Heart Of Darkness Archetypal Journey Analysis

Anchored at the mouth of the Thames river, five old friends pause their journey to wait out a tide at sundown. As they repose, they reminisce about the many great men and ships that travelled on river to complete multiple voyages for trade. Marlow’s excursion parallels that journey of the hero. He enters the Congo as an innocent sailor and leaves as a changed man. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad creates an allegory and archetypal journey that consists of: the task, the journey, the initiation, the fall, and the unhealable wound created during the expedition.

In their recalling of the sailors, Charlie Marlow then remembers his experiences as a young man when he captained for a steamboat ship in the Congo River. He recounts how he came to

Marlow then joins a caravan to take him to the mouth of the Congo. However, when greeted by the General Manager of the Central Station, Marlow is told the news that he expected, “...not [seeing] the real significance of [the] wreck at once…[but then realizing] at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer [he was to be piloting] was sunk” (Conrad 41). As patterned in plot archetypes, the hero must perform some sort of deed in order to pass by a point in a journey. Marlow was to repair his steamboat before he could even begin his trip into the Congo. In the months awaiting the restoration of his ship, Marlow hears stories of an individual named Mr Kurtz. He was one of the greatest importance to the Limited Company for trade in the Congo that Marlow was fixing the steamboat for. Marlow

As a child, the unknown spaces of Africa enchanted Marlow. He would often lose himself “...in all the glories of exploration” (Conrad 21). As an adult Marlow, after shining light on those dark unknown spaces of Africa and it was no longer a blank space on a map, but a place of darkness, there was still one river that charmed him, “...a mighty big river, that you could see in a map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, and its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land” (Conrad 22). The river that charmed Marlow in his boyhood, allowed access into the heart of the African continent. As the main method of the Europeans transportation, travelling along the river enables Marlow to see both sides of the continent, the natives and the evil doings of Mr Kurtz. Marlow is able to see the truths of the evil in the world and where they reign. Marlow went into the Congo as an innocent sailor and after meeting Kurtz and listening to his ideas, “turned to the wilderness, not to Mr Kurtz, who...was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to [Marlow] that [he] was also buried in a vast grave of unspeakable secrets. [He] felt an intolerable weight oppressing on [his] breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night” (Conrad