Heart of Darkness by Joseph Term Paper

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He makes the reader aware of these great changes by showing the wild backcountry, how the natives live, and how they are reacting to the Belgians in their midst. The backcountry Marlow travels through is sinister, and the natives become more sinister as well. These natives represent the evil they are fighting against and graphically illustrate what it has done to their culture. They have become violent and frightening because of the violence and fear tactics that have been used against them.

In addition, Kurtz goes mad at his outpost in the jungle, and his madness is a result of the imperialistic attitudes of the Europeans. A companion of Kurtz says of him, "You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz'" (Conrad 54). He spends years wandering in the jungle, trading for ivory, and learning about the natives and their customs, and he comes to be worshipped by them, who seem to look at him like a white God. Marlow says of him, "But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad" (Conrad 61). Kurtz has fallen in love with the wilderness and the natives, but he cannot admit that. He continues to take advantage of them by taking their ivory, and he continues to bask in their worship, even while he pillages their villages for ivory and other treasures. He represents imperialism at its worst, and yet the natives defend him. They do not understand how he is harming them, and that is truly the "horror" of this novel.

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Kurtz knows the natives are innocent and will never survive, and that thought, along with the isolation of the jungle, drives him mad. He seems sympathetic to the natives, yet early in his stay in Belgium, he advocated "exterminating" them all. It is this twist of position that helps drive him mad, as well.

Conrad infuses the novel with this theme of evil, and just about every chapter references the Belgians, the natives, and their struggles with each other. Critic Bloom continues, "Imperialist corruption is anatomized in sharp, visual images, and a clear moral viewpoint is presented, a scheme of values preserved by Marlow in his devotion to the work ethic" (Bloom 35). By writing about imperialism the way he does, Conrad shows his own feelings about it, and shows its evils simply by describing it, and the people who are carrying it out. They are victims, using any means they can to fight back and save their way of life. The way that most of the European characters view them is ignorant and uncalled for, but again, Conrad uses this to indicate just how evil imperialism was. The Europeans simply took whatever they wanted - land and people, without any thought to the people themselves. Imperialism was an evil practice, and Conrad makes that very clear in this novel......

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