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness” without family, neighbors or laws as guides.

Marlow’s story takes place in the African Congo at the end of the nineteenth century, during the height of the ivory trade. “It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a large scale, and men going at it blind–as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness.” Despite repeated warnings that changes occur in the minds of men who go into Africa, Marlow accepts the position as steamboat captain for the purpose of traveling into the Congo and retrieving the ill yet unwilling Kurtz, who is described as “a very remarkable person…. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together.”

His expedition into the Congo is a terrifying one. Marlow and his crew of pilgrims and natives are subject to countless attacks, both physical and psychological. In describing his journey into the core of Africa, Marlow recalls, “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there...the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.”

Upon finding Kurtz, Marlow fully realizes the impact of utter, enduring barbarity on the heart of the urbane man. The values and beliefs civility had instilled are powerless against Kurtz’s own heart of darkness as he descends into his intrinsic, animalistic nature. Marlow recollects, “I tried to break the spell–the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness–that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations... His was an impenetrable darkness.” Kurtz has given in to murder, theft and the temptation to be a god.

Based on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is Francis Ford Coppola’s critically acclaimed film, Apocalypse Now. Coppola’s horrifying epic, set during the Vietnam War, illustrates the effects of unremitting brutality and of the insidious jungle on the hearts and minds of civil men. The film vividly captures, and puts a picture to, Conrad’s insight into the capabilities of man without law. Each gives a terrifying and thought-provoking look at how thinly civilization cloaks the darkness that lives within us all.

ISBN: 037575377X
Publisher: Random House, Inc.