Analysis of Heart of Darkness - Essay Example

Referred to as the “dark continent”, Africa was one of the world’s ‘dark places’ that the Europeans had colonized by the 1890s. It is perceived in other the places (Africa, England and Brussels) that Conrad describes as depressing, dark areas. Darkness symbolizes the unknown, gaining power because we are afraid to find out what it is hiding from us (for example, in Section 2, Part II, when Marlow’s steamer enters an oppressive fog bank resulting in blurring and distortion of vision, the men aboard it are terrified when they hear a high-pitched scream followed by a clamor of savage voices; their terror emanates from their knowledge that danger is lurking somewhere in the foggy darkness, but they are unable to see it or gauge its potency (http://www.

novelguide.com/heartofdarkness/index.html). It is the metaphoric meaning of darkness that is more prevalent throughout the novel. Conrad refers to darkness as the human inability to see beyond another individual’s personal façade, and the inability to understand the feelings of that individual, both of which lead to inability to establish any sort of mutual understanding or sympathetic interaction with that person. Darkness is compelling and alluring. Unknown danger has always been a magnet that has drawn humans to dare and explore it.

In the context of the novel, darkness conceals unknown dangers in Africa that Europeans dare to tackle for the rewards it would bring. To the company men, the reward is material wealth represented by ivory; to Marlow, the African darkness conceals adventure, this being the main reason he traveled to that place due to a map he came across (Section 1, Part I), depicting the region as unexplored land (http://www.novelguide.com/heartofdarkness/index.html). Darkness is used as a cloak to conceal acts of savagery.

Conrad suggests that such a cloak of darkness can camouflage savage acts that would be impossible to contemplate in European civilization. For example, Kurtz