Heart of Darkness: Conrads Use of Language, Myth, and Symbols - Essay Example

Heart of Darkness: Conrad’s use of language, myth, and symbols Through ‘Heart of Darkness’, a three chapter novella, Joseph Conrad forces the reader to dive deep into the river of myth and meander through the dark forest of metaphors and symbols. Conrad uses poetic language to paint images in our minds, and the metaphors to animate these images and breathe life into them. He uses black colour or specifically the darkness as the title implies, to portray the people involved, the nature around them and their motives. Even the lives of the characters in this novel are shrouded in a garb of black. The main ideas in the story are interspersed with myth, imagery, complex irony, and symbols to intrigue his readers. Conrad’s choice of words and word combinations, complex sentences, his poetic tone and sophisticated style assists in smooth transition in situation that craft a sensual experience for the readers. He uses rhyming adjective phrases and complex sentences to string his ideas and make them transcend into a visual melodrama. “Heart of Darkness” is an excellent example for his ability to manipulate the abstract language and vivid imagery to attain his goal. About the story In earlier days, Africa was known to be the ‘Dark Continent’ or the “other world.”(Robert Kimbrough 1988). All negative traits of European society were attributed to Africans. So much so, that Africa did not find a place in the world map and its geographical areas were unmarked. This intrigued and stimulated the spirit of challenge in many explorers and navigators to conquer the Dark Continent. It was this passion that also goaded the boy Joseph to seek a life of adventure and romance on the high seas. A Polish by origin, brought up in a patriotic family who resented European aggression, Conrad spent his childhood in Russia and Poland. Subsequent to the death of his parents he was under the care of his uncle, and had schooling at Carcow. Like other young men of 19th century Conrad was drawn to the adventurous, lucrative, and self-fulfilling life of seamen. He remained a seaman, from 1874 to1894, and sailed under several European flags before beginning his literary career. Conrad’s long twenty years of experience, particularly a visit to Africa, stands reflected in ‘Heart of Darkness.’(p.ix). The story is narrated through the main character Marlow, who was also a sailor, and can be considered as an autobiographical travelogue of Conrad delivered through Marlow. Heart of Darkness, possibly the greatest short novel in English, asks troublesome questions on human aggression, disturbs preconceptions and hypocrisy of white on black, and possibly force the reader to ponder deeper into his self and human behaviour. “Heart of darkness reproduces dominant turn of the twentieth century values, discourses and prejudices, in order to expose and tackle colonialist motives and justifications.” (Joseph Conrad’s heart of darkness. 2002). The novella progresses at two levels. On a physical level it takes the reader on a voyage into the middle of the Belgian Congo. But in a more significant metaphysical level, the yearnings of the anguished soul of Marlow are unravelled before the reader. It reaches its crescendo upon his meeting and interaction with Kurtz, the ivory trader whom he has to rescue and take back to his home country. At still another level, the story also deals with British imperialism and the subjugation and explicit cruelty meted out to the poor and underprivileged African people. On the pretext of ivory trade, Kurtz and his men unleash a war of terror and oppression on the natives and exploit them ruthlessly for making profits in ivory trade. “While it addresses the timeless struggle of man’s self-deception and inner conflicts, influenced by Conrad’s own sense of isolation from his past, the story of Marlow’s journey into the Congo also exposes the clashes, exploitation and barbarity between European and African societies during 19th Century colonial expansion.” (The Literature Network) “Heart of Darkness” is much more than a story about colonialism in the Congo. It is about men’s hearts of darkness and what they become after they leave civilization. This fact of human mind, which is capable of “anything,” is cleverly established with the statement “because every thing is in it, all the past as well as all the future.” (p. 63). To a very large extent, Heart of Darkness also symbolizes the inner turmoil in the life of the writer himself. Through perseverance “gained by his own sweat and blood as a seaman, the life experiences and sensitivity for insight into the human condition” Conrad produced dozens of famous short stories and novels, many that are still in print today. (Conrad, Joseph 1995). Structure and language style The structure of Heart of Darkness is much like that of the Russian nesting doll -- when you open each doll up, there is another doll inside. In the words of Conrad “the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but, outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze.” (p.18). On