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Revision as of 14:59, 25 July 2006
For other uses, see Heart of Darkness (disambiguation).| File:Heart of darkness cover.jpgA September 2002 printing of Heart of Darkness | |
| Author | Joseph Conrad |
|---|---|
| Genre | Novella |
| Publisher | Hesperus Press |
| Publication date | 1902 |
Heart of Darkness is a novella by Joseph Conrad. Before publication, it appeared in a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine (1899). This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame tale, following a man named Charlie Marlow, as he recounts his adventure to a group of men, on shipboard anchored in the Thames Estuary, at dusk and continuing into the evening. It details an incident earlier in Marlow's life when he, an Englishman, takes a foreign assignment as a ferry boat captain on what readers can assume is the Congo River in the Belgian owned Congo Free State; the name of the country is never specified in the text. Though his job is to transport ivory downriver, Marlow quickly develops an intense interest in investigating Stanley Kurtz, an ivory procurement agent in the employment of the government. Kurtz's reputation extends throughout the region.
Background
To write the novella, Conrad drew heavily from his own experience in the Congo: eight and a half years before writing the book he served as a ship's captain for a Congo steamer. On a single trip up river, he witnessed so many atrocities that he quit immediately thereafter. Some of Conrad's experiences in the Congo and the historical background to the story, including possible models for Kurtz, are recounted in the historical work, King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.
The story within a story device that Conrad chose for Heart of Darkness — one in which an unnamed narrator recounts Marlow's recounting of his journey — has many literary precedents. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein use a similar device, but the best examples of this framed narrative include The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Motifs and themes
The motif of "darkness" from the title recurs throughout the book. It is used to reflect the unknown, the concept of the "darkness of barbarism" contrasted with the "light of civilization", as well as the "spiritual darkness" of several characters. This sense of darkness also lends itself to a related theme of obscurity — again, in various senses, reflecting the ambiguities in the work. Moral issues are not clear-cut; that which ought to be (in various senses) on the side of "light" is in fact mired in darkness, and vice versa.
To emphasize also the theme of darkness within all of mankind, Marlow's narration takes place on a yacht in the Thames tidal estuary. Early in the novella, the narrator recounts how London, the largest, most populous and wealthiest city in the world at the time (where Conrad wrote and where a large part of his audience lived), was itself a "dark" place in Roman times. The theme of darkness lurking beneath the surface of even "civilized" persons is further explored through the character of Kurtz and through Marlow's passing sense of understanding with the Africans.
Themes developed in the novella's more later scenes include the naïveté of Europeans — particularly women — regarding the various forms of darkness in the Congo; the Belgian colonialists' abuse of the natives; and man's potential for duplicity. The symbolic levels of the book expand on all of these in terms of a struggle between good and evil, not so much between people as within every major character's soul.
Through the novel, Conrad stresses the importance of restraint; in his view a person’s "primitive honour" against his or her basic impulses. From the perspective of existentialism, people without restraint will be trapped in the destructive cycle and their lives will be absurd and insane.
Controversy
Some literary critics, most notably author and professor Chinua Achebe, the writer of Things Fall Apart, have criticized Conrad for having a racist bias throughout the novella despite the book's intentions to expose the atrocities in the Congo. In particular, Achebe objected to the treatment of Africans in the book. The Africans, he argues, are de-humanised, denied language and a culture, instead being reduced to an extension of the dark and dangerous jungle into which the Europeans venture. Controversy over Heart of Darkness first appeared in Achebe's 1975 lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"." In his lecture, Achebe branded Conrad "A bloody racist," and emphasized the implicit and explicit statements of the inferiority of African people to the white explorers.
According to Achebe, his opinions were met with dismay and outrage from some peers: "After I delivered my lecture at Harvard, a professor emeritus from the University of Massachusetts said, 'How dare you? How dare you upset everything we have taught, everything we teach? Heart of Darkness is the most widely taught text in the university in this country. So how dare you say it’s different?'" Despite allegations that it has racist overtones, Heart of Darkness is considered to be a literary classic and is widely read in educational institutions around the world.
