Heart Of Darkness

2 Pages 600 Words

Most Literate people know that by going into the Heart of the Jungle (Darkness), Conrad was trying to relay a message about the heart of man, and the story is read as one of the most symbolic stories of the English language. The story recognizes Marlow, its narrator, not Kurtz or the brutality of the Belgian officials. Conrad wrote a statement on how the story should be interpreted: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel it, and above all to make you see.”
Knowing that Conrad was a writer that lived in his work, writing about the experiences were almost as if he was writing about himself. The Story was written through the eyes of Marlow. Marlow is a follower of the sea, His voyage up the Congo was the experience in river navigation. He is used as a mask so Conrad can enter the story and tell it out of his own logical mind. Marlow longs to see Kurtz, in hope of appreciating all that Kurtz finds appealing about the Darkness. Marlow does not get a chance to see him until Kurtz is so diseased that he looks more like death itself than a person. There were no good looks or health. In the story Marlow remarks that Kurtz resembles “an animated image of death carved into ivory”. Like Marlow, Kurtz is seen as an honorable man to many admirers; but he is also a thief, murderer, persecutor, and he allows himself to be worshipped almost as a god. Both Kurtz and Marlow had good intentions to seek, yet Kurtz seems an omniscient being who lacked morality. In the end they form one person. Marlow and Kurtz are the light and dark selves of one person. Meaning each one is what the other might have been. Every person that Marlow meets on his venture contributes to the plot as well as the overall theme of the story. Kurtz is the violent devil explained at the beginning of the story. It was his ability to control men through fear and adoration that led Marlow to signify this. T...