Heart of Darkness is an important example of modernist novel in English literature. It is full of symbols. A symbol is used to imply a hidden meaning behind the surface. When we look at symbols, we can understand the meaning attached to them. Through the story, places, and characters mentioned in the novel, Joseph Conrad wants to show the truth of colonialism and its effect on both white and black people.
A single story can be dangerous for the simple fact that we miss the whole story. The one-sided view on life can lead to stereotypes and judgement of others. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an example of this single story. This Polish-British writer is claimed to be a great author, with Heart of Darkness being his most popular work. In this novel he speaks through his main character Marlow about white settlers colonizing Africa, harming, exploiting and, portraying the natives in many inhumane ways.
According to Wikipedia, imperialism represents the tendency of a state to extent and conquer other wicker lands. In my opinion, one of the most interesting themes in Joseph Conrad`s Heart of Darkness is imperialism. The novel is about a trading European Company which exported ivory from Africa. The main character and the narrator of the story is Marlow, a seaman who obtained a job on a steamboat for that Company. In the novel the river, the location and the name of the Company are never specified, and also not important for the interpretation of the novel, as Marlow said „It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience” (Conrad, 5).
Imperialism is a meaningful word all throughout history, and many people would say that imperialism is what molded a country either from its rights or wrong viewed today. One of the reasons that world literature and history is learned is so we learn from our past to better ourselves in the future. The book The Heart of Darkness tells a unique story about the different ways imperialism is shown on the other side of the world meaning it doesn’t just happen in one place it happens everywhere in different time periods. The protagonist character Marlow tells his story that takes place in The Congo which is in Africa, and while reading the story of Marlow imperialism is shown so much that as readers can reflect to other examples in history. For instance,
A reading that demonstrates out of the ordinary behavior is the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness is about Marlow’s voyage as a skipper on a steamboat into the African jungle who is searching for Kurtz, an ivory trader. Marlow is sent to bring Kurtz back to civilization.
Heart of Darkness tells a story about Marlow, a young captain. He reserves a commission to research Kurtz who is an ivory trader and works for a Belgian trading company and loses in the Congo jungles. Apocalypse Now 's background is Vietnam War. An American captain Willard gets a mission to find and kill Kurtz who is an unsound US Special Forces colonel. Although these two stories ' scenes are different and the protagonists have different occupations, they all trip up the rivers on travelling on the rivers, the Congo River and the Nung River, to unfold the quest to attain a vision of their self-nature.
Joseph Conrad 's most read novella Heart of Darkness has double meaning in its title. One dictionary meaning is that the title refers to the interior of the Africa called Congo. Another hidden meaning is, the title stands for the darkness or the primitiveness that every person possesses in his or her mind and heart. The etymological meaning of the phrase Heart of Darkness is the innermost region of the territory which is yet to be explored, where people led the nomadic and primitive way of living. The setting time of the novel Heart of Darkness dates back to those periods when the continent of Africa was not fully explored.
The Wasteland, written by T.S Eliot, was shortly written after Eliot read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Both authors uses symbols in their texts to create a connection to life, death, fear, and self-reflection. Conrad and Eliot both use the symbolism of water in their texts to create the meaning of life and death. In Heart of Darkness, the symbolism of water is used to create a new life. In the beginning of Heart of Darkness, Marlow asks if his “fellows remember… {when he] turned into a fresh-water sailor” (Conrad 70).
How do the ideas of main characters change and how their justification develops throughout the story, in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky In this essay I will be exploring the changing of the ideas of main characters in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and the development of their justification throughout the story. Heart of Darkness is a philosophical adventure novel written by a famous English writer Joseph Conrad, it was published in 1902. The novel is a narrative journal of a sailor that travels up the river of Congo as a captain of a commercial vessel. Heart of Darkness is an extraordinary novel and it has overstepped the framework of its genre. Heart of Darkness portrays the fearsome and psychologically sophisticated story of the struggle between civilization and the wild untamed nature.
The symbols within the stories of these great writers revealed the impending darkness and gloom that characterized Dark Romanticism. The symbols from “The Fall of the House of Usher," written by Edgar Allan Poe, and “Young Goodman Brown,” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, sought to use Dark Romanticism to illuminate the mixture of good and evil in human nature. Dark Romanticism is a form of writing that consists of human nature, sins, death, and an abundance of evil to create fearful images that toy with the emotions of its readers. Edgar Allan Poe, a professional at creating such stories, used symbols within his stories to further his Gothic Romantic theme. In the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe wrote, “I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.