Others, such as Cedric Watts in A Bloody Racist: About Achebe's View of Conrad, refute Achebe's critique. (A quick 'Point by Point' refutation of Achebe's critique to Watts' rebuttal was done by one Alexis and Carla.) Other critiques include Hugh Curtler's Achebe on Conrad: Racism and Greatness in Heart of Darkness.
The context in which the novella was written should not be discarded lightly, as Conrad was expressing unprecedentedly forthright and controversial views from within the heart of the empire.
In the arts
- 1972 - Aguirre, The Wrath of God, a German film directed by Werner Herzog, is remarkably similar to Conrad's novella — like Conrad's book, it mocks European colonialism and mimics the trip in to the jungle with the madness and depravity of the characters increasing the deeper they go in to the wilderness.
- 1975 - Song titled "Heart of Darkness" by band Pere Ubu
- 1979 - John Milius based his script for Apocalypse Now on the novel. It was filmed by Francis Ford Coppola.
- 1993 - Nicholas Roeg filmed Heart of Darkness for television with Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz.
- 1993 - Animaniacs parodied both Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness in a segment in episode 20 called Hearts of Twilight.
- 1998 - Star Trek: Insurrection took plot inspiration from Heart of Darkness.
- 2004 - Dead Ringers parodied John Kerry's campaign in the 2004 US Presidential Election using an Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness setting.
- 2005 - Peter Jackson's King Kong has many references to Heart of Darkness, such as a scene where Jimmy holds a copy of the book and says “It’s not an adventure story, is it?” As King Kong itself is a story of the cruelties of men, the film suggests that Conrad meant to explore human cruelty towards others as much as he meant to explore the Belgian Congo—and thus also the film is more than an adventure story but also explores the human will to exploit others.
See also
- 1904 - The Congo Reform Association was formed to expose labor abuses in the Congo Free State, eventually leading to the Belgian state taking responsibility for the colony.
- 1912 - In The Sea and the Jungle by H. M. Tomlinson, a non-fiction travel narrative classic, Tomlinson recounts the first English "tramp steamer" to traverse the Amazon river in 1905, it contains many of the same themes as Heart of Darkness
- 1966 - The Crystal World, a science-fiction novel by J. G. Ballard, is published. It has some points of contact with Conrad's novel, notably the setting in a dark forest and the voyage of desperate character into its depths.
- 1969 - Downward to the Earth, a science fiction novel by Robert Silverberg, has former colonial administrator Edmund Gundersen seek redemption on Belzagor and bear witness to the effects of colonialism on those humans who stayed behind.
- 1980 - Cannibal Holocaust, an Italian exploitation film that deals with Westerners inflicting atrocities on natives of the Amazon Rainforest and vice versa.
- 1991 - Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a documentary about the making of the film Apocalypse Now
- 1993 - Headhunter, a novel by Timothy Findley which recasts Kurtz and Marlow as psychiatrists in an apocalyptic version of Toronto
- 1998 -"The Poisonwood Bible", by Barbara Kingsolver explores many of the themes of Heart of Darkness, largely in the same place.
- 2003 - Shatterpoint, a Star Wars book that was heavily influenced by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.
- 2005 - The First Casualty, a novel by Ben Elton, follows the same storyline where a British police detective investigates a crime in the midst of the First World War, and gradually becomes painfully acquainted with the horrors of war. He is given the false name of Christopher Marlowe (cf Charlie Marlow), and he makes references to the Belgian colonisation of the Congo.
External links
- Heart of Darkness from Spark Notes
- Heart of Darkness at Project Gutenberg
- Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad at Page By Page Books.
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: A searchable online version at The Literature Network
- Literary Critiques (from both sides) of Conrad's Heart of Darkness
- Free typeset PDF ebook of Heart of Darkness and other Conrad novels optimized for printing at home.