Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Conrad, whose original name was Józef
Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, was born near
Berdichev, Poland (now in Ukraine), the son
of a Polish nobleman who was also a political
journalist and anarchist. From his father the
boy acquired a love of literature, including
romantic tales of the sea. He was orphaned at
the age of 12, and when he was 16 years old
he left Russian-occupied Poland and made
his way to Marseille, France. For the next
four years he worked on French ships, ran
guns for the Carlist pretender to the Spanish
throne, and became involved in a love affair
that ended in his attempted suicide. He then
entered the British merchant service,
becoming a master mariner and a naturalized
British subject in 1886; a few years later he
changed his name to sound more English.
Joseph Conrad
Most famous novels:
Almayer’s Folly (1889)
Lord Jim (1900)
Heart of Darkness (1902)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Agent (1907)
Under Western Eyes (1911)
English as a Third Language
• Published first novel at 38, writing in
English
• When he wrote, critics and public didn’t
appreciate him
• Had money troubles but ultimately found
success
• Considered one of the leading Modernists
at death
Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s most widely read novel.
One reason is that it lends itself to wide range of interpretations.
It can be read as…..
1. As autobiography: The account of a journey up the Congo river
that Conrad undertook in the early 1890’s.
2. As anticolonialism: An exposition of the brutality of Belgian
colonial rule.
3. As myth: An ( Arthurian) quest.
4. As classical or Norse mythology.
5. As psychology or psychoanalysis: A journey into the Self.
- and as a picture of the American involvement in the Vietnam War
Autobiography
• Conrad
did, in fact, go up the Congo River in 1890
• Like Marlow in the novel, he got the job to go to the
Congo through his aunt.
• Like Marlow, he did not get along with the manager
• Like Marlow, he was sent to pick up an agent Klein !!
• Like Marlow, he fell ill and nearly died
Congo in the 1890’s
Inner Station
Anticolonialism
Conrad about colonialism:
• “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it
away from those who have a different complexion or lightly
flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you
look into it too much.”
• ”a taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all like the whiff
from some corpse.”
• In an essay Conrad calls the colonial exploitation of
the Congo, “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience…”
Myth
•In the King Arthur myths a knight in shining amour goes
on a quest. Typically a quest for the holy grail.
•The quest usually involves a number of trials. Some of those
are physical, but the toughest tests are usually spiritual, a test
of moral fibre or personal integrity.
•The trials do not necessarily lead to wealth and fame, but
equally often to insight and humility.
Mythology, classical and Norse
There are a number of references to Greek and Norse Mythology
and to the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid :
The women in the Brussels office => Fates or Nornes
The Sepuchral city => Descent into the underworld ( Odyssey and Aeneid)
The river => Styx, Lethe (Rivers in the underworld)
The dying Negroes => The lifeless shadows in the underworld
The journey itself => the journeys of Odysseus and Aeneas
Christian Mythology
The novel has repeatedly been compared to Dante’s
Divine Comedy.
Dante also undertakes a journey to the underworld, to the
Christian Hell.
Other parallels are:
The river = snake = temptation
The dying Negroes = souls in limbo
The Inner Station = the inner sanctum of Hell, Inferno
Psychology, psychoanalysis
More than 20 years before Freud published his tripartite
division of the mind into Superego, Ego and Id, Conrad
seems to use similar ideas:
superego
ego
id
In Freudian theory, the division of the unconscious that is
formed through the internalization of moral standards of
parents and society, and that censors and restrains the ego.
The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves.
In psychoanalysis, the division of the psyche that is conscious,
most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is
most in touch with external reality.
a. An exaggerated sense of self-importance; conceit.
b. Appropriate pride in oneself; self-esteem.
In Freudian theory, the division of the psyche that is totally
unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual
impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of
primitive needs.
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is only loosely based on Heart of Darkness.
However, the main plot and quite a few individual lines have been lifted directly
from the novel.
• Like the novel it is an delving into the darkness of man’s heart.
