Heart Of Darkness Essay, Research Paper

William Blake spent much of his youth as an impoverished child, his family barely afforded him the chances to learn to read and write. He boldly worked with controversial themes during the largest revolutionary wars ever. His theories of innocence and experience were revolutionary in themselves and inspired and stirred awesome works reflecting upon how one moves from that state of innocence to experience. Joseph Conrad, Thomas Wolfe and Francis Ford Coppola can all derive their masterpieces from Blake?s work. All of the pieces are concerned with moral dilemmas, the isolation of the individual to be tested by experience and the psychology of inner urges. The forces of darkness and dissolution consequently initiate the relativism of ethics and morality. Moral relativism is the belief that moral principles and values depend and rely solely upon the social customs and beliefs of the time and location. Ultimately, even as moral values vary from culture to culture, one should be judged on why they actually behave and do certain things as opposed to how people are supposedly supposed to behave. When passing from innocence to experience one must consider his/her own moral and ethical relativism, a key string through the works The Lamb, The Tyger, The Child by Tiger, Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. The ethics were related to their surroundings and are shown, in much of the works, through certain racist undertones, the dilemma to kill or be killed and the effects of restraints on people.

?It seemed to us boys that there was very little that Dick Prosser could not do.? Explains the narrator of The Child By Tiger, he could cook, he could tend the furnace, he know how to drive a car.?, he was a ?crack? Negro soldier and had a ?power? an order, that was astounding.? The boys loved him, too ignorant and innocent yet to experience and submit to the standard influential racism of their local communities and generation. The Sheppertons were ?delighted? with him and he had obediently accepted an assault from a drunken white fool. Despite all Dick?s meticulous care and painstaking hard work, the ethical law of the post Civil War, abolition, was still that of white supremacy and legal enslavement and discrimination of minorities, namely African-Americans. Regardless of how an intelligent, civilized and caring person Dick was, even the Sheppertons conformed and followed peer pressure to hide their Negro in the corner of their basement, to pay him meagerly and say nothing about the fact that one of the most god-faring and religious persons in the town was forced to stand in the back, quietly waiting like a horse tied to a post.

Still moral and ethical values are debated within a culture, such as abortion and cloning, societies assemble and easily agree on many seemingly important customs and mores. Dick is treated as a lowly and servile nigger and resents that his years of loyal service to his god, his country and the white man has earned him the reputation as merely a ?good nigger?. He is forced to revel in shantiful Niggertown and thus begins his murderous rampage. Ironically, murder is typically an unjust and despicable act, one disdained and loathed in the Bible, the only book Dick felt he truly needed in his life. Regardless of Dick?s apparent upstanding and wholeheartedly moral nature, the ethics of the villagers and the common white man or mob, he is outcasted from holding any sort of responsible or respectable position in the social order. Dick commits heinous murders throughout the town, running ?straight as a string? with awesome military precision.

As a mob begins to develop, Dick is left with few options, he can surrender and face the unrelenting wrath of a hate-filled gang of Caucasians, disgrace his bravery and suffer the embarrassing capitulation of suicide or go all out, take out the built up aggression and scorn he has developed for the racists who would not allow him to flourish and live his own life, without the bearings of nonexistent and bogus moral creeds. Dick instinctively and forcefully makes his way through the town considering no other option then to kill any one in his way.

?Squarely through the back of the head?, ?just above the eyes?, ?dead center in the forehead?, and a ?bullet through the throat? describe not only the astonishing military accuracy and skill of Dick?s shooting but also the brutal and animalistic nature of Dick?s vicious riot. To the homely white folk, Dick has committed a horrifically immoral, yet somewhat predictable act. Their boorish contempt for a colored man is the basics for their antiquated and absurd ethics. Yet, not to overstep their own hypocritical and ludicrous bounds, an authoritative figure, Hugh McNair, pleads with the mob to wait for Cash Eager because ?This (was) no case for lynch law! This is a time for law and order!? However, his cries for ethical and fair justice went unheard as ?A brick whizzed past him, smashing the plate-glass window into fragments.?

The bigot-filled mob hunted Dick overnight and into the morning hours, waiting for their chance to capture, kill and trophy the wild animal. Dick vigilantly picks off men from the mob in his escape while the reader secretly urges him on. The reader applauds his strength and courage and is awe struck by his skill and cunning ability to evade and injure the mass of people chasing him. Dick has done everything wrong by killing innocent people, but it was the sadistic, unfair nature of the society that drove him to sheer lunacy. The restraints, mostly ethnically based, set upon Dick put Dick into a situation with a moral objective and obligation. The depravity and ridiculousness of his circumstances have forced him into a horrible situation where he was hopelessly without conscience or choice.

?Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?? Is it possible that in a society where an almighty and all-knowing creator who graces the earth with the ?Softest clothing wooly bright? and we say ?Little Lamb, God Bless thee? that an evil creature from the dark-side could subsequently be created? William Blake questions the morality and ethics of God. ?What the hammer? / What the chain? ? In the forests of the night? this horrible creature is created in ?fearful symmetry? to the meek and mild Lamb and in any culture how could the beliefs, the ethics of a malicious tiger be the same as a poor, innocent lamb.

Captain Willard says at the beginning of Francis Ford Coppola?s Apocalypse Now that the soldiers ?were going to the worst place in the world and didn?t even know it.? Willard moves away from the moral values of standard American society and into the heart of darkness, an unknown, seemingly endless pit of immorality and depravity. It is reported that Colonel Kurtz feels ?the temptation to be god?, with ?no decent restraint? it is impossible to maintain ?acceptable human conduct.? Willard disagreed with his assignment, the ethics of war were non-existent, moral conduct was merely a burden, a foolish hindrance. ?Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500? said Willard as he contemplated what he believed to be a ridiculous attempt at ethics at a time when frail women and innocent looking children ran towards American soldiers and helicopters with explosives in hand. Obviously murder of any kind in the United States, on the soil of the United States is a horrendous and shocking act, but in the depths of a ten-thousand day war, with a civil war practically raging at home and our crusade against the evil powers of communism throughout the world how can murder charges possibly be considered. Relative to the situation, to a war in which over one million people were killed, ethics did not exist to soldiers holding the limbs and lives of their fallen brethren. People outside of the war have no right to control and reprimand the brave men putting their necks on the line against the enemy.

Just as with the severed inoculated arms one can only respect and gasp in horror at the awesome brutality and inhumane acts, including the grenade-baring children, the horror of it is so ghastly and appalling. The American soldiers had become so disenchanted with a humane and ethical war that the one American combat leader had lost any sense of morality, he chose to invade a shore base and risk hundreds of lives because ?Charlie don?t surf.? That particular combat leader had lost a significant portion of his humanity through visions of terrible casualties and heartless booby-traps to the point where he said, ?I love the smell of napalm in the morning?, to him the smell of burning flesh and death ?smelled like victory.? His views of life had become so warped that victory relatively was no longer measured in diplomatic or cordial exchanging of viewpoints and treaties but the piles of morbid souls and the stench of their untimely deaths.

Moving up the river Willard concludes ?there only two ways home, death or victory.? He knows that he must kill and succeed or die and that those are his only choices to escape this frightening predicament. The constant fear of death compels the soldiers to do anything and just about everything to stay alive, for the hope of one day returning home. For example, the confused and scared soldiers go so far as to slaughter innocent Vietnamese with a boatload of harmless animals. Furthermore, when one woman appears to still be breathing Willard?s skewed ethics perceive her as an obstacle on his truly important mission, not a living, breathing member of the human race and subsequently finishes her off.

Snaking further through the river the small boat of men comes to probably the most chaotic and uncontrollable camp possible. The ethics and morality of the men at that site were so far gone that most of them were incomprehensible and inconsolable. These men were bordering on sanity and defined the loss of rational ethics and morality at a time of war. What kind of ethics could possibly exist in a situation where a civilized African-American soldier is ironically killed by tribal natives with a spear through the chest. This tribal warfare is certainly comparable to his long distant relatives native of Africa. You can see Willard’s mood change the farther they go. He realizes that Kurtz has discovered the madness and futility of war like he, too, is discovering.

Finally as Willard reaches Col. Kurtz?s estranged and demented outpost we see the extent of ethical and moral relativism, to the depths that maybe even Nietzsche would be appalled. Upon entering the fortress there is an alter of decapitated heads, bewildered and fanatical soldiers and tribal natives, to Willard the entire scene ?smelled like slow death.? The foolish photographer tells us that the Colonel?s ?mind is sane but his soul is mad.? The scene is downright terrifying; truly the heart of darkness, into the lion?s den, Willard cannot see the ominous appearance of Col. Kurtz, as he begins to explain his cruel and distorted sense of ethics and morality. Kurtz, without the restraints of sensible military order, rules the land and with alarming might willfully beheads the chef. ?Horror and moral terror are your friends or they are your enemies to be feared? explains Kurtz, he has accepted his position as an ungodly god to the masses of his stronghold.

Willard has not fully encountered the ability to disregard ethics and restrictions of any kid and grasp the terrific power of doing what most heartedly induces you. Kurtz continues, ?You have no right to judge me?, stating that Willard is in no position to criticize his amazing loss of ethics in this godforsaken place. Kurtz no longer respects the chain of command nor the societal restraints that judge him based upon his ethics. In such a disastrous situation, Kurtz is in awe of ?the genius, the will to do that? when addressing the severed inoculated arms, ?they were stronger than we.? Kurtz respects death and the detachment from senses and ethics, ?the primordial instincts to kill without feeling, passion, without judgment. Without judgment because it is judgment that deceives us.?

