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The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
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Table of contents:
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 3
1
2
The heart of darkness ................................................................................................. 4
1.1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 4
1.2
An investigation of the human nature ............................................................................ 7
Kurtz's symbolic role ................................................................................................. 10
2.1
Marlow in search for Kurtz ........................................................................................... 10
2.2
Kurtz’s Character .......................................................................................................... 12
2.3
Freud and the portray of Kurtz ..................................................................................... 14
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 15
REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 16
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
INTRODUCTION
Jozef Teodor Konrad, originally named Nalez Korzeniowski was born in polish family, on 3
December 1857 in Berdiczew. English was not even his second language. He grew up in a
patriotic home. His father, Apollo, was a poet, playwright and a translator of English and
French literature. His parents believed in liberating Poland. Apollo devoted himself to the
literary and political interests. Apollo’s political activities led to his exile with his family to
Vologda in northeast Russia. As a young boy, he read Polish and French versions of English
novels with his father’s help. Conrad experienced the loss of his mother due to tuberculosis at
the age of eight. In 1869, his father passed away when Conrad was twelve, due to the same
disease. These traumatic experiences lived with Conrad for his whole life. As an orphan at
the age of twelve, Conrad went under the patronage of his wealthy uncle, Thaddeus
Bobrowski.
When he was sixteen, he went to France to fulfill his desires: to become economically
independent, live out adventures, and escape political turbulences. Since his uncle had
acquaintances in the shipping industry and French was his second language, Conrad joined a
ship in Marseille. He spent twenty years, travelling mainly to and from the West Indies. The
four years he spent on French ships gave him the experiences he longed for. During this time,
he was involved in gun running, as well as accumulating huge gambling debts. In 1878, he
tried to kill himself; but he had an astonishing escape, when the bullet missed his heart. After
his encounter with death, he determined to start a new life. In 1878, Conrad joined to the
British Merchant Navy, where he remained for the next sixteen years, and was promoted
eventually to the position of Master Mariner. When he was twenty years old, he switched
allegiances to Britain by becoming an English seaman. It was at this time that Conrad learned
English. It seems fair to say that if he had not joined the British navy, he would not have
undertaken his writing career in English. Conrad served on British ships for twelve years.
After twenty years of life on the deck, he transformed his sailing life into literature. In 1890,
he piloted a river boat to the Belgian Congo, an area which was Heart of Darkness. The
voyage had the greatest impact on his life; its consequences influenced his life from being a
seaman to a writer and from a bachelor to a husband. The journey motivated him to write the
Heart of Darkness. By 1894, his sea life finished and he dedicated himself to literature in
England. The polish-born Joseph Conrad may have been surprised to become a published
English author in 1895 at the age of thirty-seven, given the extraordinary varied and
cosmopolitan influences on his works, but it was not surprising that he should turn out to be a
novelist of paradox and riddle. The logic connecting the various diverse phases of his life
often appeared so mysterious to Conrad himself that he would repeatedly speak and write
about it in terms of a dream-like affair. 1 He is one the greatest novelists and short story
writers, and his language contains rich atmospheric phraseology. Conrad was identified as a
writer of sea stories in his own time. He sailed to many parts of the world: Australia, the
Indian Ocean, Borneo, the Malay states, South America, and the South Pacific Island. His life
was as adventurous as the stories he had written.
Joseph Conrad’s visit to the Belgian Congo had a twofold effect on his life. The positive
phase of the travel was that he gained the ability to write a well-known novel filled with
petrifying commentaries about his daily experiences among the natives of the Congo. As he
1
J.H Stape, “The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad”, Cambridge university press, Cambridge, 1996.
3
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
was in the Congo, he underwent a physical and mental breakdown that affected his health for
the rest of his life. When he returned from the Congo to resettle in London, his mind and
thoughts were fragmented. 2
During his literary life, he made friendships with H.G Wells, Ford Madox Ford, Henry
James, and Stephen Crane; but he lived outside the mainstream of literary life. He was not
aware of Freud’s work or James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence, whereas his
works have been compared with theirs. Like other writers of adventure stories, Herman
Melville and Jack London, Conrad infused his work with psychological and moral
connotations. His stories’ characters often face deep problems, related to the course of their
lives. His fictions have almost two levels: the adventure is one level, and to challenge of life
is another level. Reading a work by Conrad needs diligence, tolerance and concentration. His
most famous texts are: Nostromo, The Karain: A Memoir, The Lagoon, An Outpost of
Progress, The Return, Amy Foster, The Secret Sharer, and Youth.
In 1924, Conrad died at his desk at the age of sixty-six. By transforming his experiences into
literature, he has become as a leading twentieth-century British novelist.
1 The heart of darkness
1.1 Overview
Conrad's intention in Heart of Darkness is not to provide an accurate description of Africa,
and the Africa in the tale is the continent as seen through European eyes. Certainly, "Heart of
Darkness" possesses elements of realism. Marlow relates the story as if it were firsthand
experience. The most powerful influence on Conrad's choice of narrative convention would
have been the mode of the sahib recounting his colonial experiences. Conrad uses it
ironically to subvert the sahib views of imperialism.
