"Simona, please write my report for me on the book "Conrad’s Heart of Darkness"" - such request I received previous week. Now you can read the reult of such request just reading the report posted here. This report investigates this particular famous novella the central idea of which is travelling and analysis of main characters.

In 1898, Joseph Conrad wrote his most famous novella, The Heart of Darkness, which he based on his personal experience of traveling up the Congo River to Congo, Belgium’s colony. Conrad became a witness to the terrifying genocide against the indigenous population for the sake of profit and vested interests. It prompted him to reconsider the politics and the notion of imperialism and offer his thoughts to the public in the form of his alter ego, Marlow, the narrator, and the protagonist Kurtz. On the other hand, The Heart of Darkness is a departure from the typical Victorian novel and is the forerunner of a new, modern one. As the author’s alter ego, Marlow presents the viewpoint that exposes the brutality of imperialism. Conrad aimed the book at his contemporaries, the audience that shared the narrator’s idealistic views and supported the idea of European domination over indigenous populations. In The Heart of Darkness, Conrad depicts the process of disillusionment in white supremacy and imperialism.

The plot of Conrad’s novel is set at an unnamed African river in the circumstances similar to those the author experienced in Congo. Marlow needs to travel up the river and get Kurtz, an ivory trader who is known as a scientifically-minded and entrepreneurial person. Kurtz is important to the ivory trade because “he is a prodigy” and “an emissary of pity and science and progress”. However, when Marlow finds Kurtz he discovers that Kurtz used his skills and abilities to exploit the indigenous people in the most vile and despicable manner. Holding a large amount of ivory, Kurtz was slowly dying. Marlow takes him on a boat to return him to civilization but Kurtz does not survive and dies saying: “The horror! The horror!”. His last words could relate to the horrific state imperialism has driven the country in or to his own state of corruption and moral decay.

Through the gradual change and progress of Marlow’s understanding and viewpoint, Conrad exposed the faults in prevailing ideas of the time. In Europe, the widespread opinion was that white people could dominate the world and be the carriers of civilization and culture. Under this aegis, it was considered normal to subjugate other peoples and use their resources. It looked as if white Europeans had the right to conquer and dominate others. In order to reveal the naivet? of such viewpoint, Conrad endows the narrator with it. When the narrator tells the story and adds words and opinions of Britain’s might and right to rule over colonies, the reader starts to see and feel that reality is different. For this reason Marlow cannot associate himself with the narrator and his colleagues on the Nellie. On the other hand, Marlow sees the lowness of those people who work for Britain. He feels “isolation” and “no point of contact” with other fellow passengers on the ship. They are preoccupied only with their profit and do not care about the means and methods they use to gain it.

The complexity of the novella’s structure and controversy of the content resulted in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness being interpreted in different ways. Some people concentrated their attention on the figure of Kurtz arguing that it is a metaphorical embodiment of the demise of Europe. Others believed that the novella was Conrad’s way to show the European colonization of Africa. Finally, some critics simply saw Conrad’s way of reworking and reinterpreting his own personal experience of traveling to and working in Africa. In “Heart of Darkness: The Outsider Demystified,” Thomas Cousineau (1998) suggests to perceive the novella as a conflict between the individual and the communal. It means that “the group will be shown repeatedly as responding to the outsider in some self-protective or self-enhancing manner”. The community can either start to worship the individual for some of his qualities or it can behave aggressively. The group will use any outcome to its benefit. For example, Kurtz played both roles: for the indigenous people he was like god and they worshipped him. However, for the Company he was the one who violated the rules and had to be reprimanded in some way. In both cases two different communities reacted somehow to the individual.

Another point of divergence from Conrad’s contemporaries was the presence of racial discrimination in the novella. Probably for the modern readership, too, Conrad depicted Africa in a racialized way. However, he depicted the way people treated Africans at the time. His task was to reflect the prevailing view on the ‘black’ continent. Europeans were very racially discriminative back then. Furthermore, some critics accused Conrad of using Africa as a setting and not showing it as a country in its own right. However, Conrad put an emphasis on the corruption of Europe and Europeans who came to Africa. In this regard, Africa is not shown in a bad light. Quite the contrary, African people are simple and mostly uneducated but they are sincere and kind. Meanwhile, Europeans are portrayed as being eaten by vices. Conrad’s idea was to reveal that those people who were considered the epitome of civilization are in fact corrupted, whereas people who are believed to be barbarians and wild are the carriers of normal human values and qualities.

The strong side of the novella is Conrad’s idea to depict two groups of people. On the one hand, there are corrupted and deeply wrong people who come to Africa to make money. They are hypocrites. They view the world as a place of combat where everyone is their competitor. They cannot help and support each other. For example, the chief manager could have assisted Kurtz but the latter was his competitor so he was not really interested in helping. On the other side, there are many idealistically-wired people who come to Africa as bearers of civilizational light. The crew of the Nellie and the narrator are a good example of them. At the beginning the narrator writes loftily, “What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires”. Such people (Marlow’s aunt belongs to them too) are very nave and believe that the Englishmen go to work in Africa in order to bring knowledge, religion and culture to the poor people of Congo. They are left unaware that the ‘conquerors’ of Africa are moved by greediness and a willingness to make a fortune rather than some lofty ideals.

Through the figure of the protagonist Kurtz Conrad manages to deliver his authorial statement. Kurtz is the embodiment of the transformed Europe. The indigenous people viewed him as a deity whereas his interest lied in ivory. Similarly, Europe had always hid behind the words of culture and civilization, while it aimed at robbing third-world countries. For this reason Marlow says, “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz”. First of all, white Europeans had always regarded indigenous populations as vulgar barbarians. At one point Kurtz says, “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing”. Meanwhile, the superior position had no real foundation. Furthermore, Kurtz was different from other people making money in Africa because he always acted openly and without hiding. Marlow realizes that the Company and Kurtz do the same ugly and violent things towards the indigenous people but the former does it secretly while the latter does it openly. Overall, these revelations resulted in Marlow’s complete disillusionment.

To summarize, the reader can find many viewpoints in the novella and take one most appealing to them. Conrad’s work is multilayered and multisided. Whereas at the core it can be regarded as a story of personal disillusionment, at a larger scale The Heart of Darkness is both an account of European conquest and exploitation of Africa and the study of human corruption in the conditions of utterly lawlessness. In the novella, Conrad reflected the growing discontent of the British people with colonizing policy of the country. Starting from the na?ve outlook on colonization as a cultural feat, the British society eventually came to the understanding that it was a discriminatory look at indigenous populations of Africa. Finally, Conrad shows a story from the viewpoint of an outsider. By the end of the story, Marlow wins the reader’s trust and can share his new views on colonial practice. Eventually, the narrator, too, changes his opinion on imperialism under the influence of Marlow’s storytelling. Oscillating from the somewhat na?ve understanding of colonialism, Marlow finally arrives at a more mature view of the company and the Empire. The Heart of Darkness is a book that reflects social processes in the Victorian society of the late nineteenth century.