The narrator's values and assumptions are challenged — although indirectly — by Marlow's story, and

the reader is meant to perceive these two points-of-view as two different understandings of man's
relationship to the natural world and the people in it. Although the narrator states that the Thames leads
"to the uttermost ends of the earth," he never imagines that his civilized London could ever have been
(as Marlow calls it), "one of the dark places of the earth."

Clearly, this vision of Europe as a civilizing and "torch-bearing" force does not accord with Marlow's
portrayal of it in his narrative. While institutions like the Company may ostensibly wish to help the less
fortunate peoples of the earth (as Kurtz's Report to the Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs
and his painting in the Accountant's office suggest), Marlow learns that the narrator's version of
imperialism is a lie. The Europeans he meets are not "knight-errants" but "faithless pilgrims"; the
Company does not bring a "spark from that sacred fire," but death, and instead of a bright "jewel,"
flashing "in the night of time," the Company is a "rapacious" and "weak-eyed devil." Marlow's story thus
challenges the reader — who may hold some of the same opinions as the narrator — to view the men of
the Company not as men engaged in a great mission, but instead as men engaged in "a weary pilgrimage
amongst hints for nightmares."

Perception is relevant to an analysis of Heart of Darkness, for it is unclear whose point ofview constructs
the text, that of Kurtz, Marlow, or the frame narrator. Since the narrative is likely composed of multiple
perspectives, it is difficult to determine whose reality it reveals. Marlow questions reality and whether it
is feasible to convey one’s own lifesensations to another, as does Louis Althusser. At the end of the novel
Marlow's tale has significantly changed the narrator's attitude toward European imperialism. The
narrator compares him to "a meditating Buddha" — clearly he has been touched by Marlow's teachings.
While the Director of Companies remarks, "We have lost the flow of the ebb" because he wants to break
the uncomfortable silence created by the power of Marlow's story, the narrator has been too affected by
Marlow's ideas, and his enlightenment affects his description of what he sees as he looks at the Thames:
a dark river leading to "an immense darkness."

The Director of Companies remains aloof, since his living is made presumably by the same horrific
processes that Marlow has just described. Only the narrator — and the reader — understand Marlow's
initial point: "Civilized" Europe was once also a "dark place," and it has only become more morally dark
through the activities of institutions such as the Company.

At the center of the diegesis, at the ‘heart of’ the ‘darkness’ is Kurtz’ narrative. Conrad intended for each
of the narrative levels of the story to become more abstract and confounded moving inward. Kurtz’
narrative is at the heart of the darkness, therefore it is the most complex and incomplete. Kurtz is not
given the chance to play narrator to his own story. Marlow has ultimate control over his narrative, and
defies some of the ways that Kurtz would have like his narrative told. For example, Kurtz was given the
responsibility of writing a report for the Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. Kurtz wrote the
report, along with a later addition reading "exterminate the brutes!" scribbled in a column. Kurtz
entrusts the pamphlet to Marlow, convinced that Marlow will deliver the pamphlet for him. Thus the
reader does not get a direct telling of the contents of the pamphlet, only Marlow’s summary and
interpretation of it. When Marlow hands the pamphlet over, he erases the "exterminate the brutes!"
scribble, thus altering Kurtz’ leftover narrative as a whole. Similarly, Kurtz demands that Marlow
truthfully relay the details of his death to his Intended. Marlow cannot bring himself to do this and in this
way alters the original Kurtz narrative.

To complicate this idea even further, Conrad has set up all of the narrative levels to fail. As Marlow
laments, it is impossible to perfectly convey the life-sensation of Kurtz. Only Kurtz can experience the
darkness. Marlow comes close, the primary narrator may see a glimpse of it, we as a reader are left
completely out of the experience. J. Hillis Miller accounts for this outward step back into the primary
narrative as, "the way Heart of Darkness is posited on the impossibility of achieving its goal of revelation,
or, to put this another way, the way it is a revelation of the impossibility of revelation" Moving further
into the diegesis of Heart of Darkness, we are confronted with the problem of Marlow as first person
narrator. Marlow is not a teller, but a re-teller. He is recounting the story of Kurtz, as filtered through his
own human experience. Like the reader and the primary narrator, Marlow is also unable to fully grasp
the life-experience of Kurtz. However, Marlow lays claim to an increased narrative authority than the
primary narrator, as he was more directly involved in the central narrative of Kurtz. This authority is of
course confounded by the first person narration. Marlow’s reliability must be constantly scrutinized and
examined. Harold Bloom offers exceptional insight into the problem created by a narrative that is
continually being filtered through new narrators onto new narratees. He writes, Heart of Darkness
"engages the very motive of narrative in its tale of a complexly motivated attempt to recover the story of
another within one's own, and to retell both in a context that further complicates relations of actors,
tellers, and listeners". That Marlow's narration on board the Nellie concludes—or more accurately,
breaks off—just after he has told of his lie to the Intended suggests the link between his lie and his
narrative. Having once presented a lying version of Kurtz's story, he apparently needs to retell it,
restituting its darkness this time, and in particular showing its place in Marlow's own story.