On one level, Heart of Darkness is a serious commentary on imperialism, what Conrad called
"the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and
geographical exploration." Marlow's portrayal is, from one aspect, a part of this theme and
his suitability as a narrative vehicle is crucial to its presentation. In four instances, Marlow is
compelled to compromise with truth, but for a worthy purpose; we feel that he is as honest as
possible in an imperfect world.
That Marlow is a certain type of Englishman is also important. His honesty and exceptional
humanity qualify him to be a suitable narrator. But is his usefulness limited by his British
imperial-mindedness? Conrad is able to treat this side of Marlow critically just as he does the
other aspects. Marlow provides one way by which he can bring Britain into his concerns. He
can plausibly employ Marlow to convey his themes as fully as he understands them partly
because Marlow's national sentiment would not be on the defensive, as a hindrance to clearsightedness and frankness, in confronting the imperial entanglements of a foreign country,
Belgium.
2
Frederick R Karl. “Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives”, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 1979.
4
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
Conrad's presentation of the imperial theme begins when Marlow is on board a yawl in the
Thames at dusk with four cronies. Suggestions of darkness in Great Britain's (Roman) past
and present history converge. Marlow's cronies comprise a director of companies, a lawyer,
and an accountant, each pillars of capitalism, and thereby implicated in his tale. The action
gathers momentum as the scene shifts to Brussels, the headquarters of the Belgian Empire.
The whole city seems to Marlow "a whited sepulcher." Its deathlike attributes link with the
inhumanity in the empire and Conrad suggests how the attributes of the metropolitan country
are founded on imperialism. When Marlow leaves Brussels for the Congo, the realities en
route are an integral part of the portrayal of imperialism: "the merry dance of death and trade
goes on." When the action moves on to the Congo, Conrad presents the imperial
entanglements of Western civilization and primitive culture in the colony itself. The structure
of the tale is provided by Marlow's journey to and from the heart of Africa, a linear structure,
with a unifying centre, a pivotal concern, in Marlow himself and his growth.
In Heart of Darkness Marlow is extraordinary in his powers of observation, not in his
attempts at analysis. What distinguishes him is his openness to impressions. However,
Marlow is a narrator who only partially understands his experiences. The most fundamental
irony of the tale is that Marlow narrates experiences but is unaware of their full import, which
emerges through prose rich in implication, through the fine selection and juxtaposition of
scenes. It is commonly argued that Marlow is the hero of the tale, but his role as a character
in his own right is of secondary importance. He is mainly a vehicle through which Conrad
conveys the entanglements of Western civilization and primitive culture. At the story's
climax, when Kurtz tells his story of the heart of Africa, the imperial theme expands to
include an account of moral isolation. At the same time, the symbolic level of the journey
into the Congo becomes more pronounced, a journey into the depths of the unconscious.
Indeed, Heart of Darkness is more symbolic than realistic. Kurtz has lofty ideals, but the
tragedy is that he deteriorates to the lowest possible levels. Marlow thinks that Kurtz's
problems are solitude and silence, but his chief problem is one of freedom. Deprived of the
protective power of society, of civilized restraints, he is faced with the terrible challenge of
his own self, the knowledge that he is free, with all the dangers that attend this awareness.
The strong drives in human nature then emerge in all their force. Kurtz is unable to control
his lust for women, his lust for power, and the lure of the alien.
Kurtz's role in the story suggests meanings on political, economic, social, religious, moral,
and psychological levels. It also intimates archetypal and philosophic levels. Behind Kurtz
stands the Christian legend of Lucifer. Kurtz is guilty of pride, and the pride of self. Kurtz
rebels against the limitations and imperfections of the human condition. He sets himself up as
a demigod and comes to grief partly as a consequence. His final cry, "The horror! The
horror!" is rich in meaning. It is interpreted by Marlow as "complete knowledge" and "a
moral victory"; on one level, as rejection of "going native." It also can be understood as recoil
from the whole mess of European rapacity and brutality into which he is being returned.
Perhaps Kurtz also sees a vision of hell and the damnation awaiting him.
Kurtz becomes than a representative of imperialism and European civilization; he acquires
significance both as a human being and ultimately as a symbol of evil. The heart of darkness
is the centre of Africa, the unknown, the hidden self, and, above all, the evil in humankind. 3
3
Noelle Watson, "Reference Guide to Short Fiction", St. James Press, Detroit, 1994.
5
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
A brief summary
Heart of Darkness is a story within a story. Five men on board the Nellie are anchored in the
Thames Estuary at dusk. One of them narrates what happened aboard but mainly retells the
story told by another crew member, Charlie Marlow, about his journey to Africa and up the
River Congo as a representative of a trading company. Marlow shares his experiences as a
steamboat captain transporting ivory downriver but particularly focuses on the lack of
efficiency of white trading agents and how they mistreated the natives. However, the centre
of his story is his search for the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader, who gathers huge
quantities of ivory through very peculiar and secret methods and who has raised himself as
the god of the tribes surrounding his station. It is through Kurtz that Marlow discovers the
various forms of darkness in Congo and this throws light on himself.