• Like the novel, the film wants to penetrate all the way to the reptile brain.
• Where the novel may be called anticolonialist, the film may be seen as anti-war.
• There is the same basic conflict of a technologically advanced culture attempting
‘The horror…
to impose its will on a less developed people.
the horror’
• If the novel questions ‘the white man’s burden’, the film questions the right of
one country to impose its political system on another.
Survey of various interpretations of Heart of Darkness
1. Realism
the real journey
Autobiography
the Congo River
expectation
Brussels
main office
2. Anticolonialism journey
Politics
do
absurd bureaucracy criticism of
alienation
colonialism
Europe’s so-called
civilising influence
turned upside down
3. Myth
(Arthurian)
expectation
delegation of task learning process
departure
culmination
temptation, trial
cleansing
purification
return, mission
accomplished
Styx, Lethe ?
journey
Nornes, Fates
Hades, Hel
descent into Hades the underworld
dénouement
climax
danger of the forbidden, nemesis
homecoming
quest
4. Mythology quest
Classical, Norse
description of
condition in the
colony
Stanleyville
Inner Station
Marlow (Conrad)
close to dying
return to
civilisation
alienation
inability to
communicate
5. Christian
Mythology
A Pilgrim’s Progress, Everyman
Snake,
temptation
tomb, descent
memento mori
lost souls
limbo
inner Sanctum
of Hell, Inferno
punishment
purgatory
forgiveness
salvation
6. Psychology
Psychiatry
analysis,
introspection
method
first scary
revelations
learning process
desperation
final step into the
Id
crisis
cure
7. War movie
mission
’circuit cable
staff office,
plugged into Kurtz’ bureaucracy
absurdity of the
war, ’arsehole of
the world’
civilisation and
Willard alive on
morality dissolved Kurtz’ terms
mission accomplished, return
Modernism
• Literary movement from 1875-1939
• Generic term for smaller literary
movements of the same time period
–
–
–
–
Symbolism
Imagism
Surrealism
Etc.
Modernism
• Non-chronological
• Left realism behind – no attempt to preserve
the illusion of something really happening
• Emphasis on
– Consciousness
– Unconsciousness
– Perception
Modernism
• The Frame Story
– One narrator tells a story in which another
narrator tells a story
– Examples:
• The Canterbury Tales
• Life of Pi
• What effect on the reader?
• What advantage to the novelist?
Effect on the Reader
• Authors thought carefully about the ideas
they expressed
• Experimentation with different techniques
• Calculated to produce an effect
– Shift in chronology – disorienting
– Unreliable narrator – nothing is certain
– Frame story – disconnected from author
Heart of Darkness
• In 1890, Conrad traveled to the Congo in
command of a Belgian ship
• Story completed in 1899
• The story told by Marlow to his friends
aboard the Nellie.
• Narrator describes it as “one of Marlow’s
inconclusive tales”
Marlow’s Story on the Surface
• He takes employment with a European
ivory trading company, because there is no
other job.
• He travels to the Congo, where he is sent
up-river to relieve Mr. Kurtz.
• Many of the station agents travel with him.
• When they find Kurtz, he is dying (of
malaria?).
On the surface…
• Marlow returns with Kurtz down-river.
• Kurtz, in dying, whispers ‘the horror, the
horror.’
• Marlow must take responsibility for
delivering Kurtz’s papers and letters to his
fiance – his ‘intended’
• She asks for Kurtz’s last words, and Marlow
lies
Themes
• Colonialism justified by missionary zeal
• Europeans said
– Teaching the ‘savages’ a better way of life
• Suttee
• Sacrifice
– Making proper use of ‘God-given’ resources
– God gave Europeans the power to rule…
• God was on their side.
Themes
• Racism
– Marlow refers to the natives as savages
Conventional symbols
• Darkness
– Ignorance
– Sin / evil
– Paganism
• Water
– Unconscious / subconscious
– Rebirth (Christian baptism)