Heart Of Darkness Greed Quotes

Greed is what drives the characters in The Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Ivory is the cause of most greed in the novel causing people to commit horrendous atrocities in the naive villages of Africa. The power of ivory is demonstrated above when Marlow is just beginning his journey out of the central station and already hears and smells the word in the air.
Kurtz is viewed as a particularly savage character who will do anything to get his hands on more ivory, but his brutality is something all Europeans have. Marlow learns “all Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (49) showing Kurtz did not invent the ways of savagery and greed. Ivory “[rings] in the air” when it is spoken about showing the religious nature to which the Europeans

Marlow who believes in the Europeans mission says, “I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you” (7). Towards the end of the novel, Marlow comes to see the hypocrisy is his mission to civilize when he exclaims, “There had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels” (59) as he refers to peaceful looking heads on sticks. Whereas in the beginning Marlow would hear and smell the word ivory here he is starting to see the corpse where the smells and sounds are coming from. Greed causes the subject of the ivory trade to be whispered and sighed about because the smells and sounds are covered up by the mission to civilize, but Conrad shows us what is actually happening in the end. Professor Stephen Tabachnick from the University of Memphis suggests, “Conrad keeps us focused on Kurtz’s ideas rather than on his actions, as a warning that that is where the real dangers in the tale lie—in hypocrisy and greed masquerading as progress” (Tabachnick 198). On the surface Conrad shows the idea of progress and trade by talking about the word ivory ringing, being whispered, and sighed, but then a few words later he uses a simile comparing these harmless words to a corpse allowing him to tell his true