Critique on European Imperialism in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - Term Paper Example

HEART OF DARKNESS TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.3 HEART OF DARKNESS.5 CONCLUSION.9 INTRODUCTION Heart of Darkness is a novel written by one of the famous person, Joseph Conrad. Before its publication of 1902, it also appeared as a three part set of series in the Blackwood's Magazine. It is also widely regarded as a significant piece of work of the English literature and also as the part of the Western canon. The story details an unforgettable incident when Marlow, one of an Englishman, took a foreign based assignment as being a ferry-boat captain, who was employed by a Belgian trading company. Although the river is never specifically and generally named, readers may also assume that it was the Congo River in the Congo Free State, which was a private colony of the King Leopold II. Marlow was employed to transport the ivory downriver; however, his major and important pressing assignment was to return Kurtz, of the ivory trader. This symbolic story is basically a story within a story, or known as the frame narrative. It also follows Marlow as he also recounts, from the dusk through to the late night, his main adventure into the Congo towards a group of men who boarded a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary. It should also be noted from a structuralist and main point of view that Marlow was also the name of a town which was situated on the Thames, upstream from London. (Conrad and Najder, 137) Set during the era of the heightened competition for all the imperial territories that most of the historians have termed the New Imperialism, the Heart of Darkness was loosely based on the Conrad's observations and experience during a six-month stint, in the year 1890, in the Congo as being an employee of a Belgian company. This was almost five years after the coferenece 1884-1885 Berlin, a meeting of different representatives of the European powers was held in order to establish the terms according to which most of the continent of Africa would be then divided among them. During this meeting, King Leopold II of Belgium, by playing skillfully with the jealousies and fears of the rival powers off one another, astonishingly tries to be managed in order to secure as his own personal property of the central Africa that is, a territory of about seventy-five times the size of the country which he had ruled. Under the various humanitarian pretenses, Leopold's agents, who had also begun the process of the conquest several years earlier, also effectively turned the Congo Free State into a camp known as an enormous forced labor camp in order to do the extraction of ivory and, after this, the worldwide rubber also boom in the early 1890s following the popularization of the tire, rubber. Along with this, in order to outright the murders, the slave labor conditions also led to many deaths from the starvation and disease as well as a declining birth rate. During an era in which most of the Europeans viewed the imperialism as a legitimate, most of the falling circumstances of the Leopold's Congo also led to an international outrage. The Conservative demographic estimates therefore place the region's depopulation toll between the 1880 and 1920 at around 10 million people that is around half of the total population along with the worst of the carnage which was occurring between 1890 and 1910. Not much was really known outside the Africa about the conditions of the Leopold's rule when Conrad was also there, but in the several upcoming years before he began writing the Heart of Darkness, in 1898, it also became an international scandal, and most of the regular reports appeared in the British and also in the European press denouncing all the abuses. When he was writing for Blackwood's Magazine, Britain was in its last years of his Victorian rule. Britain was one of the most powerful and also an influential nation on Earth; its Empire was also spread throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857. African exploration was little bit popular in Conrad's day, Livingstone then died in 1873, in Africa, and Stanley then returned from his final African expedition in the year 1890. As exploration was popular at that time, so at that time adventure story - tales of the African exploration were available in abundance. Imperialism was also known as a popular theme at this point in the nineteenth Century. HEART OF DARKNESS In order to emphasize the theme of the darkness within all of the mankind, Marlow's narration also takes place on a yawl in the Thames tidal estuary. Early in the novel, Marlow also recounts that how actually London, the largest, and also the most populous and the wealthiest city in the world at the time, was itself a dark place in the Roman times. The main theme of darkness which is lurking beneath the surface of even civilized persons also appears prominently, and therefore was further explored through the main character of Kurtz and also through Marlow's passing sense and feeling of understanding with all the Africans. (Conrad and Najder, 137) Conrad's novel is very often identified as one of the archetypal modern text for many different reasons; one of the main reasons is that how it is well interpreted. Some of his readings basically include: Symbolic - A symbolic reading of any kind of the text may also pinpoint the constant contrasts between the light and darkness as having been part of nature and of the life since the origins of humanity came into being. Various kinds of the Symbolic comparisons are also made between the River Thames and between the Congo River, as well as those which are in the City of London and seen at the start of the novel. Mythical - A mythical reading basically brings in the ideas of the primitive, and also of the nature of the primitive existence, and the role of a vague but also the powerful idea which has upon the humanity, as well as embodying a main return to origin and towards a confrontation of the darkness. Psychological - This way of reading is known as the psychological reading, Conrad's tale has been the common form on interpretation point of view, and apart from this is is also the most obvious and an introspective one as a journey of the Marlow's inner self. Political - The political readings of the heart of darkness have also increased, is also exploring and have also commenting on the main ideology of the imperialism. (Conrad and Najder, 137) In the Heart of Darkness Conrad generally selected two important criteria the idea of the civilizing mission in order to judge imperialism and the other is efficiency. Although he himself did not espouse these above mentioned values, he