“The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness”. Thus ends Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness: the imagery of the obscured distance, the gloomy reaches of the world. After Marlow's recount of his experiences in Africa provide for him a meditation on what is light and what isn't, there is the symbolism of darkness looming in the future for audience, symbols themselves as the leaders of England and civilization. Where they are-where every character in the book is, Marlow especially--and where they go reflects their states of mind.
The binary of sanity versus madness is one of the major and relatively explicit themes of Heart of Darkness. As a doctor inspects Marlow's cranium before he departs for Africa, he remarks “the changes take inside, you know”. Those changes in mind come in response to the shift in setting, as Marlow's own mind is altered very noticeably upon his travels, eventually distinguishable from his past. His adventure begins with the rationality of an educated man searching for work in a place that he has always wanted to be, the charming, snake-like Congo River. As he goes about preparing, he is puzzled and uneasy by the peculiar behaviors of the people he deals with; he comes across two morbid-looking women knitting black wool (images of the Fates from Greek mythology), the doctor who seems awkwardly adept at analyzing the senses of men in Marlow's circumstances and unaware of any returners. He leaves, and doesn't understand anyone around him on the voyage to his destination. He doesn't see the work that he admires, and he is intimidated by the slaves laboring under chains and Europeans. He is totally lucid, and then he hears about a Mr. Kurtz. At this point, he begins to construe the natives, despite his fear of them still, and his growing distrust of his fellow Caucasians begins to form.
Finally, he arrives at the Central Station at which he will be serving, which swells the inclination that prompts the fade of Marlow's wits. In the middle of Africa, he begins to find more in common with the natives. His sole friendship on-board is with the boiler-maker (with whom he exclaims like a lunatic the need for rivets). He admires and indistinctly empathizes with the cannibals in the crew for their restraint from eating any of the “pilgrims”. And even though he has never even met the man, Marlow is enraptured by whoever Kurtz is, in what seems like the same need that in the end brought him to Africa. The closer the ship gets to the final station where Kurtz is posted, the less rational Marlow appears. When the ship is attacked right before they arrive, everyone panics, as if they didn't know what to do or they weren't expecting anything. Marlow throws off his shoes (symbols of his journey hitherto and perhaps his sanity) when they are soaked in the blood of the dead cannibal helmsman.
The climax of the journey, the novel and Marlow's mental change comes when they arrive at the post. When he would have previously thought that the heads on posts that serve as Kurtz's fence were disturbing and horrifying, Marlow is merely disappointed with Kurtz's “lack of restraint”. He confuses the distant, hypnotizing drums of the natives with his own heartbeat. When Kurtz tries to escape to the natives, Marlow threatens to throttle him instead of trying to express reason, because neither of the men, in the middle of the foreign continent, have any reason to offer. The ship leaves, and, subsequently, the men regain their thoughts. Kurtz dies on the voyage back to Europe when he comes to terms with the darkness that previously enveloped him. Marlow, however, is a permanently changed man. He contends easily with “civilized” men in England, and lies to Kurtz's Intended, in spite of his former execration for dishonesty, and his friend has to remind him to “be civil” in the middle of his account.
The various settings of Heart of Darkness symbolize the psychological drives and motivations that propel the action and the characters. Kurtz's persistence to remain in Africa, the hub of primitivity, conveys his intrinsic need for power among the natives and Europeans, disguised as the extrinsic want to hunt for ivory. Despite his initial goals of a successful career and a marriage to a beautiful woman, he is impelled to shed his “sentiments” to essentially wander the jungle. It is in the “impenetrable darkness”, in a frenzy of desperation, terror and hatred, that Kurtz comes to his senses, on the way back to civilization, and croaks from it. Marlow, at first, seeks an adventure and an excuse to go on one. He is motivated by the possibility of having a steamboat to explore the Congo enough to find a job that will give him that exact opportunity, and that desire sustains him all the way to another continent. Upon a change of setting, from Europe to the foreign, equatorial Africa, Marlow subconsciously loses his primary needs, as he comes to want to understand where he has gone and what that entails for himself and those around him. He compares the trail the Congo provides into the heart of Africa as into a center of night, and he feels the need to see something in the obscurity. He makes to the final destination, the last station, and he discovers the darkness only as he leaves, keeping the madness with him that consumed and killed the imaginary hero that Kurtz had been made out to be.
Conrad nonetheless portrays Marlow, sailing on the Thames, as an enlightened being, a “meditating Buddha” sans religiously symbolic and significant lotus flowers. The madness that destroyed the paragon Kurtz was ultimately made Marlow so much more informed and rational than any of the other survivors of the trip. His prior ignobility in comparison to the leader archetypes his friends are finally reveals that he is the ideal that no one else could achieve. Perhaps the ominous darkness the Nellie sails into is their forthcoming wisdom.
So, in conclusion, i have nailed my thoughts on the wall and can say, without hesitation, that this is a work of genius.
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