Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness:

The 19th century held new ideal of imperialism which provoked growth in art and literature. An example of this growth is the novel, Heart of Darkness. This novel is about a man who traveled to the Congo with a Belgium trading company. The novel is fiction but inspired by the author’s own journey to the Congo in 1890. Joseph Conrad’s negative views on imperialism are shown throughout the novel. The nature of these views is seen in his main character Marlow.

Marlow’s voyage begins in Brussels, Belgium where he is inducted onto a ship that will sail down to
the Congo. As seen through Marlow, Conrad is very much against imperialism. Implying that the type of imperialism happening is a hypocrisy, because in order to convert the “savages” into civilized people, through suppression and extermination. These tactics of suppression and extermination are openly supported by Kurtz, another important character that Marlow encounters on his voyage. Kurtz is characterized by how he considers the people that they are colonizing to be non-human. An example of this is when he refers to the helmsman as a machine. Kurtz is the type of character that dehumanizes anybody that he sees as unworthy. This is generally how Conrad views the Europeans that are colonizing Africa.

Imperialism was cruel in most parts of Africa. Much of the time the native Africans were tortured and enslaved. They were made to work and they were also forced to give up many of their beliefs which were replaced by those of the Europeans. Some cultures fought back and were quickly crushed by European powers while others lasted somewhat longer but still eventually defeated. The way the natives were treated was inhumane and Europeans that hadn’t traveled to Africa probably had no idea how bad these people were actually treated. Conrad is illustrious in his writing, and the descriptions of these scenes alone is enough to know that the way Europe imperialized Africa was wrong, as Conrad was trying to have the reader see.

The European’s large-scale invasion of Africa had some severe repercussions that impacted the world for a long time after much of the imperialism slowed or for some countries even halted. These lasting effects are still felt today in some conflicts like the genocide in Sudan, and the conflict in Rwanda. Most of the issues dealt with in Heart of Darkness, like dehumanization and racism are still around today. In some parts of Africa massive amounts of deaths occur because of the domino effect that happened starting with imperialism that lasted through to the present. You can see how the Europeans interference with Africa, correlates with the snowball theory in that the conflict becomes larger and more intense as time goes by. This is why there is much conflict still in Africa today.

The growth in art and literature exhibiting imperialism, seen throughout western civilization in this part of the 19th century is mostly attributed to the conflicts the Europeans started by enslaving African people and destroying much of their culture. Some people that were mostly blind to the destruction of culture and were a part of the abolishing of human rights in Africa, have expanded libraries by writing literature that supported imperialism from Europe even though it did no real good for the countries besides national pride. There was no real economic value behind the colonies, most countries couldn’t see this at the time but some studies show this is true. Though there are bad parts to the imperialism. The rapid growth and expansion of literature at this time was a great step in the direction of modern western literature.

Works Cited:

Boss, Judy. "Heart of Darkness." 1993.
University of Virginia. 16 Apr 2006 <http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ConDark.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public∂=all>.

"Heart of Darkness." Sparknotes. Sparknotes. 17 Apr 2006 <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/>.

Joseph, Conrad. Heart of Darkness. 1902.