Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, a part of Poland under Russia, on the 3rd of December 1657. Typical of Conrad’s work are the atmosphere of adventure and the distant and exotic settings. The sea is the main ingredient of most of his novels and this is obviously a result of his own seafaring adventures as a youth and his experience with the merchant navy.

Conrad’s deep pessimism, which he inherited from the unhappy political situation of his birth country, is often evident in his works. He saw man in the lap of un unforeseen estiny which had the power of revealing his true, often negative, identity. Among his best works there is Heart of Darkness. I read this book three or four times and each time I found a new interesting topic that makes me think about colonialism. I think a certain kind of colonialism still exists in the present-day society. As you can see from the plot summary I will provide you below, the story told in the novel is not so far form the events in our contemporary ‘civilized’ world.

Heart of Darkness

tells the experiences of the main character, Marlow, during a journey up the river Congo in Africa as a commander of a steamer for a Belgian trading company. The experience he tells itself to different levels of interpretation. The darkness of the title, in fact, refers both to the physical journey into Africa and to a journey into Marlow’s unconscious, whereby the more he penetrates into Africa the more he gets a deeper understanding of himself and the world surrounding him.

The novel is a strong attack on the abuses and devastation caused by colonialism. No sooner, in fact, does Marlow arrive at the Central Station than he realizes the ruin and degeneration colonial enterprises both to the land and to the natives. The latter, in fact, are reduced to mere shades, phantoms without a glimpse of life in them.
A device Conrad uses in his denunciation of colonialism is irony, by means of which what is written contrasts with what is really meant. In Heart of Darkness colonialism reveals all his evil aspects, not only because of the economic exploitation it implies but also because of the power it has to free man’s most brutal forces.

In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola directed a film: Apocalypse Now. It was inspired by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The film is set during the Vietnam War. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has been charged by the American secret services to discharge Captain Kurtz (Marlon Brando) of his command. The latter, in fact, has escaped into Cambodia and has created a personal army in the jungle, where he is worshipped as a god. Eventually, Captain Willard succeeds in finding Captain Kurtz, after a terrible voyage up a river amid of devastations, death and ruins.

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