first reading, it will not be possible to understand the message or inner meaning of the novel completely. Subsequent reading will reveal that much of the meaning in “Heart of Darkness” is found in the periphery of the book, and not in the centre of the book or the heart of Africa. The book is short, but very complex to understand. Very little is described about the main character, Kurtz, and a little is divulged by other characters like manager of the company, agent, and Russian boy. In retrospect, there is no central character in the story, but all the characters are equally important to enact their assigned role in the melodrama. In ‘The Heart of Darkness’, racism is being presented with such vivacity and explicitness that, for once, the reader is necessitated to overcome the racial aspects, before settling down to read and understand the story line. Conrad has sprinkled a liberal doze of ‘derogatory, outdated and offensive terminology,’ so much so, that the reader would not be wrong in terming him a racist, at least in as much as this book is concerned. In many instances in the book, he has fundamentally undermined the very essence of humanity and peaceful co-existence, and has chosen to term the African natives as ‘savages’, ‘niggers’ and ‘cannibals.’ Conrad’s use of such language in a major portion of the book acutely disturbs or even haunts the readers, and does little to exalt the unbiased view of the writer in the reader’s perspective. (Achebe 1977) But in Conrad’s defence, it may be said that, at the time of setting of the novel, ‘nigger’ was not always considered a derogatory term and much of the setting was contiguous with the subjugation of natives, as has been the major part of colonist setting. It needs to be remembered that then Britain was at the zenith of her colonist era and had a commanding imperial presence throughout the world, including a major part of Far East Countries, including India and Burma. An analysis of poetic attitude in Heart of Darkness reveals that the genre of poetry is saturated with symbolic, dream-like experience, incoherent, and subjective ideological ramifications mixed with divergent social functions of prose. Perhaps, Conrad infused his prose with the methods of French Symbolist poetry to create a new type of formally innovative prose. An element of poetic talent in Kurtz is brought out through the parting words of Russian “harlequin” saying “Ah! I’ll never meet such a man again. You out to have heard him recite poetry—his own too it was, he told me. Poetry!” (p.91). The artistic triads of poetry, painting and music, come to the fore from the narration of Kurtz’s painting “representing a women draped and blindfolded carrying alighted torch. The background was sombre—almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.” (79). Eloquence for Conrad, as Jeremy Hawthorn has pointed out, is a highly ambivalent and suspect talent, a word that Conrad hardly ever uses innocently and that nearly always implies a morally suspect facility with words, an ability to build beautiful verbal structures which are at variance with what is really the case.” (Parras, John. 2006) Symbolism. Conrad uses black colour, fog, the “whited sepulchre,” women, and the river Congo to symbolize the gloomy, inhuman, dream-like situation encountered by the characters. (Frederick R Karl 2001). The women at Brussels company office used black yarn to knit and the African mistress was also dressed in black. Darkness is the inability to see and conceptually it fits with the title. But, as a description of human condition, failing to see a human being means failing to understand that individual. In reality, Conrad implies that the colonizers were unable to equate them with the natives and accept them as humans. The colonizers were blinded not in the eye, but in their heart, apt to his title “Heart of Darkness.” The theme of darkness hiding beneath the veneer of culture and civilized European society has been greatly focused in the novella, through the characterization of Kurtz, an unscrupulous ivory trader in the Congo. Conrad uses the conceptual symbol of darkness as evil, debauchery, despondency and ignorance and also uses it for differentiating it with light, the source of strength, radiance and wisdom. Later, it is used to quantify mankind and human beings, who are blinded by their greed and lust, so much that they turn a blind eye to the sufferings and turmoil of their fellow human beings and the poor and impoverished inhabitants of this Dark Continent. “Later, it’s a symbol for the dark side of mankind and human’s blindness towards others.”(Darkness as Symbolism. 2005) In order to create a difference between the West and the African Congo, Conrad uses both silence and physical distance of language. Marlow’s first impression of going up the river was “like travelling back to the earliest beginning of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.” (p.59). Here humans are perceived to have no language where big trees are kings, and the surrounding nature supports this assumption with the mute darkness of the impenetrable forest and great silence along the riverbanks. Similarly, the noise of the ship exerts an authority and imposes silence on the natives on the bank as is evidenced from the words “I felt above my head for the line of the steam-whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly.”