therefore chose them because they were well suited and also popular in order to condemn all the peculiar exploitation of the Congo by the King Leopold II. Unlike the capital rich imperialism, which could only seek the long-term development, Leopold's capital poor imperialism also resulted in the hasty exploitation of the surface resources through different kind of the forced labor. Conrad's story on the other hand powerfully illustrated the special inefficiency and also the cruelty of such kind of exploitation. As in his other colonial based novels, Conrad also went on in order to imply a further enhanced judgment against all the types of the imperialism, even against England's, because of their belligerence, complicity and an arrogant disruption of their indigenous cultures. (Conrad, 80) The Heart of Darkness has also been a source of the contention for various critics since its publication. No further issue within the novel has been marked to this dispute more than the imperialism in Africa. When published originally as a series in pro-imperialism journal, Blackwood's Magazine, Heart of Darkness has also been cited as an unabashedly pro-imperialist and also as an even racist on the one hand; it has also been seen as scathingly anti-imperialist on the other hand. Around more than a hundred years of discussion among various readers and also among various literary critics of Conrad has even failed in order to produce any sort of the majority consensus on this major issue of imperialism. This diversity of an interpretation is least in part a result from the definite tensions which are generally inherent in this text itself. Along with this, Conrad also seems to have Kurtz and juxtaposed Marlow specifically for the main purpose of contrasting the noble and main ideas and the perspectives of imperialism along with the sinister abuse of the power that may and can accompany it. In this way Conrad also takes the role of the iconoclast, by destroying the constructed idols of the civilization while, at the same time, he also tries to demonstrate the barbarism inherent in an uncivilized world. The story therefore becomes less an argument about this matter of civilized vs. uncivilized; rather, it seems to suggest that whether civilization is itself an illusion or not. Civilization is basically a human construct which is built for the main purpose of justifying the evil and harsh intentions of men's hearts. Thus for Conrad the term "darkness" does not refer to only a geographic location, but also to a moral condition of every human's heart. (Conrad and Murfin, 315) The critical approaches in order to interpret the notions of imperialism in the Heart of Darkness basically fall into three main camps. The first of these was to promote most notably that Conrad generally writes as a white male European and that the text also demonstrates a specifically racist and also as an imperialist point of view. In this interpretation, it is the Africa itself that mainly corrupts the Kurtz. The barbaric and the uncivilized world basically turn a once-civilized man into a huge monster. Kurtz travels first to the Congo when he was motivated by the economic individualism, as "an emissary of science and progress". Only at that time, once he was deep in the uncivilized world, which made him more corrupted by the opportunity for the raw power that was basically presented to him and he therefore sets himself up as a god to the other Congolese native peoples. The major problem for Conrad was then not the nature of the imperialism itself. The major problem with the imperialism was the darkness and also the evil of the uncivilized world and it's after effect on the civilized mind. Therefore, Marlow saw the report of Kurtz as being a tremendously high piece of work, but then also he drops off the written postscript because it basically showed only Kurtz long after he had descended into the darkness. There is another main thought among various critics regarding the imperialism in the Heart of Darkness. This sort of critic is basically seen as via media between the extreme anti and the pro imperialism positions. These critics basically argue that Conrad was much behind the main ideas of imperialism, but on the same side the character of the empire would also greatly inform that whether expansion was performed in a just way or not. From this major perspective, Conrad was not basically writing in order to strike against the imperialism or its abuses by various individuals. Instead of this he was striking against the various particular form of Belgian imperialism that were present under the King Leopold that Conrad was himself the witnessed in the Congo, and that was also making regular news in the English press around the time when he was writing. (Conrad and Moore, 219) CONCLUSION The Indigenous peoples of Africa usually die every day because of war, famine, and also because of the various diseases which were largely due to the legacy of the European imperialism. Joseph Conrad, who first saw the horror of the imperialism as being a ship captain, sought to change the public opinion and also tried to call attention to the atrocities committed. In the Heart of Darkness, Conrad also articulates his negative view of imperialism as an oppressive and also as a hypocritical through contrasts and also through various parallels of Europe and Africa. Conrad's sympathetic portrayal of natives and also his demonizing portrayal of the Europeans do makes the readers to actively despise the institution of the imperialism by forcing them to condemn all the actions of Europeans in every single circumstance which was there presented. The Heart of Darkness, Conrad also reinforces the Europeans as being the outsiders, intruders, and also as being the prime evildoers in the novel. He also articulates his negative view of imperialism by contrasting and also by parallels of Europe and Africa by his contrast of the pilgrims and the cannibals, the main role of Kurtz, and also his portrayal of the imperialists. Conrad also observed the horror of the Imperialism and therefore tried to set out. (Conrad and Najder, 137) REFERENCES Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness, Plain Label Books, no year. Joseph Conrad, Robert Hampson. Heart of darkness, with the congo diary, Classics, 1995. Joseph Conrad. Heart of darkness, Digireads.com, 2005. Joseph Conrad, Ross C. Murfin. Heart of darkness: complete, authoritative text with biographical and historical contexts, critical history, and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, 1996. Joseph Conrad, gene M Moore. heart of darkness and other stories, Wordsworth Editions, 1995. Joseph Conrad, Zdzislaw Najder. Heart of Darkness, Hesperus, 2002. Read More