Heart of Darkness - A Forest of Symbols - Essay Example

Heart of Darkness: A Forest of Symbols Symbols are an integral element of Joseph Conrad’s somewhat autobiographical novel Heart of Darkness. Through the story, Marlow, the primary protagonist, continues to challenge the assumptions of his time period that are voiced by his listeners on the ship awaiting wind on the Thames as well as by Conrad’s intended readers, subscribers to Blackwood’s Magazine. In doing so, he blurs the lines between inside and outside, civilized and savage and the concepts of dark and light. Contrary to popular practices in art analysis and psychology at the time, Conrad explains that Marlow is different from most men in that he does not search for a great depth of meaning on the inside. Instead, he finds meaning in the outside nature of things, what can be seen and touched and therefore proved. This emphasizes the importance of symbolism in bringing out the meaning of the story as Marlowe, concentrating on the outside, will make finding true meaning difficult at best. However, Marlow’s experience in the Congo has changed him to a man who cannot ignore the deeper meanings of the symbols around him. Like the rest of the story, in which everything seems to be reversed with its opposite or at best misunderstood in its entirety, the opening of the novel depends largely upon symbols as a means of conveying this sense of inner conflict between the nature of a thing and itself. The concepts of inward and outward, civilized and savage and light and dark are recurrent themes throughout the novel, introduced at the novel’s beginning and illustrating how each of these words are actually defined by cultural rather than actual standards. 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. The trip on the Congo serves as a frame for a variety of adventures Marlow experienced as a younger man including encountering abject poverty, the frightening sight of ‘black men’ (never humans) working, chain gangs, uncomfortable station managers and broken down steamer ships. He is exposed to the most self-centered and greed-oriented individuals who appear to view the jungle as their personal treasure chest, to be exploited in any way they see fit, rather than a land to be explored and understood, gentled and colonized as he’d been told. After experiencing an African attack, brought on for no apparent reason, Marlow finally makes it to Kurtz’s station expecting everything to be made clear, but instead encounters a strange Russian man and a very ill Kurtz who does not wish to leave because his plans have not yet been completed. Despite an escape attempt in the middle of the night, Marlow manages to get Kurtz on board his boat and begins heading back down river. A few days later, Kurtz dies of his illness after having entrusted all his paperwork to Marlow. Marlow enters the forest as a colonizer, but leaves it a much wiser and more reflective man having had his world turned upside down and inside out as a result of his experiences and still, in his older years, attempting to define what he learned. The first chapter of the book takes place many years after the rest of the story and offers a glimpse at the overall themes of the book in one succinct passage. Conrad begins this passage by providing a detailed description of the scenery taking place while five men on the deck of an unmoving ship watch. The themes are brought forward in a variety of symbolic analogies beginning with Marlowe’s observations on the Thames River and his comparison of these observations with his earlier experiences on the Congo. As the sun sets over the Thames, a condition that most would view as the onset of darkness particularly as various elements of the landscape begin to disappear in a deepening haze, the narrator notes that “the serenity became less brilliant but more profound” (Conrad 16). This in itself suggests that though the sky is becoming darker, the meaning of this darkness is becoming clearer. To envision this, one must just think of attempting to squint through the evening’s last sunlight the image of a building or tree on the horizon. While the sun is still above the horizon, nothing can be seen clearly. However, immediately after it drops below the horizon, bringing about a greater darkness, the shape of the building or tree is suddenly brought forward in startling clarity even though its more intricate details remain fuzzy and unclear. However, this setting sun also suggests a sense of foreboding and danger as it is seen “brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber ever minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun” (Conrad 16). This image of something that is light and dark, good and bad, serene yet brooding is at the heart of the story and is illustrated eloquently through the symbols used in this chapter as a means of bringing this concept to the attention of the reader and the listener before it can be lost in the greater telling. In this book about the heart of darkness, the images of light and dark presented are not permitted to remain simply physical elements as conversation links them to increasingly deepening concepts. This suggests the importance of all other elements of the story that might be brought up later. Through this first section of the book, everything is seen to have a deeper meaning than the obvious, a trend that will continue as the story moves on. As Marlowe looks upon the sunset, he makes an analogy of the light and dark as a representation of the difference between civilized and savage, with the light always referring to the civilized world. This is obvious as the other men sitting on the ship on the Thames at the opening to the story have been discussing how the great heroes, the knights-errant of the sea, have made their way in similar fashion down the Thames and out into the dark places of the world, suggesting they were bringing light to other places of the world and defending the light of England against the dark hordes of other nations. They also comment upon the way in which this light was kindly distributed throughout the dark places of the world as the settlers and colonists bravely left their bright land and traveled down the Thames to dark areas that wanted exploration. In this, it is seen that bringing light to dark areas is a positive thing, always helping the savage people who are affected by it whether they know they want it or not. However, in this scene, as in the bulk of the novel, Marlowe tends to turn everything inside out, making dark seem light, in seem out and civilized seem barbaric. Keeping in mind how the light tends to blind people to the truth, Marlowe suddenly breaks the reverie of the other four passengers on deck watching the sunset with a startling observation. “And this also … has been one of the dark places of the earth” (Conrad 18). In this line, he could as easily be talking about the blindness of his comrades in not seeing past the propaganda of the trading companies regarding the effects of their activities in the darker regions of the world as he is discussing the distant past history of England. To make his point clear regarding 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, using the Romans as a safe symbol of the type of conquest and subjugation he witnessed his own countrymen undertaking on the Congo. 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 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 20). Despite any claims to the contrary, Marlowe is indicating here, as he will throughout his adventurous story, 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. As he attempts to make the distinction between the horrible Romans and what the Englishmen were doing in Africa, the symbolism of the torch is brought into play. Like the sun that burned itself out in the evening sky with a mixture of absolute beauty and menacing solemnity, Marlowe’s attempt to make a distinction is cut off as he realizes where his statements are headed. He says, “What redeems it [colonization] is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea – something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to …” (Conrad 20). As he interrupts his own statement, realizing the futility of the torch of knowledge being passed to the inhabitants of the newly colonized country, he sees that “flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other – then separating slowly or hastily” (Conrad 20). While these are ship’s lights being reflected in the water, they are much like the torch lights that appear in the forest, attempting to illuminate the way but only serving to confuse it and blind the individuals with the torch. Thus, while light has been construed as a symbol of knowledge, the emptiness of the light reflected in the water, considered light in its own right, reveals the emptiness of the light being taken into the jungle. Thus, starting from the very first chapter as Marlow challenges the assumption that London is the center of the civilized world through the use of symbolism, Heart of Darkness can be seen to challenge many of the assumptions regarding basic values as they relate to those who exist outside one’s personal cultural background. The first chapter becomes a symbol in itself of the action to be encountered in the story. In making this speech, Marlowe sums up a great deal of what he has to say throughout the remainder of the novel. By confusing the concepts of light and dark, civilized and savage and inside and outside, he makes it clear that no single definition of such terms can be applied as universally good or bad. Instead, through his London analogy as well as the inconclusive tale he tells regarding the Congo, he suggests that the actions of men, looked at from the outside and as objectively as possible, can only indicate where definitions fail, new understandings must be sought and distinctions blurred. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Read More