Heart of Darkness
Jospeh Conrad
Heart of Darkness
The British Empire
British Colonialism
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Economic penetration
East Indies Company
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Military support
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Control of local rulers
creating anglophile class
Jingoism
We don’t want to fight but by Jingo that we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
We’ve got the money, too!
Rudyard Kipling
The White Man’s Burden
Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captive’s need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
French Colonialism
►
Military occupation
►
Algeria is part of France
1962: Liberation
1.5 million dead
Belgian Colonialism
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King Leopold owner of
Congo
(47 times the size of
Belgium)
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Brutish treatment of natives
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10 million dead (half of the population)
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Noble mission to develop civilization
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Fight sanguinary customs
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Teach people to work
Labour tax
Josep Conrad
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Polish origin
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Sea captain
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1890: mission to Congo
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1895: Almayer’s Folly
Conrad’s exoticism
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Not simply adventures
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Extreme situations and isolation
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Revelation of real nature of characters
Heart of Darkness
(1902)
Anonymous narrator
On the Nellie
Marlow’s tale
Other stories
The Thames
“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly,
“has been one of the dark places of the earth”
The narrator
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Non-omniscent = Partial knowledge
(see Henry James)
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Blanks in the narrative
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The reader must work out the meanings
“Unspeakable”
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Conrad uses many words to point at what he cannot communicate:
Unimaginable
Inscrutable
Nameless
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Impossibility to describe this reality
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See Marlow and Kurtz’s Intended
Marlow
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Traditional hero: tough, honest
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Modern man: broken, weary, skeptical
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Intermediary position between Kurtz (primeval instincts) and the Company (society, rules)
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Knows the darkness but is not overwhelmed
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Destined to repeat his story
Marlow = Ancient Mariner
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Similar narrative pattern
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Extraordinary experience
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Risks to die
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Acquires a knowledge
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Must tell his story
A Journey into the self
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Who is a savage: the Company or Kurtz?
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Marlow meets his primitive self (instinct)
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Kurtz finds the horror and cannot survive
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Many parallels
The double
Thames – Congo
Fog – darkness
Marlow - cannibals and oppositions
Kurtz – Company
White – black
Light – darkness
Europe – Africa
Kurtz and Marlow: parallel or opposition?
Kurtz
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Gifted but evil (see Faustus)
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Grandiose vs flabby devils of the
Company
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Empty, hollow (see Eliot: The Hollow Men
“Mistah Kurtz – he dead!”)
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Honest?
Imperialism
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Against hypocrisy of imperialism
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Kurtz breaks loose from the conventions
No one will accept to understand him
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Colonies are just a background
Chinua Achebe on Heart of Darkness
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“offensive and deplorable book”
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Does not provide good information
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Africa is just a foil to Europe
Imperialism and Madness
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Africa produces mental and physical disintegration
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Actions with no sense
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In isolation one is the only arbiter of one’s actions
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Absolute power and fundamental fallibility
Darkness
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Brutality?
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Instinct?
nature vs. “nurture”
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Africa, London and Bruxelles are all gloomy
References
► http://www.cliffsnotes.com
► http://www.sparknotes.com
