Heart of darkness - Joseph Conrad

Heart of darkness-Joseph Conrad

We are going to study an extract from the novel Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad in 1899. The story tells the tale that Charles Marlow, a young officer in the British merchant navy, made of his ascent from the course of a river in the heart of black Africa years before. This novel or this long novelette is inspired by the own life of the author, and he wrote the story in four months. The main character, called Marlow, is the reflect of Joseph Conrad and all of the others characters are inspired by his entourage. This novel is a harsch indictment of colonialism because the author called himself his own artwork of « the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience ». Joseph Conrad was a captain and he passed his entire life on the oceans. In « Heart of Darkness », he associate Marlow’s character to himself. He is a polish man but all of his novels and short-story are in English. He lives during the colonisation period, at XIX century. Like a lot of Europeans, he was an actor of these actions in Africa, and he contribute to strip these people, until he understood the real nature of colonisation. IN his novel, he wants to show how the human can be primitive. We are going to answer to this question « How this horrific epic illustrate an awareness for the narrator and for the readers ? » For that, we will make three parts: In first, an epic in unknown living land, in second time, we will see Marlow’s désillusion and at last but not least, denunciation of colonialism.

In the first place, we know that Marlow is going to Congo in the order to find back Kurtz, the company agent at the Inner station. He has never been to Congo or in Africa. We can see in the first sentence of the extract which is located towards the end of the novel (because after Kurtz's death) that he looks and examines the landscape with his binoculars : « and was looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and the back of the house ». After the death of Kurtz, he is talking with the Russian, who knew Kurtrz since a long time. During this time, he decided to explore further and that’s the subject of the extract. He describes what surrounds him by personifying everything. Indeed, we can see that by some quotes like « there was no sign on the face of nature », « the woods were unmoved, like a mask », « …in that bush, so silent, so quiet - as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill », « they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence ». In them, the narrator is talking about the woods and a house. And during all of the extract, he is personifying all what he see. His adventure seems to be alive, all what he didn’t already know is scarifying and mostly, that seems to be a person. He compares the woods with a « closed door of prison », what it shows that the place isn’t reassuring and on the contrary it is scary and unfriendly. The narrator describe what he see with a foreign gaze, which is explained by the fact that he is a stranger and he discovered what surrounds him. This creates a relational relationship between Marlow and the woods, nature. He meet the space, he sees it differently. The more we advance in its description, the more we are afraid, and the effect of suspense is created. Thereby, as a reader or as the three Marlow’s friends whom he tells his story, we have the feeling something horrible will happen. However we know that the extract takes place after Kurtz’s death, so few horrible thins are already happens in the story. Even if Marlow is depicting a living picture, he makes an antiphrasis when he said « there were no signs of life », the only « sign » is the ruined roof, what it shows that the landscape seems to be sad and abandoned. Nevertheless, that’s towards the abandoned house than Marlow will head to.

The main actor of the extract is the house. It is intriguing and terrifying. He said that he look it through his glasses (his binoculars), and we feel that something is weird because the narrator is insisting on the posts that he looks long one by one. « You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certains attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place », here he is talking about « ornaments » in a place without life and who seems empty in all the start of the extract. Now in the greatest contradiction or in the continuity of the absence of life we discovering with dread, like the narrator, « these round buttons were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and confusing, striking and disturbing - food for thought and also for vultures if there had been anyone looking up from the sky but in any case for ants as industrious enough to climb to the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned towards the house ». It is here that the disillusion of Marlow isn’t starting but is confirmed. We know with the introduction that

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