Heart of darkness (1899)

by Joseph Conrad
Historical Context:
Belgian Colonization of the Congo
In the late 1800s Great Britain, France, Spain, Belgium, and
other European countries began seizing parts of the African
continent, creating artificial boundaries and colonies they
claimed as part of their empires. In the 1870s King Leopold II
(1835–1909) of Belgium led a group of investors to form a
trading company to control trade along the Congo River.
Leopold used trade agreements with indigenous groups as the
pretext for claiming authority over much of central Africa.
That assumption of power was codified in the Berlin West
Africa Conference of 1884–1885, which recognized existence
of the Congo Free State under his control. The present
Democratic Republic of the Congo occupies the same area
that was once the Congo Free State.
Leopold ran the colony as his personal property, separate
from the Belgian government. His rule of the Congo was
particularly harsh on the people and the environment, even
by colonial standards. Belgians enslaved the indigenous
people of the Congo and forced them to strip resources,
especially ivory and rubber, from the land and wildlife,
using torture, mutilation, and murder to enforce quotas. As
a direct result of the Belgian barbarity, at least 10 million
Congolese people died between 1880 and 1920, reducing
the population by half. In 1908 the government of Belgium
annexed the Congo, and some of the worst horrors allowed
under Leopold's ownership started to diminish. The Congo
won independence in 1960.

Conrad's character Marlow starts his journey into what is

presumed to be the Congo Basin in the late 1800s, at the
height of Leopold's rule.
The Ivory Trade in Central Africa
The trade in ivory and the concomitant abuse of native
peoples and the environment provide the historical context
for the narrative of colonialist greed that is central to Heart
of Darkness. Until Leopold's seizure of the Congo Basin, the
region had been mainly overlooked as a source of ivory,
which is obtained by slaughtering elephants and removing
their tusks. From 1888 to 1890 alone, 140 tons of ivory were
exported from the Congo Free State.
Conrad is considered one of the innovators of modernism
in fiction. Modernist works demand careful attention by
readers, calling on them to construct meaning from the
text rather than having the author make points more
explicitly. Representing a sharp break from traditional
Victorian fiction, these works use techniques such as
stream-of-consciousness narration, repetition, nonlinear
time, and interior monologue.

As described by former Yale professor Pericles

Lewis, Heart of Darkness "does not reveal its meaning in
digestible morsels. ... Rather, its meanings ... are larger
than the story itself." Readers first receive the impressions
of an event as related by Marlow, but "Marlow's arrival at
an explanation" comes later, with the result that the
narrated event and the reflection on it are sometimes not
connected. Through this and other modernist techniques,
readers must work to gain meaning from the story.
In this vein Conrad composed Heart of Darkness as an
organic or living text that echoes Marlow's state of mind.
The narrative sequence is not linear but instead moves
readers jerkily back and forth in time, much as the boat has
stops and starts in its journey on the river. The central
narrative represents a spiral downward into darkness. The
frame story provides a more reassuring narrative as Marlow
has escaped with his sanity to tell the tale.
Racism
Literary critics are divided regarding whether Marlow and
the other white characters in the novella are racist or
whether the central racism of the story comes from Conrad
 himself. Whichever is correct, Heart of Darkness echoes
the racism of the time, and racism becomes a primary
theme of the novella.
Marlow shows more sympathy for the plight of the native
people than he does for the Company people who pilfer the
land. Nonetheless, he makes racist statements throughout
the text.

For example, as he pilots the steamer and hears drums and

cries coming from the banks of the river, he says the boat is
gliding past the noise, generated by Africans hidden in the
jungle, "as sane men would before an enthusiastic outbreak
in a madhouse."
 He is frightened by what he cannot understand. He often calls the native
people "savages" and describes the steamer's fireman, who tends the boiler,
as "an improved specimen," casting judgment on the man based on European
ideals.

