Heart of Darkness - Analysis of Title and Theme

By James Cox, Student

what is the Heart of Darkness?

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

In the novella Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad in 1899, we experience the journey of a steamboat captain up the Congo. The Heart of Darkness itself is mentioned many times in the book, and many people have formulated different opinions as to what the Heart of Darkness actually stands for. In reality, it stands for many things: it is a political statement exposing the evils of imperialism, an exploration of the evil in the human heart, and an example of what can happen if one gives in to temptation.

In the story, Marlow, the steamboat skipper, is sent up the river to retrieve Kurtz, the best agent of the Company. However, the world up the river grows in weirdness and complexity; it seems that Kurtz has set himself up as a kind of tribal god to the natives: "he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know." With his European technology and skills, he shows off to them, and then as he loses his restraint he stops being the skilled agent of the Company, and turns into a savage like the natives. Many times in the story the idea of restraint is mentioned. At the start of the narrative by Marlow, he talks to the others on the boat about the idea of The British Gentleman, one of the characteristics of which is restraint. Marlow himself finds that he too is on a precipice, but unlike Kurtz, he did not go over the edge and thus has retained his sanity and 'normal' morals and ideals. "You wonder why I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance?... I had not time. I had to mess about... to put bandages on those leaky steampipes... I had to watch the steering..."

In the very first part of the frame narration Marlow mentions the Roman conquerors of England, and suggests the other on the boat imagines what the land would have been like before civilization came. He draws a comparison between England and the Congo which he traveled up, all desolate and unusable wild land, with warring natives, etc. However, he also distinguishes a contrast between the Roman conquerors and the British colonialists: supposedly the British colonising peoples are driven by the noble idea of bringing both civilization and religion to the natives, and also the running of a tight administration through efficiency. "What saves us is efficiency, the devotion to efficiency... They were no colonialists, their administration was no more than a squeeze, I suspect." Marlow brings a certain duality to the idea of imperialism, while he subscribes to the notion of his aunt that they are emissaries of 'the light', as he goes up the river he notes 'a touch of insanity' about the man-of-war firing blindly into the bush. Eventually, the manager becomes no more than 'a common trader', and the desire of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition is to "tear treasure out of the bowels of the land... with no more moral purpose... than burglars breaking into a safe." Some literary scholars believe that Conrad drew a distinction between British and Belgian and other countries colonialism, but the quote "all of Europe made Kurtz" suggests that he disagrees with all imperialism.
The journey up the river is also known as a journey of self discovery for Marlow, and also of discovery of other people, as he makes moral judgments of the events that he sees. This gives him a deeper understanding of the true nature of the human heart, the 'fascination of the abomination', and he is even irritated by the complacency of the other citizens he sees, since they have not experienced the true nature of the capacity for evil, "they could not possibly know the things I know."
In the setting of the jungle, it seems that the whites are more evil than the black natives, Marlow calls the cannibals "Fine fellows... in their place.", but he sees the colonialists as quite evil: they use the adjective of 'criminals' to justify chaining and collaring the slaves, and 'enemies' to explain firing blindly into the scrub where Marlow is assured a native camp is hidden somewhere. In the Outer Station, the 'grove of death' amounts to genocide as the natives, "bunches of acute angles", wait to die of starvation and sickness, while the imperialist colonialists, the 'bearers of the light', do nothing.

Since while studying the novel we cannot positively identify one meaning for the Heart of Darkness, we must try to read as closely as possible as to gain different meanings and images presented by Conrad. The issues of the evil in the human heart, the idea of restraint and the dual nature of colonialism were all illustrated by the author, and provide a wide range of meaning together with the title, which has the effect of making the reader think more and formulate their own ideas for the 'heart of immense darkness.'