The author Joseph Conrad, wrote the book The Heart of Darkness while he was adventuring Congo in 1890. The title of which signifies not only the heart of Africa, the dark continent, but also the heart of evil –everything that is corrupt, nihilistic, malign –perhaps the heart of man. Conrad novel alludes that there are flaws in the European country that colonizers used the ideas of colonization as a cover to allow them to do damages, like violence, slavery and de-humanized treatment to the white colonizers. Through this focus on the white colonizers, it leads to the theme of the darkness of the human heart and racism toward different races. Conrad utilizes serval devices that allow him to expose the dark side of European colonization –through allusion, diction, and symbolism, to creates for us a work of criticism.
A key device Conrad utilized in this novel is striking imagery. Conrad's powerful opinion of colonization was labeled clearly through copious examples of imagery from the novel. He used color imagery and symbolism to create a stark contrast between the Europeans and the Africans, "Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees … The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly" (1, 24). In this sentence, white is symbolic of European colonialism. The image of the white thread tied around the black man's neck is reminiscent of a noose, symbolized an idea of Africans as inferior, backward and barbaric, therefore, racism arose from the battle fought over slavery and slave trade. Conrad combines these images to suggest that colonialism is a violent and deadly practice.
The allusion in this novel is one of the devices that Conrad utilized to represent the darkness of colonialism in European society. One of the most common types of allusion he used is a biblical allusion. One example of this in Heart of Darkness is when Marlow got to France, he referred to the city as a "whited sepulcher." A sepulcher is a type of tomb or relic holder, which is decorated on the outside and hollow in the center. The phrase 'whited sepulcher' is actually an allusion to Matthew 23:27-28, 'Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.' By using this allusion to Matthew, Joseph Conrad is actually calling the city and the European civilization as completely hypocritical, therefore, it contradicts to the concept and idea at that time. European culture hides under the veneer, or whitewash of civilization in the Congo, eventually, it fades away and only left with the terrible center, full of savagery and slavery. By using allusion instead of description, Conrad can say a lot in a very short phrase in order to describe the idea and criticizes society.
Moreover, the author includes a vast amount of symbolism to further address his point of the darkness of the human heart and society. The symbolic meaning of light and darkness plays a central role in this novel. Simply, light means bright, knowledge, life, etc. and Darkness, on the other hand, refers to dark, death, inability, etc. The whole novel is filled with the symbolic aspects of light and darkness. In the novel, Marlow represents the light, and he sends his representative candidate Kurtz to give the light in the so-called dark place Africa in different ways. According to Kurtz and Marlow, they are uncivilized, inhuman. So, they say that they want to give light to all Africans who are living in ignorance and under the pressure of slavery. They want to civilize them, educate them. But in reality, they try to keep them under their control. By using such symbolism, the author emphasizes that the means of economic production are captured by people from high social status. Social status, political power all are under the control of so-called light possessed people who reveal the dark side of the society.
Therefore, through vivid imagery, a vast amount of symbolism and allusion, Joseph Conrad successfully exposes his view about colonization and represents the darkness of the human heart. The European’s colonialism is surely shown from this novel. The word "darkness" represents various parts of reality, human nature, and the corruption of decency. Marlow illustrates this novel in a symbolic sense to show how the Congo affects people morally and ethically. He severely appealed what he wanted to say and help readers to understand the story much easier and exactly.
“Heart of Darkness.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness.
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