Sebastian Novoa Gam

Mtro. Juan Carlos Calvillo

Literatura en Ingls VI
April 23rd, 2015
The Far Corners of Ideology
An ideology becomes challenged through a clash that questions the society that preserves it. That
is the proposal made in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: when an ideology is given enough
freedom to enforce tends to its degeneration. Through fictional elements such as the
transformation of the report that Mr. Kurtz writes for the International Society for the
Suppression of Savage Customs, Conrad draws a line on the basis of Imperialism and on the
principles that sustained it; principles that his contemporary Rudyard Kipling would consolidate
with "The White Man's Burden", a poem published simultaneously in 1899. It is this conflict
between the ideology of European supremacy, supported with the discourse proposed in The
White Mans Burden, and the creation of an individual ideology, sustained by Kurtz, what
makes the transformation of Kurtzs discourse resemble a descent into madness itself.
In 1899 Kipling gives imperialist ideology a poem, a noble justification of the
enterprise itself. The imperialist principles portrayed in "The White Man's Burden" work as a
portrait of the situation in which Africa was submerged at the beginning of the twentieth century:
"Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed / Go bind your sons to exile, to
serve your captives' need;" (Kipling, lines 1 and 2). It is in this same way that we find the
depiction of the character of Mr. Kurtz at the start of Heart of Darkness; an incarnation of
imperialist ideology of humanizing, improving and instructing, a promising man carrying the task
of the white man to the heart of Africa.

Kurtz begins his report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs with
the imperialist ideology of the white man as a master in a savage environment we whites,
from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in
the nature of supernatural beingswe approach them with the might of a deity (Conrad 60).
Kurtzs nature depends directly of his exercise as an agent of the empire, his ideological
endeavors are in line with those of the empire in question, he bears the white mans burden
through the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded
(60).
The conflict lies in this power for good practically unbounded; it is the disappearance of
boundaries between the masters of the ideology and the ideology itself what leads to the
degeneration of the ideology in question. In order to continue the people that remain have to go
farther, and then a little bit farther until they had gone so far that they dont know how to get
back. Profit and ambition clouds the flawed ideology of imperialism and starts to develop
something darker that opens the doorway to a limitless greed: open speech and simple, An
hundred times made plain/ To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. (Kipling lines 7
and 8), after all as one of Kurtzs companions says: anything can be done in this country (39).
I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpsethe lone white man turning
his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of homeperhaps; setting his face
towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station. (Conrad 38)
Through this first depiction of Kurtzs image, we appreciate the first direct interaction with the
clash of ideologies, the division between the collective ideology that of the empire- and the
creation of the individual ideology, the one that is born from degeneration. Kurtz abandons the
opportunity to return to the civilization that offers him an already constructed path and decides to

return and make his own. "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings
of the world (40), Kurtz remained, and while he remained he went on farther and farther until
his last words in the report became a method, an exercise of Kurtzs own gratification.
The transformation that Kurtzs report suffers resembles the one that takes place in the
second part of Kiplings poem. Kipling starts his poem by summoning the breed of the white
man to an edifying task: to serve your captives' need; that is to humanize and improve, but as
the poem advances, the tone- as Kurtzs post-scriptum: Exterminate all the brutes - gets darker:
Take up the White Man's burden And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate
of those ye guard(Kipling lines 17 and 18).
The descent into Kurtzs madness is the creation of a self-sustained ideology that places him in
the center of the universe; his actions are unbound and his power unrestrained, he becomes
primeval and abandons the ideology that he was supposed to enforce. The descent into madness
is merely a displacement of the collective ideology by the individual ambition so strong that leads
to the creation of a new set of rules an ideas but this time forged by Kurtz himself and thus in his
mind he becomes a being that has nothing either above or below him:
the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the
fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things
of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitudeand the whisper had
proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core...
(Conrad 71)

The characterization of Kurtz portrays the realization of Imperialist ideology, where the purposes
of "humanizing, improving and instructing" are abandoned for a different goal: a descent into the

mind of a man whose limit is himself. Even though Kurtz has died, his figure remains as a
pathway that Marlowe decides to follow-- an ideology; as he chooses to be nearly buried with
him, Marlowe acknowledges and destroys the flawed imperialist ideology: I accepted this
unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded
by these mean and greedy phantoms (84) and follows the one that Kurtz left him, becoming thus
the master of his own fate, a man that did not represent his class, he was a seaman but through
his interactions with Kurtz, he no longer achieves a reintegration to the imperialist ideology, he
becomes a man without place, a wanderer.
Bibliography
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover, 1902. Print
Kipling, Rudyard. "The White Man's Burden." McClure's Magazine, 1899., 2012.
Web. 22 Apr. 2015.