Beale 1

Primitive Inhumanity as True Humanity

Ada Beale

AP Literature Ms. McPherson 16 December 2012

Beale 2 There is a primal drive to conquer that has consumed mans thoughts, leading him away from family and life and love in his own selfish desire to succeed. Joseph Conrad ponders the direct manifestation of this drive to conquer through imperialism in his novel Heart of Darkness by questioning which man is actually the primitive onethe native or the European. Through the use of literary devices like asyndeton, imagery, simile, and metaphor to provide philosophical depth, Conrad explores the pervasiveness of darkness in the hearts of all men, and ultimately discovers what makes a person human. Seeing the natives in their uncivilized condition strikes fear in Marlows heart, but causes him to recognize some similarity between the natives and the Europeans. Upon seeing the steamer go up the river, the natives howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces, to try to intimidate the Europeans. (Conrad, 69). Through the use of vivid imagery to describe the natives actions, Conrad makes the natives seem somewhat inhuman and fearsome. As he continues to sail up the river, Marlow realizes how similar the societies really are, beneath the language barrier and the different lifestyles. One of the main themes of the book that is slowly revealed is the similarity between the savage natives and the cultured Europeans. As the natives jump around in their wild and passionate uproar, Marlow looks past their antics, acknowledging they were not inhuman (Conrad, 69). This differs greatly from the stereotypical view of the natives as closer to animals than men. He recognizes a remote kinship between the two groups, leading the reader to question what makes them similar at the core. After breaking down all the perceptions the reader has about what makes someone human, Conrad explores the idea of what it means to actually be a person. The Europeans cant recognize how similar both societies are because they do not understand the Africansthe prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming uswho could tell? (Conrad, 68). Conrads use of asyndeton, purposely leaving out conjunctions and forming a choppy sentence, mirrors how the Europeans view the native lifestyle as rough, confusing, and unpleasant. Although the natives are shown as primitive versions of man, the Europeans own humanity is compromised by their greed, causing them to commit atrocities. This leads the reader to question which manthe enslaved, uncivilized native or the insatiable Europeanis actually free. When Marlow sees the natives in their natural setting for the first time, he has a subconscious realization that the natives and the Europeans have the same essential nature.

Beale 3 What scares Marlow is the instinctual realization that they are both human, and he reflects, what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanitylike yoursugly (Conrad, 69). The ugly similarities between the two are the primitive tendencies at the heart of all mankind. In Europeans, the drives to conquer and to own are manifestations of the darkness at their core. Similarly, for the natives, the pureness of the natural human state without cultivated civility is seen as the darkness from which they cannot escape. At the core of man is the inhumanity that the Europeans fear, but resides within themselves. What they see in the natives as something that needs to be stamped out and civilized is what lies at the heart of mankind. Although the Europeans claim to be colonizing the natives as their ethical duty, they are really trying to cover up the primitive instincts and desires they see within themselves. Freud explored this idea of the primitive human nature as the id that man tries to cover up with ego and superego. But at the deepest heart of every man, the darkness that overshadows the human soul longs to be released. What is addressed as the inhumanity the natives exemplify throughout Heart of Darkness is, in reality, humanitys purest form. The drive to consume and use for ones own advantage is something the imperialists try to hide through contrived civility and chivalry. As T. S. Eliot wrote in his poem The Hollow Men, everyone is hollow at the core. This hollowness, the drive to conquer and consume, is the true nature of man. Over time, humans have covered up these primal instincts, this id, by treating it as a disgusting, dirty stain that needs to be bleached clean, but Conrad begs the questionwhy shame something so truly human?

Beale 4 Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1983. Print. Eliot, T. S. The Hollow Men. American Poems. Gunnar Bengtsson, 20 February 2003. Electronic. 11 December 2012. <http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/tseliot/1076>. Stevenson, David. Freuds Division of the Mind. The Victorian Web. 1998. Electronic. 11 December 2012. < http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/division.html>.