Chapter 1: Waiting for the tide to turn, the men listen to Marlow’s story. He tells them how
he has always been interested in Africa and how he used his aunt’s contacts in Belgium to
find a job in a colonial trading post up the River Congo. Marlow starts a thirty-day journey on
a French steamboat up to the mouth of the river and then joins another steamboat until they
get to the Company’s Outer Station. He stands in horror when faced with the living condition
of the native people there and the way in which they are treated. Marlow spends ten days at
the station which is run by a white chief accountant and, for the first time, he hears about the
extraordinary, best ivory trading agent, Kurtz. Marlow begins a three hundred kilometer
journey on foot to his steamboat together with another white man and learns more about
Kurtz. Marlow arrives at the Central Station and finds that his steamboat is stuck at the
bottom of the river and that it will take some months to have it repaired. He meets the Station
Manager and is told a lot more about the unique Kurtz, who appears to be presently ill. As
time goes by, Marlow is increasingly discouraged and upset by white men’s rules and
behavior and interested in Kurtz’s ideas, principles and success.
Chapter 2: Marlow repairs his boat and prepares to start his journey up the River Congo with
a big crew, the Manager, his assistants, some agents and a group of natives, towards the Inner
Station to meet Kurtz. By now, finding Kurtz, and learning from him, has become his only
purpose. When Marlow’s steamboat is getting closer to Kurtz’s station, they are stranded in a
thick blanket of fog and they can’t keep moving upwards. When the fog lifts and they are
about to get to the Inner Station, they are attacked by several natives and the pilot dies.
Marlow starts feeling that he will never get to see Kurtz, since he must have been killed. Yet,
Marlow manages to edge the steamer towards the riverbank and he sees Kurtz’s hut through
his telescope, but not him. Instead, Marlow meets a Russian seaman who has been assisting
Kurtz and who worships him as much as all the other men around him. The Russian tells
Marlow the story of his life and all about his relationship with Kurtz, but he particularly
focuses on the mysterious Kurtz, his endeavors and achievements. He also tells Marlow that
the natives have attacked his steamer because Kurtz was with them and they didn’t want him
to leave the heart of the continent.
Chapter 3: The Russian speaks about how he nursed Kurtz through two illnesses and
confesses to Marlow that it was Kurtz who ordered the attack on his steamboat because he
didn’t want to leave. He also describes Kurtz’s frightening ivory hunt and his peculiar
methods, which ruined further trade in the region, and his madness, which together with his
desires and blind greed, took control over him and even governed him. Kurtz arrives at his
hut lying on a rough bed carried by some natives and followed by several more, among which
is his mistress, a beautiful mysterious woman. The manager tells Marlow that Kurtz has done
more harm than good to the Company due to his forceful action and faulty methods. Marlow
6
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
tells the Russian that the manager and his assistants were plotting to have him hanged, since
they believed that he was stealing from the Company. Therefore, he decides to run away.
Before doing do, he tells Marlow that he knows many secrets that could damage Kurtz’s good
name. However, Marlow decides to remain loyal to Kurtz. All the men, including Kurtz, get
on board and this time Marlow’s steamboat moves quickly downstream. Kurtz opens up to
Marlow and gives him some secret papers. As Kurtz lies dying his last words are ‘The horror!
The horror!’ Back in Brussels, Marlow is visited by many people, a Company agent, Kurtz’s
cousin and a journalist, who want to know more about Kurtz’s death. Finally, Marlow visits
Kurtz’s Intended and lies to her, telling her that that his last words were her name.
1.2 An investigation of the human nature
Described in unequivocal terms as the powerful long novella of imperialism, 4 Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness challenges the nineteenth-century readers’ horizon of expectations, ironically
questioning and undermining the very bases of the value system that it seems to assert and
impose. Heart of Darkness artfully contrasts two value systems whose encounter defines the
turn-of-the-century period, Victorianism and the twentieth-century. It thus creates the
background against which the potentialities of the novel as an art form are revealed as a
valuable instrument of investigation of the self. Introducing Marlow, eye witness and
narrator, from the very beginning of the novel as part of the intended technique of
indirectness, pointing to Marlow’s propensity to moving and searching meanings beyond the
palpable reality, Conrad clearly indicates that the novel will not be like any other novel, that
the form – the shell – is part of the meaning and has to be understood as well as the events
described. A new form is necessary because the novel is not a mere reflection of the tangible,
and known reality, but an exploration of different types of reality. 5
Starting in London at an indefinite moment of time, which, however, is historically
suggestive of the time of the British Empire, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness raises a number of
issues relating to the advent of a new era, characterized by relativity, fragmentariness,
instability, lack of a shared sense of public value. Familiar with the new philosophical ideas
emerging in the age, with the premises of anthropological studies combined with Freudian
theories, Conrad voices his interest in the problems of the Empire and in imperialism as a
starting point for his investigation of the nature of man’s relation to himself and two other.