Heart of Darkness is a story about the relation of a story. It’s purpose is not to convey the essence of the
darkness, but to prove that it exists. Marlow has witnessed the darkness but has not succumbed to it like
Kurtz, placing him in an ideal position to relay his knowledge to others. The primary narrator, as well as
the reader, absorbs Marlow’s narrative, to the effect that they become increasingly aware of a darkness
they were once ignorant of. In this way, Heart of Darkness does not attempt to fully convey the darkness,
but effectively illustrates to both the primary narrator, and subsequently the reader, that the darkness
exists.

A noteworthy segment of Part 1 concerns Kurtz's painting, which Marlow sees hanging in the
Brickmaker's room. The painting depicts a woman, blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. Clearly, this
woman reminds one of the usual personification of justice, while the torch suggests the Company
bringing the "light" of civilization into the "Dark Continent." (Recall Marlow's aunt and her hope that
Marlow will help those "ignorant" savages become more civilized.) The woman in the painting also
symbolizes the Company, which willingly blindfolds itself to the horrors it perpetuates in the name of
profit; it also recalls the Company's ineptitude and the ways in which it "blindly" stumbles through
Africa.
According to Edward Said in his Culture and Imperialism (1994), the term "imperialism‟ refers to the
attitude and practice of a dominating metropolitan center ruling distant territories. Further, Said
describes it as, “imperialism means thinking about, settling on,controlling land that you do not posses,
that is distant, that is lived on and owned by others. For all kinds of reasons it attracts some people and
often involves untold misery for others” The notion believed While the westerner is rational,
individualistic, relies on science to grasp theworld, and reigns over nature, the other is irrational,
communal, relies on superstition and myth to grasp the world and is part of nature. Throughout the
novel, the representations of Africans are in keeping with the dominant Victorian negative hetero-image
of African subalterity.

Both the terms "imperialism‟ and "colonialism‟ are related to each other. Imperialism is the result of
colonialism. As imperialism is the highest stage of colonialism, it can be achieved through imposing
economic, social as well as political dependency which ensures both labour and market for the European
industry and goods. It can be achieved even without any direct political control. The changes in the
government do not affect this imperial process. It is based on the economic exploitation.

Europeans' journey to the different parts of the world ushered in new and different kinds of socio-
cultural practices transforming the whole world. While colonial contacts have been a recurrent and
widespread feature of human history, modern European colonialism is distinctive and by far the most
extensive.

Heart of Darkness is Conrad's most complex novella offering a brilliant fictional account of the savage
extortion unleashed by imperialism in the guise of progress. The novel presents an account of a journey
through the Congo, deep into the heart of Africa and into human nature. Marlow’s literal river journey
assumes metaphorical and metaphysical implications, a journey into the irresolvable, as the narrative
seems to be searching for a language to match the audacity of the truths it attempts to communicate
about the nature of man. It begins with his observation that “Going up that river was like travelling back
to the earliest beginnings of the world” Marlow feels himself to have entered an unknown world, and as
the steamboat carries him deeper into Africa, so his sense of estrangement from the world he knows
increases. Initially a symbol of alienation and energy, as Marlow’s Journey progresses the jungle is
reconstituted as an expression of forces(the same forces Kurtz gets driven by) that cannot be contained
or controlled.

It is a story of an idealistic journalist named Kurtz, who has the power to corrupt the others and himself
through his eloquence; of a man who makes a trip to the Congo to study the living conditions of the
Congolese and suggest ways and means of ameliorating the plight of the natives. His idea is to write a
book on his findings but as he reaches Congo, he finds the continent rich in material prospects. He
forgets his mission and becomes a cruel white lord subjugating the natives and exploiting the rich
resources through smuggling elephant tusks. In the end he totally ignores his earlier mission and falls
critically ill and dies on his way back to the Europe. As Edward Said has stated, the novel is directly
connected with “the waste and horror, of Europe's mission in the dark world”.