(p. 78). The language of the ship, its power alien to the natives, represents the West and its physical domination over the river. How silence could be audible, is aptly narrated through his raising the question “How could you-with solid pavements under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude-utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence-utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion?”(Pp.81-82) There was no effort either by the Europeans or the natives to breach, or even approach the boundary of language. “In the case of the cannibals the incomprehensible grunts that had thus far served them for speech suddenly proved inadequate for Conrad’s purpose of letting the European glimpse the unspeakable craving in their hearts. Weighing the necessity for consistency in the portrayal of the dumb brutes against the sensational advantages of securing their conviction by clear, unambiguous evidence issuing out of their own mouth.” (Achebe, 1977). The necessity of gestures for communication and thereby establishing the physical distance of language is once again narrated through these words “I made speech in English with gesture, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me.”(p.40) The inability to communicate with the natives, directly or indirectly, implies they are of inferior status and to see them as bodies in motion-limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze colour. Marlow sees nothing beyond their shape and forgets that as long as he remains uncommunicative the natives never speak to him. By taking away the voice of the savage through the domination of sound the writer forces the reader to consider the natives are only capable of grunts and the sounds. Silence is used to demonstrate the difference between the West and the men without charmed life. Ironically, Mr. Kurtz, a ‘universal genius’ who could ‘electrify masses,’ entrusted with preparing a report on the “Suppression of Savage Customs” breathed his last whispering incomprehensible words “The Horror! The Horror! captivating the readers to the sad end of a vociferous European. ( pp.117-118) Fog, considered as a consequence of darkness, obscures and distorts objects leading to wrong judgements and thereby to casualties. Marlow and his team was engulfed in fog and exposed to attack from the natives, substantiating the belief in symbolic destructive nature of fog. The “whited sepulchre” derived from the Bible (Book of Matthew), implies something beautiful outside but horror within. This symbol with the Company’s Brussels office hints at cruelty, dehumanization, and even death unleashed on the natives from a company intended to civilize them. The Congo River allows access to Africa without crossing it, and the navigation upriver is slow and difficult. Considering the flow of water downriver, it seems unfriendly and there exists a subtle hint that it wants to expel the white alien. Marlow’s struggle with the river upstream, in a mission to rescue Kurtz, reflects his conflict in understanding the situation he was placed in, and symbolizes the unfriendly nature of the river. The values of women and their status in different societies are illustrated through Kurtz’s prospective bride and his African mistress. Is it only the ladies, as Marlow states, who try to uphold society mores, or are they just deluded in thinking society has any morals? (p.80) Thus, symbols of black and white, dark and bright, mute and audible, and all other contrasting effects are mixed and spread as in the white and black boxes of a chessboard. Myth and imagery Marlow begins his narration sitting cross legged and resembling an idol of “a Buddha preaching.” It gives an impression of delivering sermon to eager disciples, and creating the imagery of an idolised sailor in Marlow. The teachings of Buddha, a king of East turned to a world saint, evoke a sense of peace and harmony among humans, and desist aggression and exploitation. Simultaneously, the mood shifts to contrast and irony by involving the setting sun with “only gloom of the west… as if angered by the approach of the sun.” (p 16). It has to be construed that the teachings of Buddha of the East, which enlighten and push darkness out of the soul like the sun, very much influenced the grooming of Marlow, a person from West. It also points to humanitarian approach of the East as compared to the aggressive, exploitative, and dishonest nature of the West. The imagery of map with white space and smearing it with black is narrated through “the blankest of blank spaces on the map of Africa has acquired rivers and lakes, and names,” a child-hood anecdote of Marlow looking at the past and present day map of Africa. (p.xi). The white patch was an inspiration for young Marlow to dream and plan his journey to conquer an unexplored continent and also to pen his name in the annals of history. Adding new names and locations in the map has shattered his child-hood dream of conquering, establishing his name as a sailor, and erasing his career aspirations to look his future as bleak as thick black of night. This may be reason Marlow blames Africa actually has no name, but a heart of darkness. Comprehensive use of myth to forewarn Marlow is narrated through the two women knitting black wool on his first entering the Company’s office, in the white sepulchred city, to take up his new assignment. For Marlow, the old lady with “quick glance of unconcerned wisdom” seemed uncanny and fateful.