Joseph Conrads Abandonment in Heart of Darkness - Book Report/Review Example

Joseph Conrad’s Abandonment in Heart of Darkness In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the main character Marlow continuously calls into question the modern assumptions that are made by his listeners as well as his readers, blurring the lines between inward and outward, civilized and savage and, most especially, dark and light. The bulk of the book concentrates on Marlowe’s telling of his adventures on the Congo River as a steamboat captain sent in to find a station master who has gone missing. As he struggles to make his way up the river to the interior where this man is supposed to be waiting for him, Marlowe begins to gain a deeper understanding of what is actually occurring in the forest outside the realm of what he’s been told by the Company. It is explained from the beginning of the book that Marlowe is different from most men in that he does not search for a great depth of meaning on the inside, as had been the tradition in everything from art analysis to psychology, but rather that he seeks meaning from the outside of things, by what can be seen and touched about a man and therefore proved to no false assumptions. However, what he sees in the Congo makes gaining meaning from the story difficult at best as nothing seems to be established in such dyadic certainty, a fact that is underscored as the story begins. Through his experiences, Marlowe finds it necessary to abandon materialism as the destroyer of souls which is displayed through such symbolic elements as imperialism, gender issues and moral implications. Through his journey into Africa, into the Heart of Darkness, Marlow learns that the darkness is not out there, but is instead found inside. Moreover, rather than having an obscuring nature, it is only in accepting the darkness that one can begin to see the light. This is particularly well-illustrated in the death of Kurtz. In learning about all that Kurtz had done in the jungle, Marlow beings to carry Kurtz back to civilization feeling a large degree of anger, resentment and revulsion toward this man who had attempted to establish himself as a vengeful god within the heart of the jungle despite all of the good and righteous things others had to say about him. “Precisely because he condemns himself, Kurtz unmistakably shows the survival of moral judgment in his consciousness, which Marlow sees as all the more affirmative because the expression of it from this source was so unexpected. Given the completeness of Kurtz’s ‘incredible degradation,’ how could he, of all men, be expected to pass such profound judgment upon himself? That Kurtz’s moral consciousness should have survived his descent into hell … baffles probability the way a miracle would” (Anderson, 1988: 410). Finally, Marlow is able to understand the terrible temptations of the exterior world, the pursuit for material gain, the corrupting power this pursuit has and the eventual destruction of the soul such pursuit precludes. “Darkness, not light, is the foil. Conrad shows us Kurtz’s ultimate degradation shortly before his last scene so that we may better understand the significance of the moral light that reilluminates him at a moment when he had nothing at all to gain and might more probably be supposed to die with lips sealed in contempt” (Anderson, 1988: 412). Through Kurtz’s example, Marlow is able to completely abandon any materialistic pursuits in favor of bringing the moral light of Kurtz’s darkness to those in civilization who have lost it. The ideas brought forward through this relationship between Marlow and Kurtz are alluded to early in the story as Marlow sits on deck with his listeners. The concepts of inward and outward, civilized and savage and light and dark are recurrent themes introduced at the novel’s beginning and illustrating how each of these words are actually defined by cultural rather than actual standards. They are brought forward in a variety of ways beginning with Marlowe’s observations on the Thames River and his comparison of same with his experiences on the Congo. As the narrator notices the sun setting over the Thames, a condition that most would view as the onset of darkness, the narrator notes that “the serenity became less brilliant but more profound” (Conrad, 1995: 16). This in itself suggests that though the sky is becoming darker, the meaning of this darkness is becoming clearer. The picture that immediately springs to mind is that of an individual squinting into the sunlight to make out a shape on the horizon. When the brightness is suddenly dimmed, plunging things into a greater darkness, the individual is able to now recognize the shape as something intimately familiar to them. This image is at the heart of the story and is illustrated so eloquently now as a means of bringing this concept to the attention of the reader and the listener so it perhaps will not be lost in the greater telling. In the same way, it is only by abandoning the light and allowing oneself to test the actual strength of moral fiber within, as Kurtz has done, that one can begin to truly claim a moral victory of any kind. That Kurtz was able to live