Conrad’s most famous account of his intention as a novelist is given in the preface to "The Nigger of the
Narcissus" (1897)

My task which I am trying to achieve is by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you
feel- it is, before all, to make you see. That – and no more, and it is everything if I succeed, you shall find
there...that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask…

As a Polish citizen, Conrad was born in 1857 to Apollo Kozeniowski who was a politic defender of Poland
and his wife Ewelina Bobrowska , both of whom were arrested because of revolutionary activities and
died of tuberculosis in their days of exile. His family and other relatives were sentenced to harsh
punishment by Russian authorities. Political turmoil disturbed Conrad in the sense that in his later years
he was isolated and all these experiences are represented in his literary works.

Conrad undertakes to establish a relationship between the colonizer and the colonized in which the
predator becomes the prey. The image of river Congo as the snake which charms the author, a bird, is
enough of a hint. The bird falls into the charms of the snake and perishes. Similarly, the colonizers who
are caught in the spell of the East end up being its worst victims. In Heart of Darkness Conrad is
concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of European mind caused by avarice and
sickness. In the beginning, the narrative runs like an adventure story of Marlow as a young man attracted
by the mysteries of unexplored Africa. As the story moves forward, the nature of it changes from one of
physical exploration to that of mental and moral exploration. The search into the Heart of Darkness (The
Dark Continent) becomes a search into the dark recesses of the human heart. This search is externally
symbolized by captain Marlow's search for the ivory trader Kurtz. Kurtz, who had come to Africa with the
high European ideals of civilizing and enlightening the ignorant natives, himself ends up as a moral
degenerate - a monstrous dark deity of the very natives whom he had come to redeem. We can say that
Kurtz is like the devil-incarnate, because he had crossed over to the evil side completely. His soul was
consumed by the evil tendencies. By being associated with Kurtz, Marlow also gets a feel of devilish
experiences. In fact, Marlow feels that if he stayed any longer in that evil atmosphere, he too would be
sucked into it. Conrad seems to be suggesting that evil tendencies are lying dormant in every human
being, be it Marlow or Kurtz. But in an atmosphere that encourages them, these latent tendencies grow
up to manifest themselves and whether they are suppressed and fought against, or given a free reign as
done by Kurtz, depends on the human strength of character. This self knowledge comes to Marlow at the
end of his harrowing experience and the reader finds inside everyone one of us there is darkness- a
lurking evil. Swami Budhananda in "The Mind and its Control', says,

Opposites sometimes look alike. Two types of persons do not have inner struggle; those who have
become unquestioning slaves of their lower nature, and those who have completely mastered their
lower nature. All others have inner struggles.

Kurtz belongs to the first category mentioned above; saints come under the second one and Marlow
belongs to the third.

Kurtz’s mental degeneration can be seen through his complete obsession with ivory and his apathy
towards his own violent and murderous acts. Ivory does not only affect Kurtz but most of the colonizers
as they all grow a very unhealthy obsession with it. Ivory begins to represent far more than the actual
material. The reverence with which the white men in Africa hold ivory can be understood from this
quote: “The word ivory rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to
it" We see that Imperialism fails not only in enlightening the natives, but also in ennobling the colonizers.
Far from being motivated by the goal of bringing civilization to the savage world, the colonizers are
interested only in augmenting their wealth.

'Kurtz' is a German name which means 'short'. Marlow says that his life was also short to fit his name. In
this novel Kurtz is a representative of the European white populace and all the atrocities done by him
represent the evil that is present in the heart of the so called 'civilized' white race.

Kurtz is initially known to have a belief that it is the duty and destiny of the white men to civilize the
natives of the dark continent of Africa. In course of time he himself becomes a part of the backward and
superstitious beliefs of the black savages. By using his guns (thunder and lightning) which they could not
understand, he becomes almost a demigod to the natives, whose chiefs come crawling on all fours to pay
obeisance to him. He presides at their midnight dances which ended in abominable, unspeakable rites.
In the absence of any kind of social or moral restraint Kurtz had degenerated into a personification of
evil. For his selfish desires he could kill anybody he felt like, without any scruples. Even his Russian
admirer is not above the possibility of being killed at Kurtz's whim and fancy. This fact forces the Russian
to hand over his ivory to Kurtz. As an agent of the Belgian trading company, Kurtz sends as much ivory as
all the other agents put together. The poles in the fence of his house are decorated by human heads: the
heads of rebels who dared to disobey Kurtz. All these evidences of selfishness, cruelty and depravity
point to the hollowness of his heart. The character of Kurtz can be taken as a symbol of European
imperialism. Marlow says, "The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and - as he was good
enough to say himself... His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed
to the making of Kurtz"