(p.24) Memory of the women evoked the image of “two guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continually to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and fooling faces with unconcerned old eyes.”(p.26) This prompts the readers to reminisce Greek mythology of three Goddesses Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos- known as The Fates, believed to represent the cyclic nature of human destiny: past, present and future. (The three weired sisters of wyrd myths). The notion that human fate is spun around a person at birth by divine spinners and each goddess took her turn in manipulating this thread symbolizes three stages of life or experience that shall not be manipulated by an individual and Conrad emphasizes that neither Marlow nor Kurtz is excluded from this universal truth. Comparing the River Congo with serpentine image “resembling an immense snake uncoiled,” is perhaps to remind the sailor of the impending threat of the journey ahead. Its head placed in the sea and winding upward, where its tail vanishes in the dark forest has to be read in comparison with the mythological long river ‘Styx’ that winds nine times about the world. The ship entering Congo River is to be considered a prey to the snake, and its journey upstream a squeeze and shattering before the land is reached. This has been established through damage caused to the ship, sidetracking it for better navigation, and the attack from natives Marlow and team met during their journey upstream. “Feel savagery… in the hearts of wild men. Fascination of abomination” (p.20) represents the suppressed animal instinct and darker side of human nature inherent in civilized humans, and their inability to check it. Marlow describes Romans, who first came to Britain, “were conquerors” (p.128) and harbingers of light to the Dark Continent around 45 BC. The animal instinct inherited by Romulus and Remus, the founding fathers of Rome, mythically through suckling a she-wolf, could be traced in the present day British. Through the symbol of animal instinct, which the Romans transferred to the British, Conrad underscores the greatness of two empire builders and establishes that neither the Romans of 45BC nor the European colonizers of 19th Century AD brought any light to the primitive people. The sketch Kurtz painted with the combination of the goddess of justice and liberty symbolizes Europeans spilling their own darkness on the Africans in the process of illuminating the continent and its people. It implies blindfolded Astraea moving into the darkness with a torch to illuminate her own blindness rather than spreading the light. Colonization of Africa was termed as an effort to enlighten the “uncivilized” and bring them up with western civilization. (p.135). Considered as dark-primitive society with little or no individual identity the advanced society of Europe took it upon themselves as a moral responsibility to civilize Africans. In the true spirit this act of brother-hood and camaraderie definitely throw light on the black continent. But in actuality it was to plunder the natural wealth, particularly ivory, and convert the native blacks into slaves of white masters. Conrad suggests that greed and material gain is the real motive behind the colonization and all the gimmick of brining light to Africa was a cover up to this cohort action. This view is supported by Arthur Conan Doyle stating that “with the strength of treaties entered with the Chiefs of the tribe the land held by communal tenure was bartered for simple gifts of caps, boxes of gin, and such sundries. Twenty millions of people have been expropriated and the whole wealth and land of the country proclaimed to belong, not to the inhabitants, but the king of Belgium.” (Geene M Moore, 1992) Conrad’s words reverberate and speak volumes about the inhumane treatment of Europeans against the mute natives, who are deprived of any protector or a warning voice. Conrad has a message to send across the colonizing fraternity that Africans are also human beings, and deserve fair and equal treatment, rather than equating them with animals. The novella deals with candid depiction of the inner struggles and turmoil, nor so much between the characters per se, but in the inner struggles of their souls. “With characters as anti-hero, he examines man’s moral complexities and capacity for corruption and evil, and the dark depth of the human psyche.” (Joseph Conrad 1996). Hearing the strange music of drums in forest, Marlow