The incursion of the white civilized missionaries into the heart of the African darkness is only
a pretext for Conrad’s unveiling the mysteries of human nature, and analyzing the darkness of
the human heart. The ambiguously formulated title encourages the reading of the novel at
these two levels. ‘Heart of darkness’ may be seen as a metaphor of the jungle of Africa, but it
can equally be decoded as the dark aspects of the human heart.
The modern individual oscillates between two conflicting tendencies. One implies the effort
to find and cast meaning upon an apparently incoherent and meaningless reality; the other
implies a denial of any unifying value, a questioning of the very possibility of any meaning.
The former tendency presupposes an interpretation of the title as a journey into the darkness,
which has a heart, so eventually a meaning worth looking for. The latter focuses on the
innermost and darkest aspects of the human being, whose investigation is nothing but a
failure. The individual must acknowledge his condition of duplicity, as part of a stable moral
4
5
M. Bradbury, “The Modern British Novel”, Penguin Books, 1993, p. 95.
B. Spittles, “Joseph Conrad, Text and Context”, Macmillan, 1992, p. 62.
7
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
system, of meaningfulness on the one hand, and as part of the puzzle of existence, of
meaninglessness, on the other.
The main features of the Victorian age, self-confidence, progress, stability, trust in the
individual, originate all in the power and the scope of the Empire. It is the Empire that
provides the individual with the comforting feeling of belonging to an immutable and
incontestable value system. Under the circumstances, it is hardly conceivable that the British
would ever think of questioning the almightiness of the monarchy or London’s being the
commercial and financial centre of the world. Much of the individual sense of confidence and
stability is given by these two major Victorian strongholds that give the measure of
“Britishness” and lead to the definition of the place of Great Britain in the world. For this
particular beneficial effect that the Empire and its institutions were considered to have on the
individual at the end of the nineteenth century, one cannot expect that they will ever become
plain subject matters of literature and be seen as other than taboo subjects.
This mentality characteristic of the nineteenth-century Victorian England can be considered
to be the reason why Conrad chose to write Heart of Darkness adopting the standpoint of the
cultural exile, which was what gave him, to a certain extent, the freedom to tackle such a
delicate problem. That is also the premise from which Conrad may have started when he
conceived Heart of Darkness as a highly ambiguous narrative text, asking far more questions
than it proved ready to offer answers to. By a method of indirectness, which presupposed the
presence of Marlow, protagonist and narrator, Conrad invites the reader to perform the act of
reading at various levels simultaneously, to learn to become an active participant in the act of
meaning of creation. In some opinions, the main quality of Heart of Darkness is its being
challenging to its readership artistically, philosophically and politically. 6 The choice of the
method of framing the narration of events within a narrative is dictated by Conrad’s intention
to allow the creation of deliberate thematic ambiguities, a critical historical perspective and a
tone of ironic detachment. In all situations, it is Conrad, the lifelong exile and the precursor
of modernism, in conflict with Conrad, the nineteenth-century British subject, who tries to
refresh his readers’ perception of reality and to formulate and impose a new status of
literature.
It would be thus too easy to say that Heart of Darkness is the story of a voyage of exploration
in search for ivory down the Congo into the heart of Africa. Reading the novel as a story of
the rightful and beneficial transfer of the values of white civilization to the black savage
people of Africa would be oversimplifying. The sophisticated symbolical texture of Conrad’s
novel reveals unsuspected meanings, rather unorthodox for the age, about the essence of the
relationships established between civilization and primitivism in the light of the theories
formulated by anthropology at the turn of the century.
Primitivism is almost as old, it may be supposed, as civilization; both terms, of course, being
relational. As a literary convention, primitivism allows the civilized to inspect, or to indulge,
itself through an imaginary opposite. It is often a self-critical motif within the culture. But in
the modernist period a radical questioning of the present civilization along with the close
study of tribal people gave a new edge to the primitivism impulse. 7 In line with the ideas
forwarded by anthropology, Conrad focuses on issues such as the classification and
relationship of races and cultures, hinting at the environmental and social relations. Yet his
major interest, which benefited from the most extensive treatment, engendering thus the best
6
B. Spittles, “Joseph Conrad, Text and Context”, Macmillan, 1992, p. 62.
M. Bell, “The metaphysics of Modernism” in The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. Levenson, M.,
Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 9-32
7
8
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
artistic achievement, is in man’s nature and destiny, especially from the perspective of man’s
relation to God. It is not surprising; therefore, that Conrad uses religious symbols to interpret
the nature of the colonization process. Man performs an exploratory descent into the
primitive sources of the human being as Conrad seems to believe that, only by exposure to
evil, can man achieve self-knowledge and understand the essence of reality, or life.
By establishing an analogy between the modern colonists and the Middle Ages pilgrims,
Conrad challenges the readers’ knowledge of the benefits of colonization. Although the
modern colonists look very much like the pilgrims in the Middle Ages, with the staves in
their hands reminding of the old palm leaves, Conrad repeatedly and ironically points to the
fact that the pilgrims were armed to the teeth. Thus all the essential humanistic values lying at
the core of the pilgrimage in Christian terms are questioned and invalidated by the greed,
rapacity and violence that characterize the group of people in search for ivory. Wealth,
symbolically present under the form of ivory, is the only faith that the white people have.
