Heart of Darkness: as following Conrad's themes
"There is a machine. It evolved itself, and behold!... it knits. It knits us in, it knits us out. It has knitted time, space, pain, death, corruption, despair, and all the illusions... and nothing matters. I'll admit however that to look at the remorseless process is something interesting." Joseph Conrad addresses the evils of this machine that has created modern society and molded its citizens in his book Heart of Darkness. In the story, Marlow, the main character travels into the Congo. He expects to enter a world where a code of moral conduct is followed, but he quickly realizes that morality is not the way of this world, or any world for that matter. Marlow finds, instead, that the world is made up of corruption, death and despair. Corruption is the main theme of Heart of Darkness, and it is reflected in many parts of the book. First of all is Kurtz. "He had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory that all the other agents together"(pg. 43), and no doubt committed all forms of corrupted deeds to get this ivory. "It was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer." (pg. 58) As the quote explains, he even attacked Marlow's ship, full of defenseless men, just so he could remain with the na
Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his wooly head fall on his breastbone. (pg. 14) The corruption, despair, and death in Conrad's book form the darkness that Marlow experiences. The tone that his writing emulates is one of pessimism, but the message is not. Through Heart of Darkness, Conrad is trying to tell the reader that the only way to rid the world of darkness is to acknowledge it and oppose it, for the machine cannot perform against opposition. "...in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressi
Some common words found in the essay are:
Heart Darkness, Kurtz Marlow, Devil Marlow, , Darkness Conrad, Joseph Conrad, heart darkness, knits knits, marlow experiences, corruption despair, despair death,
Approximate Word count = 935
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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