Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, is a story of discovery on the part of Marlow, a man sent into the depths of the wild African jungle to find the mysterious Kurtz. He is a man we know little about, whose story is learned through Marlow’s eavesdropping of other European passengers on the journey. Conrad’s writing style allows us to be positioned inside the mind of Marlow, able to discern his every thought as he steams down the untamed African river. The reader only receives bits and pieces of information concerning the disappearance of Kurtz, however in this way we are able to study very closely Marlow’s Orientalistic opinions of his adventure. He travels into the unknown, into the “heart of darkness”(Darkness, 65) that is so alien, so indefinite. His journey is one of knowledge, of finding Kurtz and, on a deeper level, finding his own individual selfhood.

The journey is also an imperialist one, for he is searching for Kurtz, a man who failed to return with his shipment of ivory. The ivory trade is one example of why the West colonized the East, to reap the unfathomable benefits of the land from the poor savages who had not the intellect nor resources to realize the treasure they had been wasting all this time. The manager, who exemplifies views of a typical European, remarks [on the ivory trade] that “We will not be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example. Certainly, get him hanged! Why not? Anything—anything can be done in this country. That’s what I say; nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position” (64-65). This new land that has been discovered is ripe for the picking. No civilized culture or social system has been established, and complete freedom and mastery of the territory is therefore possible.

The Orient has so fascinated the West because it is the final frontier, the last of the unexplored regions of the earth. Its lands of jungles, deserts, and savannas are mostly empty of civilization; the European finds himself in an uncharted wilderness full of the foreign, exotic, and alien. It was this fact, pushed steadily along by the ringing of cash registers in the heads of every European, that lead to the explosion of the West into the East. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow expresses the feelings of the Westerner, pure awe and wonder at the impenetrable jungle that lies before him. The jungle had “a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of the heart” (Darkness, 65). The wild aspects of Africa help bring about these Orientalist beliefs. Here was a land still feral, undomesticated, and, in the Western view, uncivilized. Marlow’s journey up the river is for him a journey “back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings” (Darkness, 66). Conrad’s description is so real, so alive, the reader feels like he is with Marlow on his steamboat, drifting down the “long stretches of waterway.” As you gaze to the “silvery sandbanks”, you notice “hippos and alligators [sunning] themselves side by side.” The air is “warm, thick, heavy, sluggish.” You are enveloped by the jungle landscape, it swallows you until “you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once—somewhere far away—in another existence perhaps” (66). This beautiful, descriptive passage shows the mystic qualities of Africa, and how Europeans simply fell in love with everything about it. The jungle is a place hidden, remote, and isolated from the “danger in Europe” (65). It is a wild, furtive locale.

When the first “pilgrims” began to interact with the many peoples of this new land, the strong cultural struggle of West and East, white and black began. Marlow’s interactions with the African natives during his travels up the river in search of Kurtz can be strikingly compared to the experiences of those pilgrims who left England in 1620 and their relations with the Native Americans whom they encountered. Africa was not seen as merely as a new addition to the map, but as a fresh land, a culture, a life totally unique from that of the West. Africa stands out so in the minds of Europeans because it is human nature to compare ones own culture with that of another’s. More often than not, it is this difference that creates the bias that any strange and unfamiliar culture other than ones own is inferior and pathetic.

Operating with this bias, Europeans see Africans as cannibals, savages, “hyenas” (76) who are ignorant of everything that surrounds them, and run about the jungle like animals in a zoo. Marlow describes an encounter with the natives as a “glimpse of rush walls, of peacked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage” (68). Marlow depicts the natives through their body parts, for, to him, they are nothing but animals. The Westerners are completely oblivious to the nature, culture, and traditions of the natives. They were lost in the situation, “the prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as some men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse” (68-69). Marlow prejudges the natives in an Orientalist way—fascinated, yet distant and “appalled.” Orientalism is very much alive within the hearts of those Europeans who have studied the Orient, what “thrilled [them] was just the thought of their [the Africans] humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar” (69). Conrad uses Marlow to voice the sentiments of the West toward the East, the fact that these natives are people so backward, so ancient. It is as if Marlow had traveled back in time. The view of the African people as animals and savages is entirely based on comparisons with Western culture. The West is civilized, with great cities and centers of industry. The Orient, on the other hand, is largely undeveloped, and the habitants live close to the land. This lifestyle is extremely primitive when based on a Western perspective.

Work Cited:

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.

Recommended: Yes