Throughout the novel, ivory is the shrine at which the pilgrims pray. There is only one
exception, when ivory acquires a much deeper meaning than that of material wealth that is
associated with the rapacious plunder of the jungle. Mr. Kurtz, Marlow’s double and symbol
for his unconscious, the ‘Holy Grail’ that the uninitiated Marlow is in search for, is the man
who had proved the ablest of all colonists.
The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and – as he was good enough to say
himself – his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was
half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz […] 8
The report that he wrote for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs
concluded by “Exterminate all the brutes!” gives the whole dimension of Kurtz’s, and
implicitly Europe’s, colonizing potential. Under the pressure of darkness, Kurtz, and through
him Marlow, is the one who discovers the immensity and impenetrability of the unconscious,
having the revelation of the power of the unconscious to invade and control consciousness. It
is significant to remark at this point that Conrad created in a period of colonial expansion
scientifically grounded by the rise of anthropology, with Freud becoming fascinated by
primitive life and artifacts. The relationship of consciousness to the unconscious in Freud’s
metaphorical discourse reflects the structure of colonialism with the unconscious as the
region to be colonized and controlled by the ego. 9
‘My ivory.’ Oh, yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my – ‘
everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the
wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their
places. Everything belonged to him – but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he
belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. 10
At the heart of the jungle, Kurtz dares challenge the very position of God, he places himself
at the centre of the universe, gesture of impiety which jeopardizes his integrity. Kurtz
becomes the God of darkness, and he is immortalized into a monument of darkness. Kurtz,
the dying man, leaves room for Kurtz, the God of the worshippers. At this moment, ivory no
longer stands for the object of human greed; it symbolically becomes the material out of
8
J. Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, The New American Library, 1950, p. 122
M. Bell, “The metaphysics of Modernism” in The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. Levenson, M.,
Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 9-32
10
J. Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, The New American Library, 1950, p. 121
9
9
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
which Kurtz, God and man, is made. It is in ivory that the darkest and finest threads of the
individual conscious and unconscious being are carved.
Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and
hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had
been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of
craven terror – of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of
desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He
cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more
than a breath: ‘The horror! The horror!’ 11
The ambiguity that Kurtz’s last words create, as Conrad chooses to give no clear indication
regarding the referent of Kurtz’s vision, encourages the interpretation of the novel in terms of
various realities, other than the palpable one. In confrontation with the other, the individual
manages to discover his hidden, darker self. Marlow is exposed to the evil existing latently in
the human nature, and it is only through evil that he can reach the truth and purify himself to
be able to understand the essence of the good.
2 Kurtz's symbolic role
2.1 Marlow in search for Kurtz
Artistically, Marlow is meaning, while being, at the same time, the way of access to the
meaning of reality. In Heart of Darkness, moreover, Marlow is individually engaged in a
process of initiation, which grants him ascendancy on his fellow sailors. Embarking upon a
test and quest initiation journey, suggested by his sailing down the Congo into the heart of the
jungle, he performs an incursion into the self, as well as into human nature. Substantially and
in its central emphasis Heart of Darkness concerns Marlow and his journey toward and
through certain facts and potentialities of the self. 12
Marlow is not only a technical invention and innovation to ensure the appropriate degree of
involvement and detachment at the same time on the part of the writer. Marlow himself
reiterates often enough that he is recounting a spiritual voyage of self-discovery. He remarks
casually but crucially that he did not know himself before setting out. 13 Yet, even if Marlow
reaches a state of self-awareness at the end of the voyage, the novel does not posit,
optimistically, the idea of a meaning underlying all things. Marlow’s voyage of self
exploration is just another form of man’s attempt to come to terms with a universe devoid of
stable central values. Yet his being incapable of producing an appropriate explanation as far
as Kurtz was concerned is indicative of the fact that at the end of his journey, far from being
redeemed and in possession of moral truths, as the pattern of the novel seems to suggest,
Marlow becomes only more self-aware, cursed to acknowledge his inner darkness, and to
learn to live with it. The perennial values that the initiation journey implies are undermined
by the discovery that the self is ultimately darkness.
11
J. Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, The New American Library, 1950, p. 147.
A. Guerard, “The Journey Within” in Conrad. A Casebook, ed. Cox, C.B., Macmillan, 1981, p. 52.
13
Ibid, p. 53.
12
10
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
The reading of Conrad’s works in terms of simultaneous stability and fragmentation, of
strongly asserted values and horribly questioned ones is synthesized in Marlow’s symbolic
encounter with Kurtz, or, in the light of my demonstration, with his real self.
