Grass Symbols and Symbolism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Grass Symbolism in Heart of Darkness

In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the very first observation that the narrator Marlow makes about his African experiences is that when he came upon the remains of his predecessor, Fresleven, "the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones."[1] This juxtaposition of grass and mortal remains may remind many readers of several powerful scriptural images of mortality and the vanity of earthly endeavor--for instance

All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth away.[2]

Marlow's striking image resonates not only with these scriptural connotations, but also with suggestions of the paradoxical natural vitality of the grass growing through the bones, and with overtones of moral judgment for the culpable neglect of Fresleven's remains by his survivors.

Images of death are associated with grass repeatedly in Heart of Darkness. Long grass half conceals but ultimately reveals the bodies of dead carders, still in harness, in final repose beside the paths on which they labored (23). When Marlow's native helmsman is killed, Marlow says that the dead body is "heavier than any man on earth," yet when Marlow tips it over the side, it is swept back in the current "like a wisp of grass" (51). Here, if not earlier, a reader may realize that Conrad is combining images of death and grass systematically.

This motif is carried forward in two more strands. First, grass is associated with impermanence and futility in a series of increasingly intense images of material things, beginning with the almost comic picture of "wallowing in the grass" at the Lower Station, more like...

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... inhere in all humanity, civilized or not.

The full force of this motif may be seen, on reflection, in only the second image of grass in Marlow's narrative. Immediately after describing the grass growing through Fresleven's ribs, Marlow remembers visiting the sepulchral city where, on a silent and deserted street, in the dark shadows cast by tall buildings, he notices, improbably, "grass sprouting between the stones" (13) and then enters the offices of the trading company to begin a journey that does not end, not even at the end of Kurtz's broad trail through the grass wet with dew and sparkling in the starlit darkness.

NOTES

1. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, ed. Robert Kimbrough, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1988). The description of Fresleven's remains is on page 13.

2. 1 Peter 1:21. See also Psalm 90:5-6 and Isaiah 40:6 and 8.