Heart of Darkness - Reform Piece or Racist Trash?
In 1890, Joseph Conrad spent four months as a steamship captain in the Congo. Like his character Marlow, Conrad became both physically ill and greatly disturbed as a result of his experiences. The Congo haunted Conrad, and despite the fact that he spent relatively little of his time there, he felt compelled to write about his experiences years later.1
Indeed, the Congo had a profound influence on Conrad. While there he met Roger Casement who was to become a life long friend and ally in the campaign against Leopold II. Conrad's experience was much like Marlow's. As a young man, Conrad would look at maps and desired to journey to the as yet unexplored Congo, much the same way Marlow did. He was the captain of a steamboat that traveled between Stanley Falls and Leopoldville. Like Marlow, he also became very ill as a result of his travels. While in the region he kept a daily diary that would aid him in future work. Conrad originally wrote a short story about his experiences in the Congo, but later decided that a slightly longer work would be necessary to deal with the topic.2 Out of this profound influence came a profound novella, Heart of Darkness, which was published in 1902 at the height of the Congo controversy.
Heart of Darkness painted a very dark picture of the Congo. It is no surprise that there is so much dark imagery in Heart of Darkness, Conrad adequately described the tone of the Congo. Kurtz can be seen as a white man who set out for the Congo, like so many others, in an effort to "civilize" the inhabitants of the region. In the end though, it's Kurtz who is the most savage. Kurtz could be a representative of any of the members of the For...
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...on different races have improved. That there even is a debate would indicate that people today are more aware of issues of racism than they were in 1902.
Works Cited
(1), (2), (6) Forbath, Peter. The River Congo. Harper & Row Publishers. New York. 1977.
(3) Widmer, Kingsley. "Joseph Conrad". Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 34. Gale Research Company. Detroit. 1985
(4) Watts, Cedric. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": A Critical and Contextual Discussion. Mursia International. 1977.
(5) Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London. 1991.
(7), (8), (9), (10), (12) Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments, Selected Essays. Doubleday. New York. 1977.
(11), (13) Sarvan, C.P. " Racism and the 'Heart of Darkness'". The International Fiction Review. winter, 1980. International Fiction Association.
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Joseph Conrad’s own experiences during his trip through the Congo helped him provide a foundation for the writing of Heart of Darkness. In 1890, Conrad took a job as a captain on the river steamer Kinshasa. Before Conrad took this job, he had worked for the French merchant navy as a way to escape Russian military service and also to escape the emotional troubles that had plagued him. Conrad had been in a financial crisis that was resolved with help from his uncle. After this series of events, Conrad joined the British merchant navy at the beckoning of his uncle and took the job as the captain of a steamboat in the Congo River. An important fact to remember is that Conrad was a young and inexperienced man when he was exposed to the harsh and dangerous life of a sailor. His experiences in the West Indies and especially in the Belgium Congo were eye opening and facilitated his strong outlooks that are reflected in the book Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s journey through the Belgian Congo gave him the experiences and knowledge to write about a place that most Europeans would never see in their lives.
In conclusion, many contribution factors led to the Crossair flight 3597 crash but is mainly triggered by Crossair’s incapability of assessment, pilot error and lastly the air traffic controller. Analysis of a flight crash is important so that we will know the causes, thus being able tackle it, making sure that there are no other flight crashes like Crossair flight 3597.
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Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch, New York: Pearson. Copyright 2004.
Zins, Henryk S. "Joseph Conrad and the Early British Critics of Colonialism in the Congo." Lubelskie Materiały Neofilologiczne 22.(1998): 155-169. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Sun. 08 May 2011.
This essay consists of two separate parts but the intention is that both these parts will prove to be relevant from the point of view of what this essay sets out to study. The first part will present Joseph Conrad's life and some of his works and the latter part will consist of a comparison of two of Conrad's works, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent. In this essay I will begin from two assumptions, namely, that both the works mentioned above include clearly identifiable similarities in their narration, theme and method, and, that Conrad's own experiences and views have had great effect on both works.
Joseph Conrad wrote the book, Heart of Darkness, in 1898. He wrote this book touching on many different themes such as imperialism and commerce, darkness imagery, dream and nightmare, isolation, mental and physical illness, truth, and journey. Although all the themes are important to make Heart of Darkness complete, three prevail overall: imperialism and commerce, truth, and journey. Being the author of the book, Joseph Conrad had a personal connection to it. He took his own journey down the Congo River and like Marlow, said that as a child his dreams were to grow up and explore the heart of Africa. A family member also recommended Conrad to a company. Joseph Conrad experienced the "heart of darkness", that could be a reason why his book is so in-depth.
Hawkins, H. (2006). Heart of darkness and racism (4th ed., p. 366). New York London: Norton Critical Editions.
In his novella Heart of Darkness (1899), Joseph Conrad through his principal narrator, Marlow, reflects upon the evils of the human condition as he has experienced it in Africa and Europe. Seen from the perspective of Conrad's nameless, objective persona, the evils that Marlow encountered on the expedition to the "heart of darkness," Kurtz's Inner Station on the banks of the snake-like Congo River, fall into two categories: the petty misdemeanors and trivial lies that are common- place, and the greater evils -- the grotesque acts society attributes to madmen. That the first class of malefaction is connected to the second is illustrated in the downfall of the story's secondary protagonist, the tragically deluded and hubristic Mr. Kurtz. The European idealist, believing the lies of his Company and of the economic imperialism that supports it, is unprepared for the test of character that the Congo imposes, and succumbs to the potential for the diabolical latent within every human consciousness.
Heart of Darkness was based on Conrad’s personal experience in the Congo in 1890, during this time King Leopold of Belgium colonizes Central Africa and forms the Congo Free State. Leopold 's original purpose for colonizing Congo was to harvest Ivory. As a consequence, King Leopold, who was a tyrant used his powers and weapons to force the Congolese’s to work to death. In the same way, that the Hearth of Darkness unfolds; it shares the similarity in which the people of Congo were treated under the authority of Leopold. “The work as going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die: “They were dying slowly—it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,
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