 At one point Marlow reveals that he has not previously thought of the native
people as human beings, a revelation made when he suggests he might have
been wrong: "that was the worse of it," he considers, "this suspicion of their
not being inhuman."
Some critics argue that Conrad was not racist but that,
through his racist character, Marlow, he reveals the racist
viewpoints of Company agents and of imperialism more
broadly. Others, including the Nigerian writer Chinua
Achebe (1930–2013), disagree. Achebe argues that, because
Conrad rarely provides native characters with speech or
other human traits, he—the writer—does not view Africans
as human.
 A major point in support of the position that Conrad was racist is the fact that
the book's central focus is Kurtz and his fate in Africa. In this view, by
focusing on one white man's fall from grace—indeed, by presenting him as in
some sense the victim of Africa—Conrad overlooks the terrible tragedies
colonization wreaked on millions of African people.
Another important issue is the question of who should speak
for the oppressed. Is Conrad, as a white man, capable of
speaking for the oppressed? Or must one be oppressed to
tell the story of oppression? Readers of Heart of
Darkness must form their own answers to this question and
how Conrad's work reflects on that issue.
Greed and Imperialism
While the stated goal of the Company is to civilize native
people, its true goal is to exploit Africa's resources and
convert them into European profits.

While there is talk back in Belgium of the civilizing mission,

and while Kurtz prepares his report for the Society for the
Suppression of Savage Customs, the focus of the Europeans
in Africa is on securing ivory.
 The Company Accountant approves of Kurtz because he sends back more ivory
than other agents; he cares neither about Kurtz's methods nor any civilizing
activity he may or may not undertake. Greed is not just a corporate trait; it is
also personal.
The manager of the Central Station worries that Kurtz's
success threatens his own advancement and opportunity to
make money. The manager's uncle leads the Eldorado
Exploring Expedition into the jungle in hopes of gaining his
riches for himself.
 Greed is not only for money. Kurtz has an insatiable greed for power, and,
when his followers feed his ego by worshipping him as they would a god, he
becomes corrupt. Marlow remembers Kurtz speaking of "my Intended, my
ivory, my station, my river" and adds "everything belonged to him." That, of
course, is the essence of the imperialistic attitude: the native peoples of a
place have no right to the land where they live or its resources. Everything
belongs to the power that can take it.
Hypocrisy and Indifference

The Company is recalling Kurtz apparently because they

find his methods, though they are never discussed or
detailed, to be excessively brutal. Yet Company officials
overlook their own ruthlessness and brutality in pursuit of
ivory. Some in Europe, like Marlow's aunt, believe that the
Company represents Christian moral values.
 In joining the Company, Marlow becomes, in her eyes, "something like an
emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle." Even before he goes
to Africa, though, Marlow knows better and tries to correct his aunt: "I
ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit." All of the Company
agents Marlow encounters in Africa demonstrate that is the overwhelming
motivation. They are indifferent to the suffering they impose on the people
around them.
Civilization versus Barbarism
Believing that they come from a more civilized culture, the
agents of the Company consistently behave in a barbaric
manner. They believe they are more civilized than the
Africans they encounter because they live in cities, travel in
steam-powered trains and ships, wear Western clothes, and
have proper manners.
 Yet these supposedly civilized Europeans can easily fall into savagery in
uncivilized Africa. Fresleven, the Danish captain who Marlow is to replace,
was "the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs" until he
snapped and repeatedly beat an African village chief because he felt he had
been cheated.
Marlow is not surprised: "he had been a couple of years
already" in Africa. The Company doctor tells Marlow, during
his examination of the recently hired captain, that
Europeans who go to Africa experience changes that "take
place inside" the mind. Kurtz, Marlow concludes, was driven
to madness by the darkness and solitude of the place.
While Marlow presents European brutality, he does not show
the supposedly uncivilized Africans as particularly brutal.
Fresleven is killed by the chief's son defending his father,
hardly a horrific act. The steamer's crew, whom Marlow
says are cannibals, want to eat the body of the dead
helmsman, but Marlow doesn't really criticize them for that.
He recognizes that they are starving.
While the boat is attacked when it nears the Inner Station, the reason is
simply that Kurtz's followers don't want him taken away. Though the
followers at the station seem threatening, they don't do anything to
harm Marlow or the other white people on the steamer. Who, then, is
civilized, and who is barbarous?