Soul! If anybody ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn’t arguing with a
lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear – concentrated, it is
true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; […] But his soul was mad. Being alone
in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I
had – for my sins, I suppose – to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. […] I saw
the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet
struggling blindly with itself. 14
The novel reflects Conrad’s state of mind and his values. Conrad works on his own psychic
and moral confusion. Charlie Marlow, the protagonist of Heart of Darkness is looking for
Conrad’s values and the presence of Conrad is undeniable in each event. Marlow who
narrates four of Conrad’s novels has been considered to be Conrad’s alter-ego; an
experienced and thoughtful captain with sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, and an ascetic
who is honest, smart, rough, and sympathetic. He is described as a civilized man who always
speaks in a gentle manner and a good example of a man of his time. As Marlow goes deeper
into the heart of the jungle to search for this elusive figure (Kurtz), he starts to know that
savagery is a primitive form of civilization. It is important to note that Marlow’s awareness of
truth in terms of civilization changes: what he thought as rational and superior was irrational.
When Marlow learned of Kurtz’s activities in the jungle, he had criticized Kurtz’s moral
collapses because of his separation from civilization. Marlow was not treating the blacks in a
cruel way and considered the pain of the native workers.
Marlow and Kurtz deal with a conflict between their images of themselves, and the appeal of
abandoning principles and morality when they try to leave European culture. They like to
civilize African people. Marlow hates the cruel treatment of the natives that work for Kurtz.
Marlow tries to get Kurtz out of the Congo River, but Kurtz dies. During Marlow’s mission
to find Kurtz, he is trying to find his true-self too. Marlow’s journey can be interpreted as a
descent into the unconscious. Conrad deals with moral conflicts of the human mind:
conscious and unconscious. Marlow’s journey into the Congo characterizes the human’s
hidden mind. The result of all the pains he had endured was the discovery of self-hood. When
Marlow returned to Europe, he found people’s behavior offensive. This could be the reason
why in the opening page of his narration, Marlow speaks of England when Romans
conquered it: “one of the darkest places of the earth.”
Marlow considered the natives as humans and respects their behavior. Kurtz and Marlow
discovered their relationship with the natives: Marlow with his Helmsman and Kurtz with his
African mistress. When Marlow visited a graveyard of dead blacks, he had felt pity for the
people who did not die in tranquility, and lived in a desert where they could be demoralized.
Marlow lied to Kurtz’s fiancé because he could not break her heart and preserved the good
memory of Kurtz. Marlow’s feeling was clear early in his adventure. What Marlow tried to
hide was the presence of immorality in one’s heart. Such a truth would surprise Kurtz’s
fiancé: knowing that Kurtz was evil could make her see the world a hell. Marlow understood
his similarity with Kurtz who was a dark shadow of European imperialism, and became
14
J. Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, The New American Library, 1950, p. 144.
11
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
alienated and more savaged. This savagery was shown particularly in the death of the
Helmsman which Marlow’s epiphany took place.
2.2 Kurtz’s Character
Kurtz is a fictional character who stands as a major example of a civilized man, who yields to
his barbaric nature because of the Congo’s environment. The model for Kurtz was made by
literary and sophisticated tradition, and the behavior of many Europeans in Africa. A man
who exemplifies Western civilization: his mother half- English, his father half-French. All
Europe contributes to make Kurtz. He is a man of talent who reads and writes poetry.
Additionally he is on a mission and accumulates a report for the international society for the
suppression of savage customs. He is a hollow man who becomes frenzied by his greed for
ivory. This is the reason why he gives up willingly to his primitive instincts, gets involved in
the dreadful rites of the natives, and let his dark essence become the core of his actions.
Kurtz is the chief of the Inner Station and the reason for Marlow’s trip. He is a man of talents.
He has the ability to lead men, and control the natives. He did whatever he wanted, because
there were no laws to restrain him. He was struggling with the darkness in himself; but at the
end before he dies, he was able to recognize and confess to it. The company described him as
the best agent, and an extraordinary man. He went to the jungle to get money for the
company and himself, but he was changed when he became dominated by the evil within his
soul.
There are no restrictions to keep him conventional. Both Kurtz and Marlow must face the
darkness within themselves, while Marlow leaves the darkness as early as he arrives. He
takes lessons from Kurtz, and notices the corruption of his colleagues. Kurtz is a gifted man,
writer, publicist, an artist and explorer. He had gone further than the conventions of his
culture regarding prohibited knowledge. Conrad deals with the dark heart of humanity in this
novel. He tells us that man has also an evil side that is masked by civilization.
African Kurtz is a man of talents. He has the capability to guide men, and control the
natives. The company described him as the best agent, a professional man in his career, of
great importance to the company. The people assumed Kurtz to be a noble man. On the coast,
the Company’s Chief accountant notified Marlow that; “In the interior you will no doubt
meet Mr. Kurtz a first class agent. He is a very remarkable person, at the very bottom of
there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together” Kurtz’s cousin claimed that
Kurtz had been a great musician. He represented many things: a symbol of the wilderness, a
god-like being, an imperialist, and a representative of power to the natives. Kurtz lived with
his power in the jungle for a long time. Kurtz was a bright man who could not adapt himself
to the environment. His hut was surrounded by the skulls of men who had betrayed him,
which served as a reminder to anyone in the jungle who contemplated going against his will.