In the end, Kurtz only wishes to ?stand up and go out like a soldier?, just as Dick Prosser wanted to. Despite his acts of lunacy, Kurtz still respects death and an honorable death. ?The horror! The horror!? sums up the awesome amount that ethics and morality have long since vanished and been replaced by terror and horror, immaterial deaths, murders of an atrocious magnitude. A final act of unrelenting horror as Willard enters the darkness as the new god of the people and orders ?drop the bomb, exterminate them all.?

Imperialism was a necessary component of any powerful and growing nation during the 19th century and the early parts of the 20th. Konrad?s adopted country of England was perhaps the worst and least compassionate world power but to avoid criticism he wrote his Heart of Darkness about Belgium. Konrad once traveled the Belgian Congo and saw firsthand the ethical horror that was the heart of darkness.

Marlow enters the jungle for the same reasons Kurtz entered the jungle, as an introspective sailor with ideals of widening and expanding the philanthropic kingdom of civilized humanity and Belgium. Marlow arrives at the Central Station eager and gung-ho about his pending journey of interest with good morale and good morals. However, upon his arrival Marlow already begins to see the effects of a restraint less society and the plummeting ethics in such a place. The general manager of the station is an objectionable and conspiratorial character. His badly damaged steamship is greatly demoralizing to Marlow and is flabbergasted by the horrible responsibility and lack of ethics by the general manager to allow that to happen and his ridiculous indifference. At the Central Station is Marlow?s first encounter of the atrocious and malicious conditions of the local workers. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced to work for the Company and they suffer and slave horribly and are grossly mistreated, overworked and ill from the management of the Company. The cruelty and immorality of the imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the tranquil and grandiose jungle that encompasses the white man?s establishments.

The manager and the other Belgiums at the Station seem to revere and fear Kurtz up the river. Kurtz?s character is developing an eerie, ominous existence as Marlow?s curiosity about him continues to grow. Once the parts for his boat finally arrive Marlow begins his voyage to Kurtz?s position with his crew of ?pilgrims? and cannibals. The cannibals disgustingly astonish Marlow and the reader as another example of how now deep in the jungle the unethical concept of eating another human being is merely relative to survival and existence. The river snaking through the flourishing landscape gives the appearance of entering into something unknown and the oppressive silence and occasional sighting of a stark native often excites and spooks the pilgrims.

As he travels upriver to find the elusive company agent, Kurtz, he becomes more and more consumed by the jungle and begins to think more and more like Kurtz. Furthermore, once the ship passes through a daunting fog the crew is attacked by a hidden group of natives causing the death of the African helmsman. The murder further invokes Marlow to consider the state of the land, what has driven this land to such intense levels of murder, corruption and unethical existence. Finally, Marlow and his crew arrive at Kurtz?s Inner Station and are quickly reassured by a demented Russian trader that Kurtz is well and has never been in a better state of mind, if it was even possible to be. Along the path to Kurtz the Russian explains to Marlow how Kurtz has expanded his mind so greatly that it is impossible to judge Kurtz in the way most humans are. Kurtz is one step above the normal human and that his views of morality are to be based upon his current circumstances and not the overbearing, inexperienced opinions of mere men outside of the jungle society. When Marlow at last meets Kurtz he is practically invalid on a stretcher and quickly establishes his god-like status in the restraint less Congo by ordering off the tribal natives who had gathered to worship him.

It is revealed by the Russian that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamship in hopes of scaring off Marlow so that Kurtz could be left to carry out his evil and horribly immoral plans. After visiting the ship, Kurtz disappears into the obscure darkness of the night and the jungle only to have an intrigued Marlow pull him from the depths of death?s grip. Kurtz has lost any and all ethical values and entrusts a packet of his queerest ideals to Marlow. The papers have instructions on how to control and civilize the Congo, including the extermination of ?all the brutes?, because Kurtz sees the tribal natives not as humans but hindrances to the unethical and sadistic goals of a crazy white imperialist. Kurtz could not resist the temptations to be rule a miserable people and land and was corrupted by the meaningless trade of ivory. He fell victim to the horrible conditions of his own land and died recognized ?The horror! The horror!? of what he had created and done. Kurtz, like Marlow, was shaken and terrified by the unethical treatment of the people around him and his own disintegration of morals and a code of ethics in the heart of darkness.

Nietzsche said that ?the free man is the man who rises above morality and ethics?, but free of what? Obviously Col. Kurtz, Kurtz and Dick Prosser rose above the moral beliefs and principles of the more civilized societies at the time. However, no matter how much one may free themselves from their conscience that can never free themselves from the consequences of their actions. In conclusion, the ethics and morality are only relative to the situation in which they are applied but they are still judged in the remainder of civilized society.