his life, test his metal and then, in the end, to judge himself based on his own sense of morality with the words “the horror!” strikes Marlow as being the true essence of being human. Only by traversing through darkness, he discovers, can one find the light. As a result, he abandons his search for the light as well as his repudiation of the dark in order to find a deeper illumination. Despite his assertions to a dedication to the truth, Marlowe’s admission of the lie to the Intended also illustrates the lie he doesn’t realize he’s telling – that of the dark continent as it really is – as seen through the eyes of the Europeans. Even as he attempts to understand his experiences, Marlowe “creates the sense of an ‘enchanted’ and ‘bedeviled land’ through its macabre images, its suggestive references to all sorts of vague horrors only partly sequestered in the dark jungles, and its generally surrealist, nightmarish depiction of scenery … in the course of which he, like other Britons, clings desperately to his Englishness” (Shetty, 1989: 470). He cannot understand the primitive Africans who seem to participate in no industrious activities unless they were driven to it (Conrad, 1995: 34-35) and finds it necessary to distinguish himself from them as among the civilized races of men. Despite his distaste at the near nakedness of the dying black men resting in the shade at the first station, his encounter with the white man, whom he found he immediately respected as a result of his white collars, vast cuffs and brushed hair, his Englishness in the wilderness (Conrad, 1995: 36). “Significantly, in his depiction of a fictionalized landscape, Conrad not only pushed facts, but he seems to have pushed them along certain well-trodden paths, choosing the most powerful of the stereotypical images of Africa, recognizable images that would certainly had had the desired effect on ‘the minds and bosoms’ of his contemporary readers” (Shetty, 1989: 471). Thus, he, meaning both Conrad and Marlow, has abandoned the truth in favor of a representation that was more in keeping with popular beliefs regarding Africa. This idea is brought into clearer focus when it is placed in context of the contemporary society, particularly in the relationship seen in England between men and women. Conrad himself establishes this difference when discussing the aunt that landed him his job in Africa. He says women “live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up, it would go to pieces before the first sunset” (Conrad, 1995: 28). As a result of this conception, “Woman as symbol is of central importance, the embodiment of the culture’s highest values. Yet women as persons are severely restricted in their sphere of activity … The enterprises of civilization are carried on in woman’s name but not under her direction” (Geary, 2002: 501). This is very much like the ‘idea’ of colonialism without the civilizing influences of those who hold to these ideals and the concept is finally epitomized in the figure of the Intended as repository of the light and the ideal. “However, it becomes increasingly clear upon examination of the episode that the Intended belongs to the darkness … She is very much a part of the rich, dead surroundings … an image which calls to mind the dark and sinister effect of the light in Kurtz’s painting” (Geary, 2002: 504-505). She is sequestered in her conceptions about the world and her ideals without being required to fully examine them just as the Englishmen are sequestered within their ideals about colonialism without actually being forced to understand what is truly happening. Rather than face up to the truth of the issue, Marlow finds himself lying to her to protect her innocence just as other explorers have lied to his countrymen regarding what is happening in Africa. He abandons this tact, though, in telling his shipmates on this voyage the truth of things as well as he can and realizes the impossibility of it all. To ensure that this concept is not linked to women only but is also applicable to the rest of England, Marlow, in the introductory chapter of the story, discusses England’s own experience with light. Marlowe explains himself by illustrating how this lead-gray, bleak land was once the savage, dark place visited by the Romans. Despite finding a flourishing society on these islands, the Romans felt lost in the darkness themselves. “Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages – precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. … Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay – cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death – death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush” (Conrad, 1995: 19). Much of this description could be equally applied to the lands of the Congo, in which Europeans died in great numbers as they fell to the strange diseases and other hazards of an unfamiliar world. The Romans, like the younger Marlowe and his associates in the Congo, had no light to guide their way to the interior of a land defined by them as dark, but that operated well enough on its own with its own people. The Englishmen to whom Marlowe was speaking were well aware of the brutality of the