Heart of Darkness: Black Truth and White Lies
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, there is a great interpretation of the feelings of the characters and uncertainties of the Congo. Although neither Africa nor the Congo are ever actually referred to, the Thames river is mentioned as a support. This intricate story reveals much symbolism due to Conrad's theme based on the lies, good, and evil that interact within every man.
Today, of course, the situation has changed. Most literate people realize that, by probing into the heart of the jungle, Conrad was trying to convey an impression about the heart of man, and his tale is universally read as one of the first symbolic masterpieces of English prose (Graver 28). In any event, this story recognizes primarily Marlow, its narrator, rather than Kurtz or the brutality of Belgian officials. Conrad wrote a brief statement on how he felt the reader should interpret this work: "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 above all, to make you see.(Conrad 1897) Knowing that Conrad was a novelist who lived within his work, he wrote about the experiences as if he were writing about himself. "Every novel contains an element of autobiography- and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only explain himself in his creations."(Kimbrough158)
The story is written as seen through Marlow's eyes. Marlow is a follower of the sea. His voyage up the Congo is his first experience in freshwater navigation. He is used as a tool, so to speak, for Conrad to enter the story and tell it out of his own philosophical mind. He longs to see Kurtz, in hope of appreciating all that Kurtz finds endearing in the African jungle. Marlow does not get the opportunity to see Kurtz until he is so disease-stricken that he looks more like death than a person. There are no good looks or health. ***WHERE? BEGIN THE SENTENCE MORE SPECIFICALLY THEN ‘THERE ARE…’*** In the story, Marlow remarks that Kurtz resembles "an animated image of death carved out of old ivory."
Like Marlow, Kurtz is seen as an honorable man to many admirers, but he is also a thief, murderer, raider, and persecutor. Above all, he allows himself to be worshipped as a god. Both men had good intentions to seek, yet Kurtz seemed a "universal genius", lacking basic integrity or a sense of responsibility (Roberts 43). In the end, they form one symbolic unity. Marlow and Kurtz are the light and dark selves of a single person. This means that each one is what the other might have been.
Every person Marlow meets on his venture contributes something to the plot, as well as to the overall symbolism of the story. Kurtz is the violent devil who Marlow describes at the story's beginning. It was his ability to control men through fear and adoration that led Marlow to signify this.
Throughout the story, Conrad builds an unhealthy darkness that never allows the reader to forget the focus of the story. At every turn, he sees evil lurking within the land. Every image reflects a dreary, blank one. The deadly Congo snakes to link itself with the sea and all other rivers of darkness and light, with the tributaries and source of man's being on earth (Dean,189). The setting of these adventurous and moral quests is the great jungle, in which most of the story takes place. As a symbol, the forest encloses all, and in the heart of the African journey Marlow enters the dark cavern of his won heart. It even becomes an image of a vast catacomb of evil, in which Kurtz dies, but from which Marlow emerges spiritually reborn.
The manager, in charge of three stations in the jungle, feels Kurtz poses a threat to his own position. Marlow sees how the manager is deliberately trying to delay any help or supplies to Kurtz. He hopes he will die of neglect. This is where the inciting moment of the story lies. Should the company in Belgium find out the truth about Kurtz's success as an ivory procurer, they would undoubtedly elevate him to the position of manager. The manager's insidious and pretending nature opposes all truth (Roberts 42).
This story can be the result of two completely different aspects in Conrad's life, one being his journey in the Congo. Conrad had a childhood wish associated with a disapproved childhood ambition to go to sea. Another he had was an act of man to throw his life away. Thus, the adventurous Conrad and Conrad the moralist may have experienced collision. The collision, however, as with many novelists of the second war, could well have been deferred and retrospective, rather than felt intensely at the time (Kimbrough 124).
Heart of Darkness is a record of things seen and done. Then, it was ivory that poured from the heart of darkness; now it is uranium. There were so many actual events and facts in the story that it was made more an enormity than an entertainment. His confrontations as a man are both dangerous and enlightening. Perhaps man's inhumanity to man is his greatest sin. And since the story closes with a lie, maybe Conrad was discovering and analyzing the two aspects of truth: black truth and white truth. Both are inherent in every human soul.
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