admits “Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell… We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us… who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings” shows irony of imperial submission and signal a loss of confidence and lack of capacity to comprehend Africa (p.62) The language used is unique and interspersed with adjective phrases combined with common and uncommon, real and unreal, and abstract and concrete. “The basic narrative structure of Heart of Darkness is a frame-tale with inset stories, an experiment with ‘oblique narration’, a tale within a tale.” (p.xxv). Conrad uses a web of parallels and contrasts to produce a “tentacular effect” in which apparent contrasts often turn out to be parallels (Watts 1977). In the author’s note Conrad cautions the readers that “we are approaching the veiled region of artistic values which it would be improper and indeed dangerous for me to enter. As to its ‘reality’, that is for the readers to determine. One had to pick up one’s facts here and there. Most skill would have made them more real and the whole composition more interesting.” (p.11-12). The sentences “yarns of seamen” have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut” and ‘the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze” are the quintessential language style adopted by Conrad to narrate his story. A nut is cracked to get the kernel inside and the shell, which was protecting it, is generally thrown out. Similarly, a true reader approach a book to get into the core and find out the message it carries, rather looking at its outline. Whereas, Heart of Darkness is an exception to the general style of a story, and it contains story within a story. Further, it needs to be said that the use of language in Conrad’s knowledge often takes pessimistic overtures, as through the very voyage down the Belgian Congo, although highly adventurous, was not fully welcome, since it was a constant threat to life and property and the savage attack on the boat, by the natives, resulting in the killing of the helmsman is portrayed vividly in dark overtures. Conrad has made use of fast language and the drama of the attack on the boat is portrayed well and as is the style of Conrad, by a subtle use of words and images. The local environment Conrad is able to evoke throughout the book is the result of his own varied and sea hardened experience as a seaman, and the language in simply terms, has been striking yet effortless. Conrad’s command and control over the use of language is masterful and elevates him to the realms of classic writers of his time. Even in this novella, Joseph Conrad has been able to capture the moods of the voyage, the haunting past and anxious moments when confronted with the native attack, and the final rendezvous with Kuntz, all this being related through a storyteller, as though Conrad himself has taken up the task of story telling. At the end of the story, Conrad has kept the readers guessing – is this truth or is this truthful fiction? He leaves it on the imagination of the reader to decide on this issue. As a classic writer, his work has been to stimulate and excite the minds of his readers, and Heart of Darkness, through the use of subtle yet forceful language, clever use of symbols to convey the sense of realism, vibrancy and down-to-earth approach through the use of aspects in blackness and darkness, and more significantly, the myths associated with Africa, the Dark Continent has been brought to the forefront. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. 1995. Heart of Darkness with The Congo Diary. Hampson, Robert. London: Penguin. Moore, Geene M. 1992. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: a case book. London: Oxford University Press. Friedman, Melvin J. 1991. The Symbolist Novel. Huysmans to Malraux, in Modernism: 1890-1930. New York: Penguin. P.453-66. Parras, John. 2006. Poetic prose and Imperialism. The ideology of form in Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness. 12 Oct. 2007 Karl, Frederick R. 2001. Introduction to the Danse Macabre: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 12 Oct. 2007 Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 2002. An Essay on the “Othering” of Africa with reference to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 12 Oct. 2007 Kimbrough, Robert. 1988. Editor. Heart of Darkness. An Authoritative Text, Background and sources, Criticism. 3rd ed. London: W.W. Norton and Co. 12 Oct. 2007 The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. 2002. Essortment. 12 Oct. 2007 Joseph Conrad. 12 Oct. 2007 Darkness as Symbolism in Hear of Darkness, 2005. 12 Oct. 2007 The Literature Network. Joseph Conrad. 12 Oct. 2007 Achebe, Chinua.1977. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Massachusetts Review No. 18 Ed. Kmbrough, Robert. London: W.W.Norton and Co. 1988, pp.251-261. 12 Oct. 2007 http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/achcon.htm . The three weired sisters of wyrd myths. (2007). 12 Oct. 2007 http://wintersteel.homestead.com/Wyrd_Myths.html retrieved on 12 October 2007 Read More