Romans as well, knowing them as conquerors, who “grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind – as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness” (Conrad, 1995: 20). Despite any claims to the contrary, Marlowe is indicating here that the claims of imperialism are little more than an excuse to plunder and steal, blinding outsiders with the light they’re supposedly bringing to the interior so little can be seen of the ravages occurring on the edges as the savages are brutally killed and the civilized men profit from their spoils and doing little more than destroying themselves in the process. Perhaps realizing that he is unable to tell the truth about Africa because of the deeply culturally ingrained ideas about it held by his countrymen, Conrad and, by extension Marlow, finally finds it necessary to abandon the search for truth and meaning in Africa only to find the truth in their own hearts. “Rather than a psychological work, Heart of Darkness is a text that interrogates the epistemological status of the language in which it inheres. The conclusion of that interrogation, the real horror in the tale, is ‘the impossibility of disclosing a central core, an essence, even a ground to what Kurtz has done and what he is” (Ferry Meisel cited in Levenson, 1986: 154). Marlow concludes, watching Kurtz’s death, that “all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible” (Conrad, 1995: 113-114). In this statement, Marlow seems to be saying that until we actually take that step into the next world, we are bound by the cultural and linguistic limitations of our homeland. Rather than leading him to despair, though, this realization allows Marlow to abandon his deep inner searching for truth because he knows he will not find it until he is able to pass out of his cultural heritage. This has led him to adopt a new approach to looking at the world: “the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a slow glow brings out a haze” (Conrad, 1995: 18). To try to look within is only to become mired in the epistemological inaccuracies that a dominant culture will inflict upon others regardless of any efforts to overcome. “To travel to the edge is to find oneself at the heart, and to approach the center is to stand on the threshold. In Heart of Darkness the center lies on the circumference; the middle is on the periphery” (Levenson, 1986: 156). In the end, Marlow seems to abandon life as he has always understood it. In the collapse of his romanticism, Marlow has found truth and sanity in an otherwise insane world through his own near death experience and his encounters with several duplicates of himself. “Seen in this way, Marlow’s doubles combine with his serious illness to make him modern: he will be a missionary to, not from, civilization; for, as an enlightened emissary of darkness, he brings the cautionary truth about man with him out of the jungle” (Meckier, 1982: 375). Through his own example, Marlow demonstrates the necessity for man to abandon all pre-conceptions about himself, all romanticism and all ideals as being meaningless and empty. However, Conrad, in his telling of the story, “gives back, as compensation, renewed confidence in the worth of being human, in the power of man, even in extremity, to pass moral judgment upon himself and his fellows. Marlow supplies his listeners with something more reliable to live with” (Meckier, 1982: 379). Throughout the story, Marlow demonstrates the various ways in which he has abandoned a thoroughly modern view of colonialism as a means of bringing light and civilization to the world. In his understanding of Kurtz’s last statements, he sees the absolute power of materialism to corrupt and destroy human souls at all levels and the fallacy behind the linguistics of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ imagery in describing England’s goals in Africa or elsewhere. This is illustrated not only in the well-understood conceptions of the difference between a man and a woman’s world in England itself, but also as it relates to the process of civilization that happened to the Britons themselves when Roman armies landed on England’s shores. He understands that issues of language and cultural identity get in the way of seeing the truth, even when one believes he has grasped it, it remains elusive. As a result, Marlow has abandoned all claims to truth itself and attempts merely to enlighten by example through the simple retelling of his story, hoping enough of its essence will reach the listener to bring about new perceptions and thus truly advance civilization. Works Cited Anderson, Walter E. “Heart of Darkness: The Sublime Spectacle.” University of Toronto Quarterly. Vol. 57, (1988): 402-421. Geary, Edward A. “An Ashy Halo: Woman as Symbol in Heart of Darkness.” Studies in Short Fiction. 2002: 499-506. Levenson, Micheal. “On the edge of the Heart of Darkness.” Studies in Short Fiction Vol. 23, (1986): 153-158. Meckier, Jerome. “The Truth About Marlow.” Studies in Short Fiction. Vol. 19, (1982): 373-381. Shetty, Sandya. “Heart of Darkness: Out of Africa Some New Thing Never Comes.” Journal of Modern Literature. Vol. 15, N. 4, (Spring 1989): 461-474. Read More