Kennon Bordelon GEOG Heart of Darkness The essence of this novel has to do with the dark forces in the

human mind that shape the civilization that we live in. I found it very similar in this aspect to Lord of the Flies except that greed is the primary road to darkness instead of the will to survive. Darkness refers to all of the hateful, greedy, brutal, and destructive aspects of the human psyche that exist deep within even the most respectable people. Some people are more prone to corruption than others, and in this novel Kurtz is corrupted beyond his ability to reason. Colonial Europeans established a paradigm of cutthroat greed and demoralization that Africans suffer even today. Marlowe maintains his sanity throughout the novel, and is easily related to because of the presence of common morality. He was very confused when he saw the French ship firing cannons into the jungle at the natives and knew he was about to enter a different world. In this context the shores of Africa represent the borderline of the light of civilization being the sea and the darkness of the interior with the savage natives. When Marlowe reaches the first company station he sees the true horror of European exploitation on an indigenous people. The black men look like beaten dogs chained and completely demoralized. I imagine thats how most of the native Africans felt at the time since they were completely overpowered by the technologically and intellectually superior Europeans. Marlowe does not want to inflict pain on anyone, he only wants to do his job and make trading runs along the river. He is not really a high moral figure, but more like a cynical observer about both the immorality around him as a result

of the greed and brutality of the company and the primitive culture around him that he is fascinated and fearful of. Marlowes journey down the river represents the civilized humans journey into his soul. He understands that he cannot immerse himself into this primitive world and culture if he is to remain sane. Marlowe knows that Europeans will not stay in Africa forever as long as the primitive culture and people are there. The anxiety for a European person being in Africa is enough for them to want to end the ivory trade in his point of view. Kurtz is a more interesting character because he does not think he is insane, but has completely gone insane as an attempt to return to nature as the god he thinks he is with the native Africans serving him. Kurtz begins his journey into Africa wanting to civilize the Africans and seems rather optimistic about them until he writes that they should all be killed. The condemnation of the Africans to death represents the first significant impulse Kurtz has to return to nature, and he denies this impulse realization by denying the Africans. Kurtz is a civilized man, but his extreme greed leads him into madness that is only fulfilled by a complete return to nature to which is impossible if you want to retain knowledge and experience. The light of civilization exists because of the darkness of the endlessly conceivable horrors without it. Kurtz does not experience a return to nature, but a dive into his dark mind first fuelled by his greed. Once the dive into darkness has been made, he justifies the further horrific actions with clever speech craft to the African natives and goes completely insane. Kurtz thinks he has some significant or other worldly enlightenment that he then imposes on the Africans and the Russian man. The enlightened philosophies he has are really nothing more than the quasi rational justification of dark aspects of man. He represents the dark impulses of the civilized man

released into action. Civilized society has ways of regulating how much we identify with being gods, and we progressively become more godlike as society develops. Dark factors such as overwhelming deceit, rationalization, corruption, greed, and power all exist in civilizations, but not in nature. These factors all exist in the civilized man but are controlled and repressed by moral expectation and social contract. Kurtz is the darkest character because he uses his knowledge for egotistical and horrifying ends. The European paradigm of ruthless brutality in the pursuit of greed represented by Kurtz has stained Africa and its cultures into thinking on one of the ends of this spectrum. The people in power ruthlessly want more power and resources, and the people below are terrified of the devils that they most of the time correctly see them as. Europeans set up the balance of power in Africa and rekindled tribal hatreds with warfare over the ivory market. The river represents the path into mans dark soul. The Horror! The Horror! explains what Kurtz is foretelling as he realizes the inescapable consequences Africa must face because of the European rape of the continent. The Europeans will eventually be forced out at a bloody price for both sides, and this is all because of forces that motivated Kurtz, the unmerciful greed of ivory and exploitation of natives to obtain it. Africans today have replaced the ivory trade culture created by the Europeans with a similar diamond trade culture in which blacks exploit other blacks instead of Europeans exploiting blacks. The unjustifiable and dark rationale that governments and rebel groups use in Africa has many of its roots from colonial European policy. Africa is tainted by the political, cultural, and economical bruises of its rape by Europe.