Ignorance of another's personal values or situation results in an impassable schism between the two parties. People fail to understand each other, and as such, they regard each other in lower lights. In “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad, through Marlow, writes his novella through a lense of ignorance and the perspective of the typical white person of the time in order to relate his story to the reader. Marlow and the accountant are contrasted with Kurtz to display the effects of evil on an individual. The majority of the novella is told from Marlow’s perspective.
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.
The theme of suffering can be shown throughout by the image pattern of light and darkness. The images of light and darkness are complete opposites. Light represents the times that are pleasant, and darkness represents the pain of the characters. In the story, the narrator was remembering the first time Sonny had ever “had a horse” (31) and how “he couldn’t have been much older than these boys were now” (31). The narrator is showing how at such a young age the darkness has creeped up inside the boys.
In both the story and the movie, Rainsford has a conversation about how he views the world; the hunter and the hunted. A difference that greatly affected the integrity was that in the movie there are other guests at the dinner. This greatly affects it because it is not Zaroff that tells about his ‘new animal’, the girl at dinner tells of her suspicions. Then shortly after she tells Rainsford this, they find her brother dead, killed by Zaroff. Another smaller difference is that the hunt is only one day.
Heart of Darkness is a novella about colonialism, about darkness and light, and about the modifications that arise inside one person while being away from its traditional society. The colonizers were expected to treat the Africans as slaves, to live among them, to make from the massive, dark forest their home. It altered one’s way of being by treating the other with such contempt and even the darkness of forest strikes against the colonizer’s honorable intentions and personality traits by turning the white men into savages. This novella unlike the others of its time stresses about the altered ego instead of the changes happened in the colonized territory. As the novella is based on contrasts, the two characters are also desplayed on the one hand, having distinctions and on the other hand, being similar.
In the scene where he is looking for Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden) at a private detoxification clinic, Marlowe attempts to ask the staff where he can be found and is usually answered or interrupted with shushing or is ignored completely. Rather receiving answers with ease and efficiency as expected in a film noir, Marlowe is ineffective and occasionally, as this scene suggests, ultimately futile. While much of the staff and patients within the clinic are dressed in muted pastels or white, Marlowe stands out in his dark suit which echoes that of a film noir protagonist. Unlike the classic film noir protagonist however, Marlowe’s contrasting wardrobe is representative of how out of place he is in relation to the rest of society. Demonstrated in this scene, while he seems to be misplaced.
The darkness is said to be full of savages and cannibals it is further emphasized as being the uncivilized part of the world where people eat people and the savages wait in the trees and in the darkness. Africa in this novella is portrayed as “the Heart of Darkness” the place where the men’s inner evil is exposed, this is done through their thoughts and actions. The contrast between the Thames River and the Congo River is also made evident in the novella. The Thames River is described as calm and peaceful. It is viewed as a city of light that is not mysterious.
It is found that native people treated or believe Kurtz as god, along the way he notice differences or hatred between colonizers and native African people, Marlow faces with difficult situation with regard to meeting Kurtz on the way but Marlow could sort out with struggles as he is the main hero and the daring character in the story. Marlow was capable captain and was interested to know more about the business of ivory and rubber where we wanted to succeed, thus take up the journey with regards to his capabilities and apply his idea to be more successful man. According to Conrad,(2012), ”His was an impenetrable darkness” though they heard much about Kurtz but no one knows his real character like what he feel and think from inside his heart, Marlow rescue him from native people. At the end of novel it sound like Marlow is a liar because he lies to Kurtz fiancée saying that he called last words as her name the truth was he called out last words The Horror, The Horror, though Marlow was main protagonist and he did went through difficulties to full fill his aim and thus does what he think at the end. Marlow was skilled man with regard to being captain of navy he did his best as a
“Heart of Darkness” is a modern novel written by Joseph Conrad. As a modern novel not only it has a complex plot but complexity is found in narration and characters too. The novel begins with an unknown narrator describing The Nellie being struck on Thames and waiting for the “turn of the tide”. The reader remains in a constant confusion about who is the narrator of the novel; whether it’s Marlowe, the possible protagonist or A Narrator, accompanying the rest of the four on a voyage. The first appearance of Marlowe was him sitting “cross-legged” in a Buddha-like posture, had “sunken cheeks” and “yellow complexion”.
“‘Exterminate all the brutes!’” (Conrad, 25), Kurtz writes on his report. What is the sentence trying to tell? This single sentence from Heart of Darkness indicates that there are a number of themes in the story. It describes how a European of the 1890s views himself as a superior being above Africans, and how a man has become a cruel monster when separated from a civilized world. Then, what themes does the whole book talk about?