Marlow represents Conrad's own reactions to things and people, and he represents Conrad's own point
of view, to a greater extent. Though the character of Kurtz seems to dominate the final part of the story,
it is Marlow who is to be regarded as the moving spirit throughout this novel. The plot runs in such a way
that it is through Marlow's eyes that we see and understand the people and events, including the
characters of Kurtz. Since Marlow represents Conrad himself, he seems well qualified to make
philosophical and neutral comments and analyses of characters. However, the complexities that
characterize Conrad's literary modernism create a divided narrative in which the relations among
modernism, race and imperialism work in several ways. Primary among these is the division between the
modernist accounts of Marlow’s subjectivity and Kurtz's subjectivity, closely identified with each other in
Edward Said's analysis and their respective and their respective method of registering the effects of
empire and racial otherness. More recent readings of Conrad's novella mark a departure in the
discussion of race from earlier critiques by Chinua Achebe and Frances B. Singh, in which Heart of
Darkness is seen to contain "suggestions that the evil which the title refers to is to be associated with
Africans, their customs, and their rites" This solid localization of darkness is contested in Hunt Hawkins's
argument, "The lasting political legacy of Heart of Darkness, more than any confirmation of racism, has
been its alarm over atrocity". Again, Paul B. Armstrong argues that Conrad's representation of the Other
is not an act of racism as Achebe alleges, but a daring and deliberate exploration of the difficulties in
understanding "cultural otherness": "Conrad is neither a racist nor an exemplary anthropologist but a
skeptical dramatist of epistemological processes. Heart of Darkness is a calculated failure to depict
achieved cross-cultural understanding."

in a 1975 lecture, the distinguished Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, declared that Conrad was a
"racist". Achebe asserted that Heart of Darkness depicts Africa as a place of negations... in comparison
with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest. The Africans are dehumanized and
degraded, seen as grotesques or as a howling mob. They are denied speech, or are granted speech only
to condemn themselves out of their own mouths. We see Africa as setting and backdrop which
eliminates the African as human factor. Parry, on the other hand, asserts that the text does not
accommodate such univocal readings. Parry, by turns, recognizes the novel's capacity for self-critique as
well as its "racist idiom," its "powerful critique of imperialism as historical undertaking and ethos" and its
simultaneous "complicity with the imperial imaginary". Conrad's narrative consciously never posits its
finger against Europe and sympathizes with Africa, but deep inside, it sheds light on the evils lurking
within the human psyche to a great extent. Patrick Brantlinger, for example, while noting the text's
criticism of King Leopold's imperialism, also acknowledges that "its anti-imperialist message is undercut
by its racism, by its reactionary political attitudes, by its impressionism." Heart of Darkness is a tale not
only of Belgian colonialism but more significantly of the colonial enterprise tout court, while Marlow’s
story of his voyage into the unknown can be seen to mimic the imperial impulse itself. Conrad didn't
take an anti-imperialistic stance in the book, and rather focused on the deepest and darkest regions of
human psyche that come to the fore when unrestrained- the "heart of darkness", so to say. The cultural
influence of the novel, Heart of Darkness was clearly pervasive. This novella served as a reference-point,
an anthology of scenes and passages that in various ways epitomized twentieth-century problems and
particularly twentieth-century modes of exploitation, corruption, and decadence. Joseph Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness displays an ambivalent attitude with respect to imperialism. This ambivalence is attested by
Marlow’s participation in the imperialism project, as well as by the novella’s use of stereotypical exotic
representations of native Africans. While certainly inconsistent, the novel does nonetheless argue
against capitalism and socialism by revealing the dystopian outcome of both versions of imperialism. For
Terry Eagleton, a Marxist, Conrad’s art was an art of ideological contradiction resulting in stalemate:
Conrad neither believes in the cultural superiority of the colonialist nations, nor rejects colonialism
outright. The ‘message’ of Heart of Darkness is that Western civilization is at base as barbarous as
African or any other society - a viewpoint which disturbs imperialist assumptions to the precise degree
that it reinforces them.