Once Kurtz considered the world is in a fixed way: birth, life, and finally death. In his quotes:
“I am lying here in the dark waiting for death”.
Kurtz utilized severe violence in not only taking the ivory from the Africans, but also
mistreating his fiancé and colleagues. Throughout his time in the Congo, he became very
unsympathetic. His hut was decorated with skulls which showed his brutality and cruelty
towards the natives. Finally, Kurtz’s greed, curiosity and desire for the ivory were the main
12
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
reasons why he came to Africa. The way he wanted to get ivory was the way imperialism
demanded. The barbarity of his deeds, cruelty, and greed made him mentally ill and led to his
failure and finally to his death. The colonial expansion resulted in extreme cruelty and left the
native people in a ruined state. Six million Africans died during the trade, many of them were
enforced to move cargos or help smuggling supplies into the jungle. These dilemmas helped
the formation of Kurtz’s personality.
Kurtz has a symbolic role, and is a ghost in Marlow’s nightmare. This is clear when
Marlow mentions; “No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any
given epoch of one’s existence - that which makes it s truth, its meaning – its subtle and
penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream - alone.” Up to this point, Heart
of Darkness is an attempt to do the impossible; provide a meaning to a dream. The tale has a
double fold message in this context: the first is Marlow’s dream and the second is Marlow’s
journey to Africa. After three months, Marlow goes up river with the aim of relieving Kurtz
at the inner station. His journey is both literal and symbolic. Marlow’s journey to the Congo
River is a discovery of self. His aim is acquiring self-knowledge, and understanding the
mystery of existence; but Kurtz affects him. Kurtz’s crucial role in the tale lies in his
symbolic importance: in the signification of his history, in his role in the personification of
darkness itself, and a potential image of Marlow’s self-hood. This enigmatic man was acting
like a God to the natives. Marlow encountered reality in two ways: the reality of ethics and
the reality of darkness.
Kurtz is not a symbol of evil, though isolation and the absolute freedom afford that when he
confronts it, makes him be an evil to the natives. It is reasonable to suggest that a man in a
state of absolute liberty will not act properly. There is a different hollowness in different
characters of the novel. The manager and brick maker show emptiness, while Kurtz’s
hollowness involves the meaninglessness of the universe, and everyman’s desire to take the
highest place among the devils of the earth. Unlike Kurtz, Marlow chooses the good instead
of the evil to rescue Kurtz. Kurtz spent all of his time in the jungle, and he forgot his civilized
life. Kurtz is also a liar and Marlow too. It is obvious that the atmosphere of the novel will
help the reader in finding out one’s soul. The snake is an image of evil, which can show that
the inner-self of a man is complicated and twisted. 15
After Kurtz’s death, Marlow spends a long time dangled between life and death. Upon his
return to Brussels, he feels a different person with a new perspective toward life. While he
enters Kurtz’s fiancé’s house, he expressed this sentence to the listeners: “It was a moment of
triumph for the wilderness, and invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would
have to keep back alone for salvation of another soul.” Marlow is confronted with a critical
moral dilemma, and refuses to tell the truth to Kurtz’s fiancé. Moreover, darkness which
Marlow is searching for exists in every man’s soul. A careful reader can get the insights that
Marlow gets from his journey.
15
Sara Assad Nassab, "A Postcolonial and Psychological Approach to Heart of Darkness", Luleå University of
Technology, 2006.
13
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
2.3 Freud and the portray of Kurtz
The minimum unit of a society is a person: what is the connection between a man and the
society? How does a man contribute to the configuration of the society? Does the selfhood
become distorted, sublimated, restrained? Kurtz, the main character, was an enlightened man,
painter, poet, when the chief accountant called him as a remarkable individual. Therefore,
what happens to him or which reasons make him change or think to be changed? Freud says,
“Life is too hard for us, it brings too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In
order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measure.” Kurtz was unable to marry his
fiancé because of financial constraint, so he joined a Belgian company in search of his
destiny. Kurtz has been away from everything, mostly alienated from his social life. It could
be a reason why he became disappointed and went mad. Freud says; “Civilization describes
the whole sum of the achievements and regulations which distinguish our lives from those of
our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes-namely, to protect men against nature
and to adjust their mutual relations.” 16
When Kurtz enters Africa, his thoughts regarding the society structure were more like a
normal Europeans. But as he was the absolute ruler for nine years those thoughts gradually
faded to become more like what Freud calls the original personality: the basis…of hostility to
civilization. Kurtz is an individual whose consciousness is dominated by a European ‘id’, and
the ‘ego’ cannot balance between the two ‘ids’. Especially after he was left alone in the
jungle, his inner self drives the irrational ‘id’, while Marlow’s ‘id’ remains in harmony with
his ‘ego’. Like Freud, Conrad felt that the self should grow by virtue of the pressure and
conflicts imposed on it by external reality. Its functions of self-regulation and reality
perception should become more complex and coordinated through increased exposure to the
reality of principle. Like Freud, Conrad believed that exposure to reality should stretch the
ego’s capacity to understand reality. 17
If we look at Heart of Darkness and apply Freud’s notion of the human psyche, we can
consider Marlow’s journey as a psychological journey. Kurtz and Marlow both are seduced
by unexplored Africa. Marlow and Kurtz portray two different aspects of man’s personas.
