Heart Of Darkness Essay, Research Paper

Most Literate people know that by going into the Heart of the Jungle, Conrad was trying

to relay a message about the heart of man, and the story is worldly wide read as one of the

most symbolic storys of the English language. The story recognizes Marlow, its narrator,

not Kurtz or the brutality of the Belgian officials. Conrad wrote a statement on how he the

story should be interpreted:

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to

make you hear, to make you feel it, and above all to make you see.

Knowing the Conrad was a writer that lived in his work., writing about the

experiences were almost as if he was writing about himself. The Story was written through

the eyes of Marlow. Marlow is a follower of the sea, His voyage up the Congo was the

experience in river navigation. He is used as a mask , per say, so Conrad can enter the

story and tell it out of his own logical mind. He longs to see Kurtz, in hope s of

appreciating all that Kurtz finds appealing about the jungle.

Marlow does not get a chance to see him until Kurtz is so diseased he looks more

like death itself than a person. There were no good looks or health. In the story Marlow

remarks that Kurtz resembles an animated image of death carved into ivory. . Like

Marlow, Kurtz is seen as an honorable man to many admirers; but he is also a thief,

murderer, persecutor, and he allows himself to be worshipped almost as a god.. Both

Kurtz and Marlow had good intentions to seek, yet Kurtz seems a omniscient being

lacking of basic integrity or sense of responsibility.

In the end the form one person. Marlow and Kurtz are the light and dark selves of

one person. Meaning each one is what the other might have been.

Every person that Marlow meets on his venture contributes to the plot as well as

the overall theme of the story. Kurtz is the violent devil explained at the beginning of the

story. It was his ability to control men through fear and and adoration that led Marlow to

signify this. Throughout the story Conrad builds an unhealthy darkness that never allows

the reader to forget the focus of the story. At every turn he sees evil in the land and in

most of the people. Every image was depressing and blank. The deadly Congo winds

itself through the jungle connecting its tributaries. It seems that Conrad added this as a

significant part of the story. It seems as if the river itself was the only source of good and

life in the jungle.

The setting of these adventurous and moral quests is the great jungle. As a symbol

the jungle encloses all, and in the heart of the journey Marlow enters the dark cavern of his

won heart. It even becomes and image of a vast coffin of evil, in which Kurtz dies but

from which Marlow emerges spiritually reborn.

The manager, in charge of three stations in the jungle, feels Kurtz is a threat to his

position. Marlow sees how the manager is purposely delaying the relay of supplies and

help to Kurtz. He hopes he will die of neglect. This is where the inciting moment of the

story lies. Should the company in Belgium find out the truth about Kurtz s success as a

ivory dealer, they would undoubtedly elevate him to the position of manager. The

manager s insidious and pretending nature opposes all truth.

This story can be the result of two completely different aspects of Conrads life.

One being his journey into the Congo. Conrad had a childhood wish associated with a

disapproved childhood ambition to go to sea. Thus the adventurous Conrad and the

Moralist Conrad may have collided.

Heart of Darkness is a record of things seen and done. Then is was ivory that

poured out the heart of darkness. Now maybe it is Marijuana and Cocaine. There were so

many actual events and facts in the story that it was more of an eye opener to the past than

entertaining. His confrontations as a man are both dangerous and enlightening. Perhaps

man s inhumanity to man is his greatest sin. Since the story closes with a lie, maybe

Conrad was discovering and analyzing the two aspects of truth. Real truth and False truth,

both of which, are ever present in the human soul