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Marlow, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is a highly critical character that exhibits a pattern of disdain for other characters in the novel. Through interactions between Marlow and other characters, Heart of Darkness suggests that humans put other humans down in order to bury uncomfortable truths about themselves and to bolster their own self-image. Marlow illustrates this concept by withholding information from characters like Kurtz’s Intended and belittling many others in an attempt to create a “Marlowian sphere of truth” that masks his complicity in the horrors of imperialism.

Some may argue that Marlow is not complicit in imperialistic atrocities because he never kills or steals from Africans, but the novel suggests through its opening scene that Marlow is in fact complicit. The opening scene places Marlow on a pleasure cruise with the Director of Companies, a lawyer, and an accountant (17-18). By placing Marlow alongside the upper crust of Company members, the novel implies that Marlow is in good standing with the Company that exploited Africa. This scene suggests Marlow did not take any measures to fight “the horror” of imperialism, and he is thus a complicit member in its atrocities.

In her essay “Too Beautiful Altogether,” Johanna M. Smith reveals that Marlow gains a false sense of enlightenment that veils his complicity by keeping facts from Kurtz’s Intended, but by limiting her analysis to feminist theory Smith fails to recognize that Marlow gains a false sense of enlightenment through his treatment of both male and female characters. According to Smith, all men benefit from Marlow’s lie because it “enables masculine imperialism” by creating “an ideology of separate [gender] sphere[s]” (Smith 200)...

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...ed with the damning evidence of Kurtz’s “horror” like the African heads mounted on sticks (Conrad 73). I would argue that Marlow admires the Director because he has not seen any direct evidence of the Director’s own “horror” and admires the Director’s power much like he did Kurtz’s power.

The novel details the methods Marlow uses to cover the truth instead of taking steps to fight imperialism. This interpretation of Heart of Darkness is perhaps more important in today’s society than when the novel was authored because information about current atrocities such as genocide, third-world working conditions, and human rights violations is so readily available on the Internet. The novel serves as a wake up call to take action on these problems instead of trying to convince ourselves that idleness after perceiving a problem, as Marlow does, is anything less than complicity