Md Daniyal Ansari

Fiction II – The Modern Novel

Prof. Roomy Naqvy

MA English Semester III

Q. “And this too has been one of the dark places of the world”. Analyse this statement in the light
of your reading of the novella Heart of Darkness.

A. Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness was published first in 1899, that
narrates a voyage up the Congo River into Free State of Congo in the Heart of Africa. Charles Marlow
narrates the story to his friends on a riverboat anchored on the River Thames. In the novella, Conrad
draws parallels between the greatest town of the world, London and Africa as a land of darkness.
Conrad’s work focusses on trying to present the similarities between the people who considered
themselves civilised and those who were called savages. Heart of Darkness subtly questions
imperialism and racism.

Conrad employs several symbols in the construction of the novella, focussing specifically on the
symbols of light and dark and their symbolic meanings to allow the readers to witness the author
overthrowing the general understand of those symbols and terms. Throughout the story, the
narrator Charles Marlow predominantly uses the symbols of Light to describe Europe and everything
associated with the term Europe as knowledgeable and civil, in contrast with Africa and everything
related to the term African, that he explains with the symbol of darkness or blackness, that he
equates with savagery, mystery and exoticism. As we move deeper inside the Heart of Darkness, we
realise that the reader as well as the narrator find their traditional understanding of the terms light
and dark challenged as the symbols get infused with special meanings, contradictory to what they
usually mean. The light symbols, the “Whited Sepulchre”, and two symbols of darkness, the African
jungle and fog, help us understand how the writer overthrows the common understanding of those
symbols.

A sepulchre represents the meaning of death and isolation. The term “Whited Sepulchre” is a biblical
reference, “For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they
are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So, you also on the outside look righteous to
others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” It is described as a thing of external
beauty but also keeps within itself horrors. The Sepulchre represents the Brussels in Heart of
Darkness, the place where the company’s headquarters were located. The company calls civilising
and enlightening the natives its mission whereas, all its actions seem to be driven by profit. The
hypocrisy of the imperialist company is apparent, where on one hand, it calls itself civil, but on the
other hand its treatment of the natives is nothing but savage and brutal, and leaves no stone
unturned in dehumanising them, which causes harm and death to both, the whites and the natives.
Also, the use of different colours on the map that indicates towards the imperial presence in Africa
also points to the differences in imperialism in different areas marked by different colours. The
yellow, for example covers the place where the corruption in the name of empire-building has been
the most brutal. Referencing the river as snakes tells the reader of its evil. Marlow considers the
Congo River as the centre of evil. When Marlow stops off in his way to join the Company to bid
goodbye to his aunt who helped him get the job in the first place, she talks about “weaning those
ignorant millions from their horrid ways”. This makes Marlow uncomfortable as he very well realises
the hypocrisy of the Colonial power, as the profit driven company he is about to join that does
nothing for the good of humanity. In the same way, the heads of the Belgian company justify their
inhumane treatment of the natives as a mission of civilisation where in fact, the presence of the
Belgian power was marked by brutality and discriminative bloodshed. The darkness of corruption
and inhumanity peeks through the outer lies of a noble cause, drenched in the colour of pure light.

While traveling from the Outer Station to the Central station and finally up to the Inner Station,
Marlow witnesses a group of white prisoners shackled under the guard of another black man. He
comments, “I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but by
all the stars! There were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men - men, I tell you.
But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become
acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly”. These devils,
in Marlow’s eyes, are the devils of colonisation. Conrad smartly mocks the ‘benevolent’ project of
civilising the native Africans when he witnesses their ill-treatment.

Another point of hypocrisy in the idea of light and darkness is the reputation that Kurtz holds in the
eyes of fellow colonialists. Described as ‘a universal genius’, a first-class agent who is a humanitarian
and embodies the ideals and emotions with which imperialism is justified, in reality represents the
worst of what imperialism has to offer. Known to be carrying imperialism forward with the idea of
education and hope for the future, Kurtz is downright ruthless and inhumane. Marlow says of him,
“He begins with. his argument that ‘we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at,
must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings – we approach them
with the might as of a deity.’” Kurtz is known to have the desire to civilise the natives, which is
contrasted vividly by his postscript, “Exterminate all the Brutes”.

Throughout the novella, Marlow’s judgements as an imperialist has been challenged, and he realises
the wrong of his side of the binary equation and talks to his readers about it with honesty. Through
the experience of going deep into the Congo River, Marlow discovers the true side of imperialism,
that is brutal and inhumane, the way one’s vision gets clear after fog lifts off. He also discovers the
id, the evil side of humanity as a species. The whites, in all of their ‘light’ glory claim to be working
for the betterment of the native Africans, but in truth as soon as they leave their own civilisation,
they give in to their evil animalistic instincts. Kurtz’s brutality is out in the open, but is still not as bad
as the intangible evil inside the ‘civilised’ pilgrims. The “whited sepulchre” is beautiful only on the
outside, but inside is full of hypocrisy and evil. The dark grove suggests towards the primitiveness
and savagery of native Africans but also stands for humanity whose corruption is shown openly once
away from the standards of the ‘white’ society. The hypocrisy of imperialism and the drastic effects
of the decrease in the influence of society on humanity is thus explored in the novella by Marlow.