Marlow reflects the ‘ego’, the more rational side and Kurtz represents the ‘id’ that is man’s
primitive force. Kurtz is Marlow’s ‘alter ego’. By viewing Freudian’s tripartite model of the
mind as being in Kurtz’s psyche, we can conclude that the ‘id’ of a person is separated from
his ‘ego’ and ‘superego’ in the African jungle.
16
17
Harold Bloom, “Modern Critical Interpretations: Heart of Darkness”, Chelsea House, New York, 1987.
Marshall W. Alcorn. “Narcissism and the Literary Libido”, New York University Press, New York , 1997.
14
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
CONCLUSION
Civility, civilization and civilize are man’s resistance against the power and mystery of the
nature of the self. The tragedies of a hero and heroism are obvious in the novel. As Marlow
fights against the enemy, the more he begins to be like the enemy; the more he kills beasts,
the more he becomes like a beast.
Conrad also focuses on the conflicts and moral ambiguities of European investigation and
development of its colonial empires. Kurtz is an anti-civilization figure. During the trip into
the wilderness, they discover their true selves while they keep in contact with savage natives.
Both Marlow and Kurtz search for truth, both suppose that they know the truth about their
good and moral intentions. When Marlow encounters the white agents, he is shocked and
turns away from the civilized men. Marlow finds out that there is a savage monster in him,
and in all men in his mind. He is forced to accept his disenchantment with Kurtz, and is
terrified of the identification.
In order to demonstrate the force, and yet the vulnerability of the individual, confronted with
the aggressiveness of hostile forces, Conrad resorts to a much older set of values, that he
transplants in the new context of the twentieth century relativity. He takes over and
personally interprets the chivalric code, making it pliable to the new co-ordinates of a tainted
civilization. In a world marked by the death of God, Conrad tries to transfer the values of
chivalry, and to make them consonant, up to a certain point, with the modern cultural
environment. His attempt is to accommodate the Christian chivalric value system to the
questioned, questionable and deformed modern one.
Yet in spite of the apparent solidity and simplicity of the ideas Conrad constructed his work
on, Heart of Darkness turns out to be a sophisticated investigation of the ‘darkness’ of the
self, avoiding at the same time, by the choice of narrative technique, simple-mindedness and
straightforwardness. The narrative structure being centered on Marlow, and the story being
filtered through memories means that meaning is deliberately placed under question, that
nothing can be taken for granted, as the narrators themselves are susceptible to questioning.
Yet, in a manner that would become common practice in modernism, Heart of Darkness
demonstrates that the mind and the inner life of the individual are far more complex than
what can become apparent at the level of the restricted reality of external events.
Kurtz symbolizes Europe as it is moving towards the end of imperialism when the Europeans
recognize their harmful actions. Throughout Heart of Darkness, Conrad is challenging to
convey the message to his readers that imperialism is immoral. Most likely Conrad does not
oppose imperialism, but he indicates that the white man is too money-orientated to
understand how spiritually motivated the natives are. Conrad’s main message is that man’s
greatest sin is his violence against the weak. A number of scholars claimed that there is a link
between racism and imperialism. Some argued that European racism occurred during the
expansionist era in the late fifteenth century when Europeans began to come upon and defeat
large numbers of non-Europeans.
Heart of Darkness is even more direct about imperialism. In the earlier 19th century, a
political system of controlling weak nations came progressively to influence a system of
economic and political rights of those countries. Conrad’s novel identifies both of these
aspects, where European powers are in search of establishing political control over the
African continent.
15
The heart of darkness- Kurtz as a mirror of humanity
REFERENCES
1. Marshall W. Alcorn, “Narcissism and the Literary Libido”, New York University
Press, New York, 1997.
2. M. Bell, “The metaphysics of Modernism” in The Cambridge Companion to
Modernism, ed. Levenson, M., Cambridge University Press, 1999.
3. Harold Bloom, “Modern Critical Interpretations: Heart of Darkness”, Chelsea House,
New York, 1987.
4. M. Bradbury, “The Modern British Novel”, Penguin Books, 1993.
5. J. Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, The New American Library, 1950.
6. A. Guerard, “The Journey Within” in Conrad. A Casebook, ed. Cox, C.B., Macmillan,
1981.
7. Frederick R. Karl. “Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives”, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
New York, 1979.
8. Sara Assad Nassab, "A Postcolonial and Psychological Approach to Heart of
Darkness", Luleå University of Technology, 2006.
9. J.H Stape, “The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad”, Cambridge university
press, Cambridge, 1996.
10. B. Spittles, “Joseph Conrad, Text and Context”, Macmillan, 1992.
11. Noelle Watson, "Reference Guide to Short Fiction", St. James Press, Detroit, 1994.
16
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